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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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To: TonyRo76
I sort of felt the same way once, except that when I really did research on what he said I found that he has been off his rocker since at LEAST the 1970s (probably since birth).

Notice the liberals attacked him when he was still in the G.O.P., but now, not unlike McCain, he is a "maverick" or some such nonsense.

When he was Republican, he was the dumbest kind of paleocon, IMHO -- the sort that called FDR a "war-monger" for pushing us towards involvement in WWII, which was always inevitable anyway. People like that would've been perfectly happy to see Eastern Europe under permanent Nazi control and London bombed into the Stone Age. It's not just isolationism, it's escapism.

41 posted on 05/11/2003 9:04:29 PM PDT by American Soldier
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To: DPB101
Thank you for this post, maybe with this document dump the whole story will be told.

One thing for sure and certain not many conservatives want to be tainted by his name, and he, hated most by the liberal/socialist/communists, in this nation, far more than Stalin himself, who was the bloodiest human who ever walked the face of the earth.
42 posted on 05/12/2003 4:06:16 AM PDT by Just mythoughts
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Comment #43 Removed by Moderator

To: DPB101
Thanks for the post. McCarthy's biggest mistake was he UNDERESTIMATED the influence of Communists in government, media and Hollywood. They were then as now 'touchables' hence the flogging of McCarthy's corpse because McCarthy alone stemmed their takeover of America.

I'm sure you will see the usual sh't from those trying to change the subject from McCarthy to Buchanan.

44 posted on 05/12/2003 8:49:01 AM PDT by ex-snook (American jobs need balanced trade - WE BUY FROM YOU, YOU BUY FROM US)
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To: ex-snook; Just mythoughts
Just mythoughts comment that "not many conservatives want to be tainted by his name" pretty much sums it up. The massive propaganda campaign of the last 50 years won the day. When "Touched by an Angel" can do a hit piece on anticomunists and get away with it, the debate among the general public is over. Even Pat, who has nothing to lose, doesn't get into the misinformation put out by the Senate about these transcripts. Only Human Events, Worldnetdaily and Newsmax , to my knowledge, have touched the issue of the truthfulness of what Levin and Collins signed off on as an introduction to the transcripts.

Sure Arthur Herman and other McCarthy experts will have something to say once they have digested what is in these transcripts and checked it against their research and other testimony. Appreciate it if you would flag me when something comes up. Thanks.

45 posted on 05/12/2003 11:39:56 AM PDT by DPB101
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To: JoeSchem
A demonstration in Tokyo Bay might have encouraged surrender. But one never knows.

I think we can know, because the first bomb wasn't enough to convince Japan's hardliners to surrender.

46 posted on 05/12/2003 2:27:40 PM PDT by Balto_Boy
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To: American Soldier
Pat B. has now gone on record celebrating or defending BOTH of the main axis powers (let's not forget about the "courage" of Hitler!)

Let's not exaggerate here. Pat's off base on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he's hardly "celebrating" or defending imperial Japan. He's just claiming Truman used more force than necessary to defeat them. I agree he's wrong on this, but how is it anti-American?

Regarding Hitler, Pat never celebrated nor defended him. You are swallowing whole a lie the left has been propagating since 1977. The "great courage" line comes from his 1977 column, "A lesson in Tyranny too soon forgotten." Here's a link.

Anyone who reads this can plainly see Pat is not celebrating or defending Hitler. He's just trying to show how so many respectable people of Hitler's time were unable to recognize the threat Hitler posed, and Pat compares them to people who fail to recognize the threat Communism posed back in 1977. Like Hitler, Communists appealed to principles of self-determination and the like to justify their aims, and some useful idiots were falling for it. Pat was trying to set them straight.

The "great courage" line is a reference to Hitler's valor in WW1, which, among other things, allowed him to put the wool over the eyes of many.

47 posted on 05/12/2003 6:21:39 PM PDT by traditionalist
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To: Balto_Boy
What we do know for sure is that Truman sent thousands of soldiers back to die through Operation Keelhaul. Strange how no one wants to talk about that, though the carnage was equivalent to Hiroshima. I guess the visual isn't there.
48 posted on 05/12/2003 7:09:48 PM PDT by JoeSchem (Okay, now it works: Knight's Quest, at http://geocities.com/engineerzero)
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To: traditionalist
Have you not read Pat's statement that Roosevelt "cut off Japan's oil"?

That is patently pansyish and anti-American. He suggesting that we ought to have operated in the Pacific at the pleasure of Japanese militarists. Japan's oil? Come now. It's not their oil till they take possession of it. Roosevelt, in one of his rare lucid foreign policy moments, tried to cripple Japan's war machine, at a time when their claws had already extended far past their own borders or even any conceivably justifiable buffer zone.

With regard to the courage comment, I may have been off base. But Pat is clearly taking the anti-American line trumpeted by so many Japanese history professors when he speaks of WWII.

49 posted on 05/12/2003 11:02:05 PM PDT by American Soldier
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To: American Soldier
Have you not read Pat's statement that Roosevelt "cut off Japan's oil"?

Yes. It's in Republic not an Empire, and I actually agree with his argument, which I suspect you have not read since your account of it is highly characatured.

Up until late 1941, Japan was not doing anything to threaten us. They were, in fact, going out of their way to avoid conflict with us. They were targeting China as well as Dutch, French, and English colonies. FDR imposed an oil embargo in July 1941 in response to Japan's invasion of French Indochina.

This would have destroyed Japan since they had no oil reserves of their own, so the Japanese sent diplomats to Washington to get FDR to lift the embargo. They offered all kinds of concessions to FDR, including withdrawal form many places they invaded, including I believe French Indo-China. FDR refused to compromise. The Japanese concluded they could not avoid war with us, so they attacked.

This is not an anti-American analysis. It's an anti-FDR analysis, who I believe is the worst persident in history.

50 posted on 05/14/2003 2:06:20 PM PDT by traditionalist
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To: traditionalist
Up until late 1941, Japan was not doing anything to threaten us. They were, in fact, going out of their way to avoid conflict with us. They were targeting China as well as Dutch, French, and English colonies. FDR imposed an oil embargo in July 1941 in response to Japan's invasion of French Indochina.

This is a bizzare line of thinking to me. You're asking me to accept a role for America even more limp-wristed and namby-pamby than that which the leftists propose for us.

The one GOOD thing about FDR is that he distrusted the Japanese and saw their empire as a threat to our interests, which even Theodore Roosevelt had recognized at the turn of the century.

Again, FDR did not threaten to shoot anybody! We were a threat to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, not Japan proper, and we were a logistical threat not a direct physical one. We were well within our rights to do so. As far as I'm concerned FDR should have demanded they withdraw from Okinawa -- they didn't even have any business being there.

The Pacific is ours. We should've taught the world that lesson earlier than we did, and more often than we have been doing. China will probably have to be instructed as well due to our legacy of half-measures.

51 posted on 05/14/2003 3:46:48 PM PDT by American Soldier
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To: American Soldier
You're asking me to accept a role for America even more limp-wristed and namby-pamby than that which the leftists propose for us.

That's not true at all. I'm advocating a strong America that does not involve itself in wars that do not concern it. That's hardly leftist, unless you want to call George Washington a leftist.

I think the majority of Americans in 1940-41 were right in believing that a dipute between Japan and European colonial powers and China did not concern us. Japan never threatened us, and I do not see how Japanese empire in East Asia was a threat to our interets: the Japanese were no less willing to trade with us than were the Chineese or the European colonies in SE Asia. By cutting off their oil supplies we were taking sides in a conflict that did not concern us. Perhaps the Japs had no business being in Okinawa, but I and most Americans do not want our military to be the world's policeman.

That being said, I agree that we were within our rights to cut off oil to Japan, even if it was a stupid thing to do. Our cutting off their access oil in no way morally justifies Pearl Harbor. Like Charles Lindbergh, I would be first in line to enlist after Pearl Harbor if I were living in those days.

52 posted on 05/14/2003 4:35:42 PM PDT by traditionalist
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To: JoeSchem
What we do know for sure is that Truman sent thousands of soldiers back to die through Operation Keelhaul.

I lookled into this as time allowed, and I'm missing something from your point. I thought Operation Keelhaul was to forcibly send millions of refugees of communism back to their communist countries. The deaths were a result of their treatment under Stalin when they got back.

Strange how no one wants to talk about that, though the carnage was equivalent to Hiroshima.

From what I read, it was several times the number killed at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I guess the visual isn't there.

I think the difference is that, instead of killing them outright, we returned them to Stalin. Of course, sending someone who escaped Stalin back to him was about the same as putting that same refugee in front of a firing squad, but I guess the attitude was "we didn't kill them, Stalin did."

53 posted on 05/16/2003 1:08:52 PM PDT by Balto_Boy
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To: #3Fan
Yeah, but who did JFK consider the hero and who the traitor?
54 posted on 05/16/2003 1:13:33 PM PDT by brownie (Reductio Ad Absurdum, or something like that . . .)
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To: traditionalist
Wow. Do you actually believe we should not have entered WWII? At what point would it been alright to enter - after all of Europe was enslaved by Germany? After Japan controlled all of asia?
55 posted on 05/16/2003 1:28:24 PM PDT by brownie (Reductio Ad Absurdum, or something like that . . .)
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To: brownie
Or, when Hitler's final solution was completed?
56 posted on 05/16/2003 1:29:20 PM PDT by brownie (Reductio Ad Absurdum, or something like that . . .)
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To: brownie
I'm sure Teddy would set the record straight. :^)
57 posted on 05/16/2003 2:00:41 PM PDT by #3Fan
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Comment #58 Removed by Moderator

Comment #59 Removed by Moderator

To: brownie
Wow. Do you actually believe we should not have entered WWII?

No. Once we were attacked, national honor demanded we declare war. However, FDR admitted that, against the express will of the American people and in violation of his campaign promises, he manuevered the Japaneese, who wanted to avoid war with us, into firing the first shot. It is these actions with which I have a quarel.

At what point would it been alright to enter - after all of Europe was enslaved by Germany?

So instead half of Europe was enslaved by the Soviet Union and we had a Cold War with the Soviets instead of the Germans. I don't see a big difference. I think Loyd George was right in his assessment that the West would have been better served to sit back and watch Hitler and Stalin duke it out rather than take the side of either genocidal maniac. The Europeans foolishly choose the latter course, but that did not mean we had to follow suit.

After Japan controlled all of asia?

Japan would have controled Manchuria and some former European colonies. Had Japan not had to fight us, they would be a bone in the throat of the Chineese Communists, and possibly would have destroyed them. I fail to see how that would harm US interests. So long as the ruler of Asia is capitalist and willing to trade, as the Japanese were, it makes no difference to us who that ruler is.

60 posted on 05/16/2003 2:56:53 PM PDT by traditionalist
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