Gee. I.F. Stone was a commie agent who spoke “Truth to Power.” Who would have thought it. I am so surprised...not. What is telling is that SO many liberals who DO know who I.F. Stone and Alger Hiss were continue to venerate them to this day, and the same ones that continue to insist they were not Soviet spies also insist that the Rosenbergs were innocent.
“Witness” by Whittaker Chambers was a book that changed my political life.
I have been a conservative since I was probably 10 yrs old. (I know...I know...)
Ann Coulter’s books “Treason” and “Slander” were books that validated the conclusions I had come to about liberals a few years back.
But until I read “Witness”, I did not understand the real threat the liberalism posed to our country. Once I read that book, my tolerance for liberalism as a valid opposing point of view vanished completely.
And that, for me, was a pathway into a personal examination of Joseph McCarthy. I remember hearing about what a terrible, terrible wretch Joseph McCarthy was, and how what he did was a stain on America, and that there were no communist spies in the government, it was just a Red-Baiting witch-hunt by a politician looking to get ahead.
Boy, I sure did suck that up, hook, line, and sinker for many years.
Joseph McCarthy was an American hero. He was slandered and defamed by the same type of people who practice the same types of tactics on their enemies today.
I was one of those people who unthinkingly believed about McCarthy what my teachers taught me in school, and what I saw in the newpapers, magazines and on television.
When I read Ann Coulter’s book “Treason”, I was perplexed. I was puzzled why her account of the famous encounter between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy was so completely and diametrically different from the accounts I had grown up with and been taught.
It wasn’t just a little different, it was COMPLETELY different. So I did what the Internet allows you to do these days: I researched. I obtained the transcripts of the actual hearings, and read them.
Ann Coulter was spot on in her characterization of that hearing, and the others as well. After I read that, I began to read everything that didn’t appear to be completely slanted against McCarthy. I read three separate books on Venona, and then capped it off with the book that was, for me, the most important political book I have read in my life.
“Witness”, by Whittaker Chambers.
I was completely astounded by that book, and it explained a lot of things for me. It explained why the Left viewed Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy the way they did, and why all three of them, Chambers, Nixon, and McCarthy were villified and slandered by a poisonous and biased media.
I have a web page on my site devoted to this issue at:
http://web.mac.com/rlmorel/iWeb/Site/Whittaker%20Chambers.html
What is perhaps most disturbing of all is to see that the Left practices the exact same form of character assassination warfare today that it practiced fifty years ago against Whittaker Chambers. Exactly.
I admit freely that it was a disillusioning time for me. To realize that all my teachers, people I had no reason to distrust, fed me a steady diet of falsehood regarding Joseph McCarthy. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.
The good thing about it is that I now view everything political with a grain of salt, which I think is healthy. I am also now completely biased towards the right of the political spectrum. I have no use for the Left.
This was cemented for me last March at the Gathering of Eagles down in Washington, D.C.
I saw with my OWN eyes what happened that day, and I watched the news with ten other people afterwards, and was stupefied by the way the media presented it on television. Everyone in the room, all of us who had actually BEEN there and seen what went on, looked at each other in disbelief. I will say that there was not one person who was surprised by it, but...that didn’t mean we had to accept it. That was the first time I had seen on my own, the bias of the media.
When you visit the Nixon Library you will find sitting in one of the myriad of displays one of her campaign brochures where she seriously suggests that Nixon is the Commie and she's the patriot.
It is to laugh!
If you haven't read Stanton Evans's "Blacklisted by History" I strongly recommend it. Coulter's background on McCarthy was based on Evans' notes but his own book is mind-blowing. Destruction of incriminating official records didn't start with Sandy Burglar!
Ralph de Toledano provided many of his personal copies of research material for Evans that was missing from official archives. De Toledano was a friend of Chambers and his own 1950 book on the Chambers-Hiss affair,"Seeds of Treason," is well worth reading. You can probably find it used.
Miss Coulter’s “Treason” should be mandatory reading in all American history classes IMHO.
Considering how liberal a Republican administration the Nixon Administration really was(Nixon going to China, seeking detente with the former U.S.S.R., institution of wage and price controls, creation of the EPA, appointment of Supreme Court justices who, except for Rehnquist, were pro-abortion), one would think Nixon would be thought of much more highly by the Left. But the crazies never forgave him for nailing Hiss(possibly Nixon’s greatest accomplishment).
Wow, great developmental reflections - thank you very much for sharing all of that. I've experienced much of your journey myself, and experienced the same sort of puzzlement as I discovered the various petals of truth that were in such complete, diametrical opposition to the earnest teachings I had received for so long from various liberal sources. And like you, I finally reached a moment of epiphany where I realized the completely vile evil that liberalism actually represents, despite it's incredibly facile and numerous levels of lies about truth, light, peace, harmony and absolutely every other good thing known to the human race.
On that last, any time I have had insider information on a news story, the media got something important wrong, often several somethings, and hugely so.
I now assume this is the case on just about every story I read, especially on politically oriented stories.