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When the Right was Right
The Washington Dispatch ^ | 5/11/03 | Pat Buchanan

Posted on 05/11/2003 10:33:18 AM PDT by DPB101

Why do they keep digging up the corpse of Joe McCarthy for a ritual flogging? The Wisconsin senator died in 1957. He never killed anyone. He never sent anyone to prison.

Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on two defenseless cities of a prostrate nation and sent 2 million Russian prisoners back to Stalin to be murdered in Operation Keelhaul. Yet Truman remains a hero to those who despise McCarthy with an undying hatred.

Why? Even if what is alleged is true -- that McCarthy bullied witnesses and accused men of disloyalty who only made mistakes -- that still does not explain why the Left cannot let go of him.

The answer: As no other man, Tailgunner Joe stripped the old establishment of its reputation, credibility and moral authority in the eyes of the people. McCarthy convinced Middle America that FDR and Truman had been duped by "Uncle Joe," had tolerated treason, and had blundered and lost in five years all the fruits of the victory won by the blood and sacrifice of the Greatest Generation in World War II.

The establishment has never recovered from that beating.

In the latest document dump by the Senate, we learn -- horror of horror! -- that McCarthy questioned witnesses in private before selecting those he put on the stand. But so, too, did the Watergate committee of the sainted Sam Ervin. This is a common practice of senators who don't want to be surprised before TV cameras.

The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes that those few historians shown the latest documents claim they "do not support McCarthy's theories that, in the 1950s, communist spies were operating in the highest levels of government."

Perhaps not, Ms. Stohlberg. But if so, that is only because, by the 1950s, the spies had been rooted out, though their collaborators remained. But they had been there, selling out their country.

Indeed, the espionage and treason, proven again by the Venona transcripts -- the intercepted coded messages from Soviet agents to Moscow -- were far more extensive than even McCarthy imagined. In the 1940s, the U.S. Government was honeycombed with traitors and spies. Even today, not all the names have been revealed. Call the roll:

-- Alger Hiss and Lawrence Duggan, two of the highest ranking diplomats at State, were communist traitors and spies. Hiss stood behind FDR at Yalta when Eastern Europe was signed away to Stalin and helped shape the United Nations for Harry Truman.

-- Harry Dexter White, father of the International Monetary Fund and the "Morgenthau Plan" to smash all German industry after the war -- a plan embraced, then disowned, by FDR -- was a Soviet agent. Truman knew it by 1946 and covered it up.

-- Lauchlin Currie was a Soviet spy on the White House staff.

-- William Remington was the Soviet spy at Commerce.

-- Judith Coplon headed up a spy ring at Justice with access to the FBI secrets and files she transferred to Soviet agents.

-- The Rosenbergs were communist traitors who gave their Russian handlers secrets of the atom bomb. The brother of Robert Oppenheimer, father of the A-bomb, was a communist, as was his wife, who was a lifelong friend of Steve Nelson, a key figure in the Communist Party underground apparatus.

On and on the list goes. For an unbiased account of McCarthy's life, Arthur Herman's "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator" is indispensable.

McCarthy's career as an anti-Communist began in February 1950 with his Wheeling speech and was effectively ended with his censure in December 1954. Why was Harry Truman chased out of Washington in 1952 with an approval rating of 23 percent? Why did Joe McCarthy enjoy a 50-29 favorable rating as late as January 1954?

Because McCarthy, almost alone, was exposing the treason and folly of those who had ceded half of Europe to Stalin and all of China to the murderous hordes of Mao Tse-tung. And with 200 American boys dying every week in Truman's "no-win war" in Korea, Americans were demanding explanations.

The 1950s were good years. No one was terrified then, except the fools who had joined a Communist Party that turned out to be a lickspittle of the Comintern. Gallup polls of the era show not even 1 percent of Americans were concerned about "witch-hunting" or "anti-Communist hysteria" or "McCarthyism." That is pure myth.

In 1954, when some snot at the 15th reunion of his class got up to toast Harvard College for never having produced an Alger Hiss or a Joe McCarthy, John F. Kennedy stood up and walked out, roaring, "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor." Yes, indeed, that was when the Right was right.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: conservatism; mccarthy; patbuchanan
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Excerpts from the transcripts are on this thread:

Levin and Collins Trigger Disinformation. Senate Historian Clams Up When Queried On McCarthy

1 posted on 05/11/2003 10:33:18 AM PDT by DPB101
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To: DPB101
In 1954, when some snot at the 15th reunion of his class got up to toast Harvard College for never having produced an Alger Hiss or a Joe McCarthy, John F. Kennedy stood up and walked out, roaring, "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor."

Wow, is this correct?

2 posted on 05/11/2003 10:40:05 AM PDT by #3Fan
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Comment #3 Removed by Moderator

To: DPB101
Pat Buchanan wasn't a young Marine waiting on a transport off the coast of the Japanes islands. He wasn't contemplating the horrors that he would have faced in the invasion of the Japanese mainland. And he certainly wasn't a veteran of numerous island-hopping campaigns that claimed THOUSANDS of lives.

I'm most interested in his use of the term "defenseless."
4 posted on 05/11/2003 10:45:05 AM PDT by SJSAMPLE
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To: TonyRo76
WOW! I bet this little known fact “irks” the Kennedys almost as much as that awesome tax-cut ad citing JFK. Beautiful thing!

Yeah, I'm going to keep this little jewel of information handy. :^)

6 posted on 05/11/2003 10:51:18 AM PDT by #3Fan
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To: SJSAMPLE
Pat Buchanan also wasn't one of the 5-15 million Chinese who were slaughtered in Japan's war against China, which if I'm correct was still being waged by this "prostrate" nation at the time the bombs were dropped.

Hi also doesn't tell us what alternative to the bomb was available that would not have endangered American live and would have resulted in fewer Japanese deaths.

7 posted on 05/11/2003 10:54:30 AM PDT by Balto_Boy
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To: DPB101
>>...In 1954, when some snot at the 15th reunion of his class got up to toast Harvard College for never having produced an Alger Hiss or a Joe McCarthy, John F. Kennedy stood up and walked out, roaring, "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor." ...<<

Yeah, but JFK doesn't say who he was referring to as the traitor and who was the great American.

(This is what 8 years of parsing Klinton's statements will do to you)

8 posted on 05/11/2003 11:02:38 AM PDT by FReepaholic
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To: DPB101
McCarthy represents the greatest victory that the communist ultra-left and their running dogs in the American media ever had. They dig him up in memory of that victory and the scam it represented. It is also the basis for most of what the left tries to pull today.

The left, through ownwership of all the communications media, was able to label inquiries into ones traitorous activities as "McCathyism" and use that defense as a mechanism that allowed the entire burden to be shifted back to the inquirer. A commie didn't have to answer questions about his treason but could simply claim "McCathyism" as an absolute defense and one that put the questioner on the defense. Hollywood loved it because they and the State Department had most of the commies.

The fairies love it. They no long have to respond to questions about pedophilia or they spread of fairy diseases, they simply shout "homophobia," as an absolute defense. All America haters love these devises because they shift the issue from rational examination of issues and facts to pure emotional shouting. But, now that we have free media in this country, it will no longer work and that is why the neocommunists and paleoleftists love to dig up Joe.

9 posted on 05/11/2003 11:03:43 AM PDT by Tacis
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To: DPB101
I've always had a sort of crazy theory that McCarthy was a Soviet spy. He was right concerning the Soviet spy networks in America, but he was a horrible messenger. So, the message was correct, but the messenger could be derided forever.
10 posted on 05/11/2003 11:06:48 AM PDT by Mr.Clark (From the darkness....I shall come)
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To: Tacis
In a nutshell, the argument "we are all hypocrites anyhow" is effective rhetoric. It seems so easily to absolve the sting of consiousness that accompanies the prospect of being a human person.
11 posted on 05/11/2003 11:10:09 AM PDT by cornelis
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To: DPB101
Confirmation of that statement...

"Robert Armory, who had been at the dinner and who later worked in the Kennedy Administration recalled in an oral history at the JFK Library that when a speaker had likened McCarthy to the convicted Soviet spy Alger Hiss, JFK rose to his feet and declared "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!" and walked out. The incident has never been denied by anyone who was there, and is accepted by JFK biographers Herbert Parmet, Thomas Reeves and Chris Matthews."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk2.htm
12 posted on 05/11/2003 11:20:57 AM PDT by Tamzee ("A half-truth is a whole lie" .........Yiddish Proverb)
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To: DPB101
Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on two defenseless cities of a prostrate nation

What the..... oh Buchanan wrote it. Never mind. *sigh*

(I suggest that someday he visit Okanawa and see the rubble it was reduced to and imagine what it would have been like to have had to do that all across Japan. Prostrate nation my foot!)

13 posted on 05/11/2003 11:21:34 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (There is nothing you can do with that computer that I can’t do with my little pad and pen. –My Dad)
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To: Tacis
Funny how those people who cannot let go of McCarthy are the biggest McCarthyists of them all. The media brands anyone who dissents from liberal orthodoxy as racist, xenophobic, anti-choice, homophobic, and far-right in order to intimidate. Now the media has begun a witch-hunt to ferret out suspected conservatives like Miguel Estrada.
14 posted on 05/11/2003 11:21:41 AM PDT by Holden Magroin
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To: SJSAMPLE; Balto_Boy; Harmless Teddy Bear
Two atomic bombs almost weren't enough. The military members on Japan's ruling council wanted to fight on even after the second bomb was dropped, and the emperor had to be consulted to break the deadlock. Allied commanders estimated up to a million casualties from an invasion, and many millions of Japanese would probably have died. I'm always amazed when people suggest that Truman had any other choice.
15 posted on 05/11/2003 11:25:05 AM PDT by Stay the course
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To: Mr.Clark
I've always had a sort of crazy theory that McCarthy was a Soviet spy.

Long term McCarthy, or rather how his actions were portrayed in the media, was the best thing to ever happen to communists and their supporters in America. Short term, he tore up the Democrat party by making it clear to Americans that liberals would side with communists against their own country. McCarthy, in large part, was responsible for the defeat of perhaps a dozen Democrat Senators including majority leader Ernst McFarland, majority whip Francis Myers and 4-term Senator Millard Tydings. After that, the Democrats were out to get him just as they got Newt after 1994 and Nixon because of his exposure of Hiss and landslide victory in 1972.

16 posted on 05/11/2003 11:30:16 AM PDT by DPB101
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
What the..... oh Buchanan wrote it. Never mind. *sigh*

Yes, sigh, is right. A google news search brings up dozens if not hundreds of editorials and articles parroting the party line on McCarthy. I've found just three which tell the truth about what is in the transcripts. Pat's is one.

17 posted on 05/11/2003 11:34:28 AM PDT by DPB101
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To: DPB101
Pity that he is blind to the truth in other areas isn't it?
18 posted on 05/11/2003 11:38:24 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (There is nothing you can do with that computer that I can’t do with my little pad and pen. –My Dad)
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To: DPB101
Yes, sigh, is right. A google news search brings up dozens if not hundreds of editorials and articles parroting the party line on McCarthy. I've found just three which tell the truth about what is in the transcripts. Pat's is one.

Good Ol'Pat. It's just the Nixonian effect kicking in.

Khrushchev was right .. "We will bury you."

Nikita wasn't kidding around. :-\

19 posted on 05/11/2003 11:49:54 AM PDT by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi .. Support FRee Republic)
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To: Mr.Clark
He was right concerning the Soviet spy networks in America, but he was a horrible messenger. So, the message was correct, but the messenger could be derided forever.

No, what it really shows is the power of the organized media that was a prime effort of the communist agents. See "psychopolitics, the soviet art of brainwashing" on a web search, but be careful, many of the posts are are phony disinformation postings made to look like they are from the KKK or ayrian nation or a similar group. I think a site on geocities is pretty straight.

As for Joe M being arrogant and bullying, well at least half of the Dems, and a few pubbies [McInsane for one] are just as unplaesant to their foes. I really don't think it was the messenger, it WAS the message. There was more than one "Jolting Joe" in those days.

20 posted on 05/11/2003 12:02:15 PM PDT by det dweller too
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