[FredZarguna]

I always get a kick out of conservatives who repeat the claim that "The Left nowhas completed its Long March through the institutions." I think if you critically examine the record you'll find that American "intellectuals" in and out of the academy have always been enablers and fellow travellers (full disclosure: I left academia in the 1980's after a brief career, but my discipline was not overtly "political." Even so, most of my colleagues including my thesis adviser were reflexively, though not ideologically, liberal.)

You might like The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression , by Amity Shlaes. This is a bit drier and less overtly "shocking" than the communism revisionist [neorevisionist] books, but if you like history you very well may enjoy it. I certainly did. To the point: In this book Shlaes documents -- among many other interesting and heretofore mostly unknown things -- that most of Roosevelt's economic "brain trust" were leftist academics and fellow travellers long before most Americans even thought seriously about communism. Many of them had travelled to Russia to see for themselves what the excitement was all about, and came back to America thoroughly converted (or confirmed) in "the Cause." This was in the 1920's, not the 1960's or 70's.

[It's also interesting to see The Ickes and Blumenthals, the Harvard grads and Yalees of previous generations whose children and grandchildren thread their way through the history of the 20th Century and are still part of the Democrat nomenklatura today.]

[elcid1970]

Thanks. For those who think the Hollywood crowd’s fascination with communism began with Jane Fonda and Oliver Stone (or no further back than Dalton Trumbo), “The Red Decade” by Eugene Lyons (1941) is still instructive.

Published just after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and the incredible flipflops by the CP,USA which followed, the book describes of communist infiltration & recruitment of the filmmaking elite that began even before Lenin consolidated Bolshevik rule in Russia. The communists were early experts in using mass media to seize the attention of the masses.

As for the descendants of the fellow-travelers of the Comintern period, “The Coercive Utopians” (Rael Jean & Erich Isaac, 1984) is a useful and not yet dated reference. A revised edition would have to include Cass Sunstein in that assemblage.

S. Steven Powell’s “Covert Cadre” (1987) is also helpful in identifying those who were later forced to abandon pro-Soviet advocacy for today’s leftist movements (green, gay, gun control, anti-Western, government healthcare, etc.)

Though aging, `communitarianism’ theorist Amitai Etzioni & his writings give keen insight for understanding the thinking of those who belong to our latter-day Aristocracy of Conscience.