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Two Cheers for "McCarthyism"?
National Review Online ^ | 2/26/03 | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 02/26/2003 11:45:35 AM PST by bassmaner

One of the most difficult things for a conservative to write about is McCarthyism. Oh, I don't mean "difficult" in the Oprah Book Club sense of difficult. It's not painful, or heart-wrenching, or cathartic. I mean it is technically challenging to write about it with clarity and precision. The problem is simple: McCarthyism has come to mean anything liberals or leftists consider to be unfair, unjust, un-nice. It's simply another example of the general phenomenon described by George Orwell when he wrote in "Politics and the English Language" that "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" (See "Orwell's Orphans.")

What makes McCarthyism so hard to discuss is that McCarthy behaved like a jerk, but he was also right. Every movement has its jerks, the Left included — but liberals are unwilling to elevate these people to villain status or to make their tactics into a full-blown "ism." Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton are perfectly willing to accuse any Tom, Dick, or Harry of racism without regard to the damage this might do their careers. But we don't talk about "Jacksonism" or "Sharptonism," even though being labeled a racist is the modern equivalent of being labeled a Communist. Indeed, being a prick has become something of a badge of honor on the Left. Alan Dershowitz is brilliant and eloquent. He is also one of the most obnoxious people in public life. Michael Moore is by all accounts so ughsome, so selfish, so noisome (yes, noisome), and so unlikable that if he'd been a conservative, the New York Times would have stepped on him and wiped its shoe on the curb. Feminists, gay activists, and other champions of social change even wear their nastiness on their sleeves. Just look at the bitch cult among feminists. There are any number of books dedicated to the glories of being a "bitch": Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch, and so on. Elizabeth Wurtzel, a feminist priestess of bitchdom, has explained that "bitch" is a sexist label for difficult, strong women. So, she argues that women should reclaim the word "bitch" in the same way as homosexuals reclaimed "queer."

Well, I would dearly love to reclaim the word McCarthyism, if only a little bit. Which gets back to the challenge of writing on the topic.

Senator Joe McCarthy was a lout, generally speaking. But he was on the right side of history and, in a broad sense, of morality as well. If, in some sort of parallel-universe exercise, the same number of (now proven) Soviet-Communist spies, collaborators, sympathizers, and the like were somehow switched to Nazis, and McCarthy went after them with the same vehemence as he went after Reds, Joe McCarthy might well have universities and foundations named after him today. Just imagine if a ring of Nazi party members were found to be working in Hollywood, never mind the State Department, taking money from Berlin to advance the Nazi cause. Does anyone really think "McCarthyism" would still be denounced as an unmitigated evil, often put at the front of the parade of horribles alongside Hitlerism and Stalinism?

Now, I'm sure many people are rolling their eyes at this point. "It's not the same thing!" say those who believe that the lost jobs of a few Hollywood writers and the loyalty oaths reluctantly offered by some unjustly accused union officials are the American equivalent of concentration camps. Maybe, maybe not. The argument over which was worse, Communism or Nazism, will never be settled. Nor should we expect it to be. But even if you firmly believe that Nazism was more evil than Communism, as even Robert Conquest does, you must concede that Communism was evil enough. If the sight of an American Communist screenwriter being forced to take the Fifth Amendment before Congress and have his "career ruined" still fills you with blinding rage, it's indeed curious why the forced slaughter of millions by Stalin seems like a trivial event to you. After all, there were plenty of men and women invoking their "rights" as their heels left lines in the dirt on the way to the gulag. Needless to say, their careers were ruined too. And if the American Communists had had their way, much the same thing would have happened here as well. But, yeah, Roy Cohn's the devil.

Regardless, wherever you come down on McCarthyism, Communism, and the rest is a matter of opinion. What is a matter of fact — unmitigated, irrefutable, undeniable fact — is that there were hundreds of Communists working for Moscow, directly or indirectly, in the United States during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The Rosenbergs were guilty and got what they deserved. Alger Hiss too. Victor Perlo, Judith Coplon, Morton Sobell, William Perl, Alfred Sarant, Joel Barr, and Harry Gold were all either pawns or lackeys of a foreign and evil foe. We know the Hollywood Ten were all Communists, but what else they were we can't know for sure, because they believed taking the Fifth was more important than protecting the country (and if you think it's unfair to cavalierly call people who devotedly followed the Moscow line for all their adult lives "Communists," I sure hope you don't ever call, say, President Bush a "fascist" on the basis of no evidence at all). The American Communist Party (CP-USA) was in fact a Soviet franchise.

In other words, you are free to describe McCarthyism as a witchhunt if and only if you are willing to concede that actual witches existed in our midst. The evidence — from declassified Venona transcripts, Soviet archives, memoirs, etc. — is still mounting, but what we have so far is plenty in itself. In 1996, Nicholas Von Hoffman wrote an essay for the Washington Post that caused no small amount of hysteria on the American Left, which has been milking its myths and denial for decades. McCarthyism was the product of the "paranoid style" in American politics. There were no witches — only zealots and brown-shirted bullies. The playwright Lillian Hellman declared: "The McCarthy group — a loose term for all the boys, lobbyists, congressmen, State Department bureaucrats, CIA operators — chose the anti-Red scare with perhaps more cynicism than Hitler picked anti-Semitism."

Yet, as Hoffman reluctantly conceded, these assessments were in turn lies, myths, and carefully constructed distortions. The reality was that "in a global sense McCarthy was on to something. McCarthy may have exaggerated the scope of the problem but not by much… The Age of McCarthyism, it turns out, was not the simple witch hunt of the innocent by the malevolent as two generations of high school and college students have been taught."

But even as honest liberals like Von Hoffman were coming to grips with reality, many on the Left decided to take another approach. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the Left was largely content to describe McCarthyism in Hellman's terms: a baseless assault by right-wing paranoids and fanatics. But in the 1990s — as the evidence against the Rosenbergs, et al., became undeniable and the general obsession with Marxism was replaced by an obsession with postmodern sexual gobbledygook — the Left began rewriting the moral of McCarthyism.

The McCarythites — defined as almost anyone who was meaningfully anti-Communist — were still venal and unjustified in their assaults on "civil libertarians." Now, however, they were homophobes as well. The canard about anti-Communism being a stalking horse for anti-Semitism was replaced by the canard that anti-Communism was really the dyspepsia of repressed right-wing homosexuals. Sidney Blumenthal, for example, wrote in The New Yorker that the "true legacy" of Whittaker Chambers was that "he helped to transmute an external threat into a moral panic, and to encourage a new generation of Cold War conservatives to do the same." For "a pantheon of anti-Communists . . . conservatism was the ultimate closet," a way of disguising their latent homosexuality. "Conservative anti-Communism," Sidney Blumenthal lamented, is "an anachronism. What endures is the fear of the enemy within: the homosexual menace." Blumenthal's bile is mild compared to what you might find on many college campuses.

THE "NEW MCCARTHYISM"

Now, I don't bring this up because I'm one of those conservatives who can't get over the fact that the Left got away with decades of dishonesty and deceit on the subject of America's struggle to save Western civilization. (Though, for the record, I am one of those conservatives.) Rather, this history has new meaning and relevance now because the Left is again invoking "McCarthyism" in an assault on those who would defend the country.

The USA Patriot Act, wrote David Cole in The Nation, "resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'terrorist' for 'communist.'" Arab-American and Muslim groups denounce almost any accusation of someone with an Arab surname as "McCarthyism." "It smacks of McCarthyism and other events in history in which heavy-handed government tactics against an entire community have done nothing but ruin innocent lives," Sarah Eltantawi, a spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, predictably declared of a Justice Department policy. Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on America-Islamic Relations of Southern California, exclaims, "This new McCarthyism against Muslims must end," he said. "Are you going to deport us all?"

Now, I have no problem with Muslims denouncing McCarthyism — if, by McCarthyism, you mean unfairly accusing someone of wrongdoing either through guilt-by-association or through simple prejudice. But that's not what those throwing around the "McCarthyite" smear are up to. When they denounce McCarythism, they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people.

Consider Sami al-Arian, the controversial University of South Florida professor who's been arrested on 50 counts of supporting terrorism. He is alleged to be a senior member of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which carries out "suicide" bombings and the like. If "terrorist" has any meaning at all, Islamic Jihad is a terrorist group. Al-Arian's arrest would not have been possible without the Patriot Act, which allows domestic law enforcement to use foreign intelligence.

When al-Sami was the subject of intense controversy for his statements justifying terrorism against the U.S. and Israel, his defenders claimed that — you guessed it — this was nothing but so much McCarthyism (see John Podhoretz's excellent column on the subject). On CNN, the charming spokesman for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Hussein Ibish, insisted: "Until we have some reason based in fact to think otherwise, I think that the presumption has to be that this is a political witch-hunt, a vendetta, and a kind of very, very ugly post-9/11 McCarthyism." Eric Boehlert of Salon wrote: "Media giants, eagerly tapping into the country's mood of vengeance and fear, latched onto the Al-Arian story, fudging the facts and ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers here at home." Professors reveled in the opportunity to change the subject to "academic freedom," in much the same way as defenders of Stalin's gulag used to insist that the only issues worthy of public passion were the civil liberties of spies and traitors.

Al-Arian hasn't been proved guilty yet. But, between you and me, I find it hard to believe the Justice Department would risk the colossal embarrassment of being proved wrong about a case so popular among its critics. And, any reasonable person must concede that there are some Muslims and Arabs in America either in the employ of al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Islamic Jihad, et al., or, at minimum, sufficiently sympathetic to such causes as to be indistinguishable from employees of bin Laden & co.

This hardly means that all Arabs or Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. I agree with Ibish that the vast, vast majority of such citizens are innocent and decent people. And no one wants to bully or mistreat innocent people the way McCarthy sometimes did. But to claim that the current legal and political environment for Muslims is "McCarthyite" does not change the fact that there are, in fact, real Muslim terrorists here in America — just as decrying the excesses of Tail Gunner Joe doesn't change the fact that he was right when he said there were Stalinist spies in the State Department.

Meanwhile we will all wait for the verdict on Mr. al-Arian, who has gone on a hunger strike in jail to protest the supposed McCarthyite vendetta against him. Professor al-Arian is not stupid and he knows that the crowd that considers John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden is nothing if not a sucker for a good hunger strike. This is no doubt an ordeal for al-Arian. Indeed, it prevented him from doing the work second-most-dear to his heart. On March 5, he was originally scheduled to give a speech at the University of Colorado. It was titled "McCarthyism II: The Post 9/11 Erosion of Civil Liberties."

What a coincidence.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: communists; doublestandard; huac; joemccarthy; mccarthywasright
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History has proven that the late Senator from Wisconsin wasn't a paranoid kook after all. He was a true American hero.
1 posted on 02/26/2003 11:45:35 AM PST by bassmaner
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To: bassmaner
The left has never come clean about this; and it's always refreshing to hear them squawk about "McCarthyism" in this day and age, as they have just LOST the debate - never let them use this phrase unchallenged, ever.
2 posted on 02/26/2003 12:03:43 PM PST by Freedom4US
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To: bassmaner
I went to a public high school (in the early 90's). I'll never forget how we spent an entire class period or 2 on how the prosecution of the Rosenberg couple was one of the biggest mistakes in US history. That we should all feel guilty as Americans for being in a country that would do that.

Where is the egg on these peoples' faces after the KBG admitted EVERYTHING about those monsters was true, even not the entire story! They are directly responsible for Stalin getting the bomb in the 50's, changing the entire face of global politics. A quick execution was not fitting enough for what turned out to be two of the biggest criminals in US History.

What I would like to see is a comparision on this great Devil of the 20th century; McCarthy's claim against individuals, and the KGB records of the stories that were true. Was he always right, of course not, but people seem to forget that occassionally he was and that is very important to fight against the ostrich brigade. There were true threats amoung us, just like right now.
3 posted on 02/26/2003 12:13:52 PM PST by PeoplesRep_of_LA (Reagan must have done alot of good to be hated by the left this bad)
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To: bassmaner
Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies,.....Or... Joe McCarthy was more right than he ever knew

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/622675/posts

4 posted on 02/26/2003 12:14:01 PM PST by quietolong
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To: bassmaner; PeoplesRep_of_LA; All
Tailgunner Joe--Patriot Whistleblower or Right-Wing Witch-hunter?

The Rosenberg Case- Spies, Scapegoats, or something inbetween?

5 posted on 02/26/2003 12:17:40 PM PST by backhoe (The 1990's will be forever remembered as "The Decade of Fraud(s)...")
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To: bassmaner
Eastern Europe was lost to Stalin at Yalta. FDR was old and sick. His chief advisor was a communist sympathizer (famous guy, but I'm drawing a blank on his name).
In the early 1950's, the US had thermonuclear weapons and the Soviets did not. The Cold War wasn't too scary. Until the Rosenberg's gave the H-bomb to the Soviets.
Alger Hiss, Kim Philby and others really existed. The Communists WERE planting spies throughout the West.

Also, my understanding is that it has never been illegal to be a communist in the US. Even in the 1950's, Congress was not jailing people for that political affiliation. However, if people refused to talk about where their sympathies lay, then suspicions were raised. Through the Right of Free Association, some folks decided not to associate with other folks who seemed un-trustworthy. That's black-listing, and it's OK in my book.

Lastly, the attempted leftist subversion of the US did not end during the McCarthy era (far from it). The War in Vietnam was lost because leftwing sympathizers (Jane Fonda and many others) made in politically difficult to continue. South Vietnam was lost to the Communists, and millions died. Over and over we have seen how fear and death have been increased by the actions of secret leftists working against our national interests.

I think McCarthy is a hero, flawed as he was.

6 posted on 02/26/2003 12:23:26 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: bassmaner
He was a true American hero.

I disagree. I think that McCarthy did enormous damage to the anti-Communist movement in America. Not because he was wrong, but because he was a drunk, and he absolutely lied and exaggerated. Victor Hugo said that "the good must also be innocent" which is, to a certain extent, true. When McCarthy started spouting numbers that constantly changed, when he claimed to have a list that he could never produce, he created the environment and context for the entire process to be characterized as a "witch hunt." Even though, in essence, he was right - there were Communist agents in the State Department, and they were a threat to America.

My grandfather was in Washington during the 40s, working for several different Senators, and my grandparents were good friends with McCarthy. I've spoken about him with my grandmother on several different occasions, and her reaction, as someone who knew him well, was that "he had a real problem with liquor, but he was an American through and through." Based on all that I know, I buy that assessment. But, though he was brave enough to stand against the tide and speak the truth, he spoke enough un-truth to marginalize himself...

7 posted on 02/26/2003 12:32:01 PM PST by Lyford
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To: ClearCase_guy
Eastern Europe was lost to Stalin at Yalta.

I remember the first time I read the text of the Yalta agreement. (It was not contemporary - I'm not 40 yet). I almost threw up. What an appalling document. Arrogant and just plain evil, as we sold Eastern Europe into two generations of slavery.

FDR was old and sick. His chief advisor was a communist sympathizer (famous guy, but I'm drawing a blank on his name).

Wasn't it Hiss? Hiss was definitely part of the US delegation to Yalta - I'm thinking he was the highest ranking State Department member there, though that could easily be wrong. Or are you thinking of Averell Harriman?

8 posted on 02/26/2003 12:41:35 PM PST by Lyford
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To: ClearCase_guy
McCarthy made the case over 40 years ago that the seeds of our destruction were being planted by Soviet intelligence agents through their infiltration of academia, the entertainment industry, and in high levels of government.

The noxious scions of those seeds are starting to bloom today, 12 years after the demise of the USSR: every time a so-called "peace activist" spouts his/her anti-American bilge, I think of the warnings that the late senator sounded so many years ago.

9 posted on 02/26/2003 1:01:30 PM PST by bassmaner (Let's take back the word "liberal" from the commies!!)
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To: Lyford
I think that McCarthy did enormous damage to the anti-Communist movement in America. Not because he was wrong, but because he was a drunk, and he absolutely lied and exaggerated.... When McCarthy started spouting numbers that constantly changed, when he claimed to have a list that he could never produce, he created the environment and context for the entire process to be characterized as a "witch hunt."

DING DING DING -- We have a winner.

Frankly, I would not be surprised in the least if some dusty old document turns up in the KGB archives describing how the whole thing was set up to discredit legitimate and rational investigations into Soviet infiltration.

10 posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:56 PM PST by steve-b
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To: steve-b
Perhaps Jonah Goldberg could play some solitaire?
11 posted on 02/26/2003 1:12:57 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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BFL
12 posted on 02/26/2003 1:23:38 PM PST by HighRoadToChina (BFL)
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To: Lyford
I want to say that it was Whitaker Chambers and he visited Moscow right after one of the Big 3 Conferences, probably Tehran. I think Hiss was in the state department at this time. I just love how old Soviet documents are showing that Hiss and almost all other accused of being communist spies were in fact communist spies. In fact, I believe Hiss's codname was "Garnet". (From Vasili Mitrohkin's "The Sword and the Shield", straight from the KGB archives").
13 posted on 02/26/2003 1:32:49 PM PST by KC_Conspirator
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To: ClearCase_guy
Also, my understanding is that it has never been illegal to be a communist in the US. Even in the 1950's, Congress was not jailing people for that political affiliation.

Correctamundo. The major piece of "McCarthyite" legislation was an act requiring communists to register, but it bounced around the courts, including SCOTUS, for years and never did go into effect. Also, there was no "blacklist;" the movie writers were fired by the studios because they thought the public wouldn't pay to watch movies written by commies, but you never hear about that from the Hollyweirdos.

What the left describes as a reign of terror really didn't amount to much in fact.

14 posted on 02/26/2003 1:37:19 PM PST by colorado tanker (beware the Ides of March)
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To: Freedom4US
Why did the term Borking get named for the victim and not after one of the Rats who was doing the political harassing?
15 posted on 02/26/2003 1:44:58 PM PST by weegee
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To: KC_Conspirator
I want to say that it was Whitaker Chambers and he visited Moscow right after one of the Big 3 Conferences, probably Tehran

Uh, no. Chambers never worked for the government. He was a writer for a communist paper ("The Daily Worker", I think, but my copy of Witness is downstairs, and I'm not going to get it now...) and an agent for a Russian communist spy ring, but never a sleeper working for the government...

16 posted on 02/26/2003 5:26:10 PM PST by Lyford
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To: KC_Conspirator
It was Harry Dexter White That was FDR’s closest adviser. And he was a KGB agent. And also according to the Venona transcripts. He under orders from Moscow. Inserted language into the talks with Japan that would be totally unacceptable to them. So the US and Japan would not reach an agreement. Thereby precipitating Pearl Harbor
17 posted on 02/26/2003 10:27:39 PM PST by quietolong
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To: Lyford
"Not because he was wrong, but because he was a drunk, and he absolutely lied and exaggerated."

That's a bunch of bull. He was not wrong about the Communist threat. The whole of China of literally turned over to the Communist through Communist sympathizers like Marshall and others in the State Dept.

McCarthy only became drunk when they (the Communist sympathetic media smeared him).
18 posted on 02/26/2003 11:49:05 PM PST by HighRoadToChina (BFL)
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To: HighRoadToChina
This would be the perfect subject for Fox News channel to investigate for an hour special. Somebody fair and balanced should put the truth out about him in chronological order. He really did expose alot of card carrying commies, but it went to his head to stay in the limelight, and he certainly wasn't up to the task. And everything he feared was true. The entertainment industry and academia was packed with them and of course, still is. Now they have a voter base called the DNC and can be elected to congress without even having to explain why they lionize Karl Marx. Some don't even pretend to be Democrats like Sanders from Vermont. They are so prevalent today that they claim the center, and we are relgated to the extreme right just because we don't want to burn the flag.
19 posted on 02/27/2003 12:15:34 AM PST by chuckles
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To: HighRoadToChina
"Not because he was wrong, but because he was a drunk, and he absolutely lied and exaggerated."

That's a bunch of bull. He was not wrong about the Communist threat.

I didn't say he was. In fact, I specifically said that he was right. But he was still a drunk who lied and exaggerated. He waved a piece of paper around, and said that it was a list of 187 card-carrying communists in the state department. Later it was 210. And he never, ever, produced it.

McCarthy only became drunk when they (the Communist sympathetic media smeared him).

He only became drunk when he drank. Which he did long before he became a national figure, according to my grandmother, who knew him well.

20 posted on 02/27/2003 4:36:00 AM PST by Lyford
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