Posted on 12/12/2007 5:31:38 PM PST by secretagent
Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies By M. Stanton Evans Crown Forum; 663 pp; $29.95.
Eight years after Arthur Herman, here comes Stan Evans with another effort to pull off what most historians would regard as a Herculean (if not Sisyphean) task: the rehabilitation of Joe McCarthy.
As did his predecessor, Evans does an excellent job of correcting excesses in the historical record — the unthinking, near-hysterical, and far too common demonization of McCarthy. Indeed, Evans’s book is more detailed, and he conducted more original and diligent research into primary documentation than did Herman in his account of “America’s most hated senator.”[1]
So comprehensive is Evans’s research that it will be a foolish historian who does not consult Blacklisted by History when a question arises over some person or event that comes into the McCarthy story. Unlike Herman, however, whose bottom-line appraisal was positive but qualified, Stan Evans’s defense is more full-throated. While granting that McCarthy was “a flawed champion of the cause he served,” Evans judges that the cause needed a “warrior” like McCarthy, and finds that McCarthy had a highly positive impact on public opinion, on America’s Asian policy, and on government security policy.[2]
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemagazine.com ...
"The American Communist Party was a clear and present danger, as McCarthy and Evans would have it, in the early Cold War. But its chief threat was that of political subversion, not espionage, and therein lies the dividing line between a positive view of McCarthy and a negative appraisal. Had American Communists and their allies retained the influence they had achieved in the labor movement and the broad New Deal coalition, it is difficult to imagine that the United States would have undergone the political mobilization necessary in the crucial, early years of the Cold War. And the absolutely vital, perhaps irreplaceable, political elements in this mobilization were the leaders who would come to be derided in the 1960s as “Cold War liberals.”
From 1946 to 1950, a civil war raged within labor and liberal institutions over the postwar direction of their movement. Initially, it looked as if Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party, with its secret Communist leadership, might wrest Roosevelt’s mantle from a faltering Harry Truman and the Democratic Party. But after an uncertain start, Truman reformulated the New Deal for the postwar era, and adopted a policy of confronting Moscow that transformed him into the greatest of the Cold War’s liberal presidents. By the time the 1948 election was over, Wallace and his followers had ceased to be a viable alternative to Truman and the Democrats. Soon afterwards, the last bastions of Communist institutional strength were leveled when the CIO expelled its Communist-led unions.
In addition to ideological rejection of Communism, one must note a practical aspect of the Democratic Party’s embrace of Cold War liberalism. From 1945 onward Republicans had been unrelenting in their criticism of the covert presence of Communists in the New Deal coalition. Many Democratic professionals realized that in the context of the developing Cold War, continued tolerance of the Communist presence opened the party to devastating Republican attack.
The heroes in this political marginalization of the extreme left were such figures as Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt from Americans for Democratic Action; liberal Democratic politicians such as Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas; and labor leaders such as Walter Reuther and Philip Murray. Yet they were not McCarthy’s allies — indeed, these were the kind of people against whom McCarthy railed.
By the time McCarthy’s Wheeling, West Virginia speech in February 1950 launched what came to be labeled “McCarthyism,” an anti-Communist consensus dominated the American landscape. The Democratic Party was firmly in the hands of Cold War liberals; the CIO free of Communist influence; and only remnants remained of the once-significant Communist role in mainstream politics, civic institutions, and the labor movement. Yet McCarthy threatened the anti-Communist consensus that liberals had helped create because he attempted to make anti-Communism a partisan cudgel."
...snip
Go Joe!
The debate amongst conservatives continues.
Ann Coulter also did a pretty good job of vindicating McCarthy in “Treason”.
“Initially, it looked as if Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party, with its secret Communist leadership, might wrest Roosevelt’s mantle from a faltering Harry Truman and the Democratic Party.”
Setting that one aside for reading-challenged lurking DU types.
Call out the reds by name he did and they swore they would never let it happen again.
Anybody who is opening up a big mouth criticizing this book is a guaranteed communist or sympathizer.
Naw, that assumes he was habilitated.
McArthy simply needs the truth told about him. Thats not rehabing. Its exposing the liberal socialist historical lies about Joe.
And the libs want to call it rehabing?
Buahahahahahaha!
The libs are afraid that we will have another McCarthy era. In fact we need one quite badly, what with 5th Column operatives in the CIA and the State Dept. leaking secure info. to the NY Slimes, and purposfully traducing presidential policies.
Yup, we need another Joe right now!
Maybe Reid and Pelosi, as well as that *urd Murtha would end up behind bars where they belong, for their Unamerican conduct of aiding and abetting the enemy.
Democratic Underground - never visited the site.
Do they reject the anti-Communist credit assigned to liberals by Haynes?
Haynes is not vindicating McCarthy. He’s respectfully criticizing Evans.
I read Evans’ book. It left me enlightened and furious. McCarthly not only explored specific individuals’ ties to Communists, but also the processes that left the individuals in place within our government and military.
The American Communist Party IS a clear and present danger.
Now they are called the Democratic Party however.
I don't agree. Some conservatives have points where they differ with Evans on McCarthy.
I haven't yet. Did Evans think McCarthy erred with Marshall?
Its sad that the world did not listen to Joe - we could have saved 50 million not killed by communism yet.
I’m not quite sure what this guy has been smoking. Aside from Reuther kicking the Communists out of the unions and possibly some sense from Schlesinger, the Democrats have never been willing to admit how thoroughly FDR’s administration had been infiltrated. It wasn’t until the Venona papers emerged that Alger Hiss wasn’t regarded as a martyr who had been unfairly prosecuted by Nixon.
The reality of the political landscape was that the U.S. government had engaged in blatant pro-Stalin propaganda during the later war years in order to sell the “lend-lease” program to the American public.
McCarthy had to resort to a degree of sensationalism in order to overcome the results of this propaganda campaign and the image of “Uncle Joe” Stalin that resulted.
Even when Kruschev emerged in the late 1950’s to lead the Soviet Union the American MSM portrayed him as a grandfatherly figure ignoring that he had presided over much of Stalin’s purge activities and was internally known as the “butcher of the Ukraine” by the Soviet populace.
I read a book recently by William F. Buckley (title escapes me) about Joe M. Even though a work of fiction, I think it contained enough truths for me to do a complete reevaluation of the man.
Haynes writes:
The heroes in this political marginalization of the extreme left were such figures as Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt from Americans for Democratic Action; liberal Democratic politicians such as Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas; and labor leaders such as Walter Reuther and Philip Murray. Yet they were not McCarthy’s allies — indeed, these were the kind of people against whom McCarthy railed.
Did McCarthy rail against Reuther?. Haynes doesn't specifically say so.
It is not true that by the time McCarthy arrived on the scene, an anti-communist consensus had swept away all communists in government. If it had, he would have had no ammo, as the author of this piece pretends. Instead, the State Department in particular was still a communist subsidiary, and Dean Acheson was a large part of the reason why. He made it his business to protect the chums from his "correct" class, and they in turn made it their business to see asia delivered to communism, along with whatever espionage they could get away with.
In case everybody forgot, on Truman's watch, American citizens deliberately gave atom bombs to Joe Stalin.
Evans is fair to the real anticommunist hawks in the Democratic party, notably Scoop Jackson and JFK. He notes that both worked just fine with McCarthy, despite his alleged hyper-partisanship supposedly ruled way out of bounds. Morever, and again as Evans makes clear, it was far from partisanship to McCarthy, it was policy substance. If it *had* been just politics, he would have soft peddled it once Republicans won the 1952 elections - and there can be little doubt that is exactly what Ike wanted and expected him to do.
For all of them, Truman and Acheson, this author and Ike, McCarthy was just a partisan weapon. But he wasn't that to himself. He went after reds wherever he smelled them - or more accurately, wherever internal bureaucratic fights and the FBI told him they were being coddled by politicos interested only in credit and spin. That meant he crossed Truman yes, it also led him to cross Ike - the definition of non-partisan.
It was the latter than actually destroyed him, by undercutting his own political base on the right. It was as much that internal Republican fight - not now, back in 1954-56 - that let the Dems back into control of congress. I realize modern liberals think control of congress is their birthright, but really it simply isn't and wasn't.
Evans was entirely fair on the subject of Marshall in the book. He even went soft on him, because an objective reading of the record shows he treated security issues like a spin dominated prima donna, and backed off sensible seriousness about it as soon as he got the first whiff of bad liberal press over it.
This article writer pretending it was because the right was isolationist is utter horsefeathers, as is his imaginary asia first charge. The right simply didn't think writing off all of Asia was a good idea - and it wasn't - and Acheson's hamfisted rhetoric in that direction sparked the Korea war and killed tens of thousands of Americans trying to stem the damage. Acheson was not a cold war hero but a walking foreign policy disaster.
The article also claims there was no evidence of any Truman complicity in any of the latter security problems, but this is demonstrably false. Evans has the FBI on the subject and Truman justice is caught, dead to rights, fixing cases to get off communist spies. And why? Because they are concerned about partisan embarrasment. In other words, the hyperpartisanship the author pretends McCarthy was guilty of, was in fact the problem with Truman - and is also his own.
The richest bit, though, is the pretence that McCarthy deserved to be destroyed because he was such a partisan demagogue and he was scoring heavily painting the left as soft on communism, and politics requires restraint in such things and not painting enemies as so evil they can't be tolerated. Um, that is precisely what the left did to McCarthy. And to Nixon, come to that.
They murder the man and then claim it was self defense because after all, they were mortal enemies.
Then there is the spin control aspect of it all. He can't understand why magazines let people even talk about it. I mean, it is supposed to all be beyond the pale Bircherism, and nobody is ever to be allowed to talk about it, unless they agree that the left were wronged saints throughout.
Evans is winning this one going away. If this is all they can say against him - attacking others for being allowed to speak without genuflecting to the sainted Marshall - then he is entirely right in all his main points.
We have lived through what the left does to such moderate and principle men as Bush, and we will never believe their histrionics against men like McCarthy again. Instead of the smear campaign working one more time, it just shows us how little it takes to set them off - any effective attack on their claims to power.
As I recall, yes. Evans wrote that McCarthy made several mistakes, mostly form and style, rather than substance.
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