THEY'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU [Ann Coulter on Ron Radosh, Joe McCarthy, "Blacklisted by History"]

AnnCoulter.com ^ | December 5, 2007 | Ann Coulter

[RonDog]

THEY'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU
by Ann Coulter
December 5, 2007

Poor Ron Radosh is still hoping liberals will forgive him.

He wrote a good book a quarter-century ago with Joyce Milton -- "The Rosenberg File" -- which was supposed to exonerate Julius Rosenberg, but instead concluded that Rosenberg was guilty of Soviet espionage.

Radosh has spent the rest of his life apologizing to liberals for that book.

This week, he's apologizing in the pages of the increasingly irrelevant National Review with a nasty review of the greatest book since the Bible, M. Stanton Evans' "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy."

Radosh makes misstatements of fact about the book, misstates facts about the cases and falsely accuses Evans of plagiarism. Other than that, it's a good review!

The review makes it comically obvious that Radosh didn't so much as glance through the pages of Evans' book. (Please forgive me, Eric Foner!) At least Kelly Ripa skims the summary cards written by her assistants who actually read the books when she interviews an author. Radosh doesn't even manage that.

It must be painful for Radosh to read a thrilling historical account of Soviet espionage without every accusation against a liberal having to be surrounded by 400 excuses, as in Radosh's excruciating books.

This contemptible Uriah Heep patronizingly writes, for example, that "Evans does an impressive job of reminding readers how serious the issue of Communist penetration was" -- something Radosh's own books failed to do because he's too busy denouncing right-wingers like Joe McCarthy.

But Uriah Radosh complains that Evans "does not emphasize, although his own data make it clear, that most of the knowledge about these people came before McCarthy was on the scene. After all, Elizabeth Bentley first went to the FBI in 1945, and named key members of Soviet networks."

This is extensively covered in Chapters 10 and 11 of Evans' book. Extensively. There are even never-before-released charts in those chapters that you'd notice by merely flipping through the book before purporting to write a review of it. So even people who just read Evans' book for the pictures will know that he's covered that point pretty exhaustively. This includes one intricately detailed FBI chart mapping out Bentley's Soviet contacts. But thanks for reminding us about Elizabeth Bentley, Ron!

All of this information, incidentally, was delivered to the Truman administration, where it was promptly ignored.

This is the central fact that apparently must be explained to liberals over and over again. I will understand the rules of football before liberals will grasp McCarthy's point.

It is true that most of the high-value targets whom McCarthy cited to prove Democratic perfidy had been identified as Soviet spies before McCarthy came on the scene.

But the essence of what McCarthy was saying was: Let's get into this a bit. How could Whittaker Chambers meet with FDR's Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939, reveal massive Soviet penetration of the Roosevelt administration, and still have these same Soviet spies swarming through Democratic administrations a decade later?

How could Truman have nominated known Soviet spy Harry Dexter White to be U.S. director of the International Monetary Fund in 1946? How could Truman still be denying Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent in 1956?

Democrats want endless, pontifical investigations into how 9/11 happened, but they can't comprehend why McCarthy wanted an investigation into how an immense network of Soviet spies managed to run rampant through the Democratic administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

After Hiss, the Rosenbergs and the loss of China, there was considerably more reason for McCarthy to investigate the State Department than there is for the current Congress to investigate Bush's firing of his own U.S. attorneys.

By exposing the Democrats' absolute blindness to Soviet totalitarianism, McCarthy shattered forever the nation's confidence in the Democrats' capacity to govern. For that, the Stalinist hate machine attacked him viciously and has never let up -- as detailed in "Blacklisted by History," a book Ron Radosh might want to read someday.

But Radosh is not about to let the first book to render a full and honest historical account of Joe McCarthy ruin his blissful ignorance. Radosh knows less about McCarthy than I know about fly-fishing. He gets cases wrong, sources wrong, hearings wrong. He's been pulling this nonsense for 25 years now. The sole point of his current cliche-ridden ramblings in National Review is to make yet one more special pleading to liberals.

DEAR RON:
No matter how hard you try, they'll never forgive you. You still can't get a job teaching at any university in America.

DEAR NATIONAL REVIEW:
Your fake dispatches from Lebanon are more interesting than whining liberals writing book reviews of books they haven't read and don't have the guts to write.

COPYRIGHT 2007 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111

[Robwin]

“Hoover saw McCarthy as hurting the ani-communist cause...”

““”According to the Communist leaders, McCarthy has helped them a great deal,” Herbert Philbrick, who spied on communists for the FBI for almost a decade, said in 1952.”

Secretagent, I hope you don’t mind if I view with scepticism these quotes as I consider their source, SFGate, unreliable. In fact these comments look suspiciously like disinformation, and I will not accept either one without independent verification.

The comments from Hoover, for example, are not doumented in any way. They are just the writer’s opinion. He quotes DeLoach, of course, but only to say Hoover did not like McCarthy. And so? Proves what?

I would like to see where Philbrick said what is quoted, as other sources I have read talked about how the CPUSA devoted huge amounts of energy, time, and personnel into maligning the Senator. Something doesn’t jibe.

And just look at who the article’s third “expert” on McCarthy is. None other than Ronald Radosh, the very “authority” Ann Coulter excoriated as a know-nothing at the beginning of this thread.

Color me unconvinced.

[endthematrix]

Excerpt transcript of newspaper page from the Appleton Post-Crescent, September 8, 1952 (friends for re-election)

“Some of our friends say they are not dupes, and quote Mr. Herbert Philbrick, FBI Counter-Spy as saying that Senator McCarthy’s efforts have aided Communism. We have checked Mr. Philbrick’s book and find that he doesn’t even mention McCarthy.

But here is a Photostat of what Mr. Philbrick actually wrote on the Fly Leaf of his book as he presented it to Senator McCarthy: It reads as follows: “With many thanks to Joe McCarthy, who despite an attack by the enemies of our country unprecedented in history, has refused to yield to the forces of evil and who in fact has redoubled his determination to keep on fighting – and to win. (signed) Herbert A. Philbrick.”

Should we believe what the “Confusionists” say Philbrick thinks?
Or should we believe what Philbrick tells us Philbrick thinks?”

http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/turningpoints/mccarthy/mccarthy-dearjoetransc.html

[SShultz460]

It’s behind a subscriber wall on NROnline.

[nikos1121]

Wa it the National Review that posted his review? I think she’s wrong is she not?

[nikos1121]

Okay, I see that she is right the review was in the National Review. BUT can someone explain to me why Ann is upset with the National Review? That’s Buckley magazine, right? Their writers are usually right on the money about things. Perhaps NO ONE at NR reviewed the Radosh review.

[alloysteel]

This came off as a DOUBLE scold - not only Ron Radosh, but National Review as well.

Fitting.

Especially for the way Ann was scourged for her statement, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”

Now more than ever.

[Stepan12]

This came off as a DOUBLE scold - not only Ron Radosh, but National Review as well. Fitting. Especially for the way Ann was scourged for her statement, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Now more than ever.

[jmaroneps37]

“.... the increasingly irrelevant National Review.... “

BINGO. I let my subscription go when it became so obvious that buckley had become goldwater.

[Stepan12]

Worth repeating again. That line was worthy of Steyn.

Ann is talking about this And now for some shoddy reporting from an NRO millblogger

[Syncro]

Thanks for the ping RonDog BUMP!

[Loyal Buckeye]

I just finished reading “Blacklisted.

It was a very good read backed by a ton of research. A real eye opener.

[smoothsailing]

Good article by Ann.

Wes Pruden has an ongoing series (part 8 is the latest installment linked below) on the Evans book at the RenewAmerica website.

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/vernon/071203

[EveningStar]

can someone explain to me why Ann is upset with the National Review?

They fired her 6 years ago. See the link on post 29.

[Bigun]

Because their counterparts don’t just run rampant in the Democrat Party these days...they run the Democrat Party, and are rampant throughout the U.S. gov’t, etc.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Winner Here!

[Bigun]

Are you kidding? The scumbag Democrats STILL use the word "McCarthyism" all the time to smear sensible Republican initiatives.

That is true but there is MUCH more to it than that. The United States Department of State is, to this day, still riddled with the hirelings and minions of the very people McCarty was seeking to expose.

[EveningStar]

I did not realize that Ann had been in the military.

[Ultra-Secret.info]

“Despite Hoover’s excesses, he didn’t make a practice of frivolous accusations about communism the way McCarthy did.”

As M. Stanton Evans irrefutably demonstrates, McCarthy “didn’t make a practice of frivolous accusations about communism” either.

Meroney’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, J. Edgar Hoover strongly supported McCarthy. As the FBI director put it in 1953:

“McCarthy is a former Marine. He was an amateur boxer. He’s Irish. Combine those and you’re going to have a vigorous individual, who won’t be pushed around ... Certainly, he is a controversial man. He is earnest and he is honest. He has enemies. Whenever you attack subversives of any kind,... you are going to be the victim of the most extremely vicious criticism that can be made.”

-Blacklisted by History, p. 36

[KC Burke]

Whittaker Chambers relates in his autobiography, Witness, how almost two years after he had broken with the Communists and left the underground where he ran White and Hiss he was sitting in his office at Time Magazine and was called on by two FBI agents.

After calling the Deputy Secretary of State for Security whom he had met with over a year earlier to get permission to relate his same account, Chambers outlined the Soviet Military Intelligence network in which he was an important nexus for high ranking Washington, DC spies supplying information and documents to the Soviets.

After the interview, he never saw those two agents again.

After the interview, he was never contacted by the FBI again during the War or thereafter.

When the Hiss case began, he went throught other government agencies and did have some secondary contact with the FBI but seems to have considered them compromised, either by political ambition, or manipulation.

Witness is riveting.

[y6162]

NR online fired Ann after she made her ..invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity...post 9/11 column.

Ann retorted that Jonah Goldberg and Richard Lowry were girlie men. =) So there’s no love lost between NR and Ann.

I’ve subscribed to NR for over 25 years. I’ll continue to subscribe as it is the Vatican of conservative journals and must endure. However, I think Jonah gets too much ink, there’s too great a Brit representation and well, lately, the features have been dull.

NR was at its best when it was the anti communist bastion. It needs a new crusade.

[secretagent]

From David Horowitz, an admirer of Coulter and a publisher of her work:

“It is a shame that Coulter mars her case with claims that cannot be sustained. In making McCarthy the center of her history, ironically, she has fallen into the very liberal trap she warns about. It is the Left that wants McCarthy to be the center of (and in effect to define) the postwar era so that it can use his recklessness to discredit the anti-Communist cause. In fact, as Coulter herself points out, McCarthy began his anti-Communist crusade after the decisive battles of 1947 and 1948, surfacing only in 1950, after the onset of the Korean War. By then, even Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, knew he had been duped. This is why McCarthy did not unearth any Communists in government or out (all they had all been previously identified by the FBI), and why FBI officials engaged in counter-intelligence work despised McCarthy for damaging their efforts. Hopefully, ‘Treason’ will not have a similar effect.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={85013A39-1679-49EF-9799-DE762C337F95}