Posted on 05/08/2009 11:12:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
We are about to look at the trials of a man who was judged in one decade for what he was said to have done in another. Alistair Cooke, A Generation on Trial, 1950
It was not entirely true, even in 1950, that Alger Hiss was being judged primarily on the basis of what he had done in the 1930s. Unless a former Communist Party member had thoroughly repudiated his past and turned against his one-time friends and political associates, he was suspected in the late forties and early fifties of still being a secret Communist or, at the very least, a communist sympathizer known as a "fellow traveler." In Hiss's case, the real suspicion underlying the indictment for perjury was that he had betrayed his country while serving as a State Department aide, by passing confidential information to the Soviets not only in the thirties but perhaps even during the Second World War (although Whittaker Chambers, who left the Party in 1938, never claimed to know anything about Hiss's subsequent activities). By the time Hiss was indicted and tried for perjury, he stood, in the opinion of a significant proportion of the public, for all of the American-born subverters-from-within who helped the Soviet Union to become the most prominent, indeed the only, counterweight to the power of the United States in the postwar world. To his liberal defenders, Hiss stood for all of the loyal Americans whose lives were being destroyed by charges that they had once been Communists or had even associated with Communists.
But it is impossible to understand the intensity of the passions surrounding the guilt or innocence of Hiss without making an imaginative leap backward to the thirties, when Americans were struggling with the Depression and trying to suppress awareness of the intermittent,
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We almost did with the McCarthy hearings.
What the left never, ever will admit is that McCarthy was right. The State Department,and a big chunk of the Federal Government were infested with fellow travelers and outright spies for Soviet Russia.
This is yet another New York Times piece of disinformation.
Always remember when reading the Times that they still have Walter Duranty's Pulitzer on display. The man who helped cover up the Ukrainian starvation by Stalin.
“The State Dept. and a big chunk of the Federal Govt. were infested with fellow travelers and outright spies for Soviet Russia.”
And not a damn thing has changed. (Except it’s worse now. Even the Prez is involved!)
Great followup post NB...I can appreciate where you come from as far as times/family politics, mine were similar.
You, like many of the current day anti-Communism, do a lot to keep the freedom flame alive, thanks for your diligence.
Obviously sympathetic to Hiss and other Communists.
My “48 Liberal Lies About American History” will be released as a paperback in Sept. and we added a 49th lie-—”Alger Hiss was Innocent.”
No historian or anyone seriously interested in history is going to take the musings of this well-connected leftist journalist seriously. Allen Weinstein’s _Perjury_ and _The Haunted Wood_ closed the book on Hiss years ago. But you’ve got to admire the tenacity of the Left. They just won’t let this go.
Looking forward to the Hiss chapter in Larry’s book.
It tells you all you need to know about the Left that, when it turns out Sacco & Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, Hiss, etc. were guilty as charged, IT DOESN’T MATTER. Leftists have always been great explainers, ever since the working class failed to deliver as promised by Uncle Karl.
The title should read: Alger Hiss and Revisionist History. Remember, for Democrats and their minions in the teaching profession the US needlessly exploded two atomic bombs, started the war in Korea, was responsible for the Cold War, forced the Soviets to build the Berlin Wall, and forced the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. And, of course, the person whose policies brought the Cold War to an end was Mikhail Gorbachov. Our indigenous America-haters are now numbered in the tens of millions thanks to revisionist historians.
I took a class from a history professor who was like that. He let FDR off the hook for Yalta and railed against “McCarthyism” claiming there were “never any communists in the government.” He absolutely adored Woodrow Wilson, FDR and JFK. Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., Nixon and McCarthy were the great villains of American history according to him. I would be critical of communism and JFK and question him on it. I think that’s why he gave me a B instead of an A.
Richard Carlson as Herb Philbrick in I Led Three Lives the black and white series sponsored by Phillips 66.How quaint--the secret Communist cell--
Now comes Frank Marshall Davis the CPUSA member and his whiskey-and-marijuana comrade Stanley Armour--
And Stanley's grandson the highest mole yet.
Al Gore the darling of Armand Hammer bagman to the Soviet dictators, his father founding the CPUSA in 1919.
Delano was enamored of Uncle Joe, quite prepared to sacrifice the freedom and very lives of millions of Europeans, to insult Churchill, to dismiss charges of infiltration in his administration--
Now comes Hillary the progressive whose homage to Alinsky is unsealed--and her Alinskyite fellow traveler Hussein.
Again it should be emphasized New York Times, Walter Duranty, Uncle Joe, Senator Joe--
Drink the Kool-Aid or be deemed anti-intellectual, a clinger to Bibles and guns.
The institutional pressures you describe are now so pervasive as to be the water which the fish cannot perceive.
Horowitz chronicles serial academic outrage and is met by shouting agitators.
We have met the anti-intellectuals and they are the Left.
Now shapeshifted into the Harvard grease extruder Hussein, an absolute babbler sans his telepromptered lines.
Who was so impressed at the Potemkin metropolis built on the spilled blood of the Tiananmen Two Thousand.
Brother Ayers knows of omelets and bombs, while bony metro usurper whines to be left alone to his waffle.
Thank you again for your illumination of the persistent subliminal sleight of hand of the Left.
It's tyranny and we're not having it--not yesterday, not today, never.
*Bump!*
Excellent Phil, we know the truth. I would have loved to see Stanton Evans (Blacklisted by History) the greatest living authority on McCarthy, eviscerate Indiana Civil Liberties head Dr. Robert Risk in 1964—a fact-based fearless warrior defeated a propaganda-spewing fairy in public combat.
Balcklisted by History, The Venona Files and Comrade J are 3 must reads for all Americans.
As bad as Alger Hiss was, Harry Dexter White was far more dangerous.
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