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.
They also sent back some soldiers from countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia who had escaped the Nazis and fought with the allies.
If the French and the British had not declared War in 1939 and had sat back to watch Hitler and Stalin duke it out, the Jews of western continetal europe would have been saved. Britian and France going to war in 1939 when Poland was invaded did nothing for Poland and nothing for the Jews living east of the Oder river, and I say this as a man of Polish heritage. Don't forget the Soviets were just as bad as the Nazis when it came to genocide. Stalin murdered about 2-3 times as many people as Hitler. (Of course, Stalin had more time to perpetrate his genocides, so pound for pound they were about equal)
1st, two wrongs don't make a right. that is not a rational nor logical answer. I did not support the USSR, and America fought the cold war and won.
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
If I'm not mistaken, Hitler invaded france/poland, etc. before he broke his pact with Stalin. Accordingly, your entire premise is based on an incorrect "fact".
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.
You really have to give me your source for this quote. Most historians have missed it, whatever the source is. I would be very interested to see this admission by FDR.
I simply do not understand isolationists. Do you honestly believe america can just sit back and not participate in the world? If you do believe America should participate in the world, how? Isolationists seem to be against an awful lot, but I have never heard what they are for (aside from closed borders and high tariffs). For instance, North Korea is a nice isolationist state. Should we be more like that?
It's a perfectly rational answer because by fighting Hitler we helped Stalin. This is an uncontroverible fact. By fighting Hitler, all we did was trade Nazi enslavement of Central and all of Eastern Europe for Communist enslavement. Is that worth hundreds of thousands of American lives?
If I'm not mistaken, Hitler invaded france/poland, etc. before he broke his pact with Stalin. Accordingly, your entire premise is based on an incorrect "fact".
France declared war on Hitler before he invaded France. On several occasions Hitler explicitly stated in public, in private letters, etc. that he had no interest in fighting the West. He only invaded France because he did not want to have to fight a two-front war. This was also the reason he signed the pact with Stalin, so he could quickly remove the threat from his West without worrying about the East.
What brought France and Britain into the war was the fact that they gave Poland a war guarantee, which BTW did Poland no good anyway. The opinion of Lloyd George and other eminent British statesmen at the time was that this was stupid. Had they not given Poland the war guarantee, Hitler would have marched on straight to Russia. This is also the opinion of many eminent British historians today, such as Keagan.
But what of poor Poland, the land of my ancestors, you ask? By 1939, there was nothing France and Britain could do to save her. They should have stopped Hitler when they had the chance, and they had numerous chances. By 1939, it was too late, and their war guarantee did Poland absolutely no good at all.
You really have to give me your source for this quote. Most historians have missed it, whatever the source is. I would be very interested to see this admission by FDR.
It was in private correspondence with his staff. I'll get you a reference. This is not controversial.
I simply do not understand isolationists. Do you honestly believe america can just sit back and not participate in the world?
No. Where did you get the idea that I think that?
If you do believe America should participate in the world, how?
In a way that advances our interests. i.e. opening up foriegn nations to trade, destroying regimes that harbor terrorists, etc. There are countless ways.
Isolationists seem to be against an awful lot, but I have never heard what they are for (aside from closed borders and high tariffs). For instance, North Korea is a nice isolationist state. Should we be more like that?
I'm not an isolationist. Neither were most Americans back in 1940-1941. Wishing to stay out of wars that do not concern one's nation does not make one an isolationist.
Yes. America has never been isolationist. That is one of the monstrous lies of those who want to abandon the wise Washington/Jefferson foreign policy, but it has no truth whatsoever. We have always been involved with the world, not trying to mind the affairs of othes, or permit others to mind our affairs, but via trade and friendly relations. (See An American Foreign Policy and George Washington's Farewell Address.)
As for Joe McCarthy, I disagree with Pat Buchanan, here, in characterizing McCarthy as being on the Right. He wasn't. While he focused on fighting Communism, he also supported the Moderate/Liberal agenda, supported by most of the more Liberal Republicans in the 1950s. In this he was not voting with men like Taft & Bricker, but with the Eastern Republicans.
On the other hand, if he did cut a few corners in identifying people as Communist--i.e., people linked to the Bolshevik structure--who might have been only communists with a small "c"--i.e., American "Liberals" seeking an egalitarian world order--or communist sympathizers; the overreach was no more, and probably less extreme than that we see today in the smearing of American religious leaders and Southern statesmen by the spokesmen of the Left.
Indeed, Pat Buchanan, himself, has probably been subjected to far more overreaching attacks than McCarthy even arguably launched in his entire career.
I was still a school boy, when the McCarthy lynching took place; and I have always had the notion that his real offense against the "Liberals," was that he blurred the disctinction that they so desperately sought to create between those who were collectivist egalitarians, outside the formal Communist apparatus, and those who were collectivist egalitarians, under party discipline. That distinction had some significance in providing counter-espionage; but in terms of the ideological confrontation of the 20th Century, had only minor importance.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
It's in the diary of FDR's Sec. of War, Stimpson. There are other sources.
I'm not sure that I agree with your assessment of Hitler's intentions regarding Europe and Russia. It seems very revisionsit to me.
It's become mainstream. BTW, revisionist is not necessarily bad. Revisionism just means challanging accpeted opinion about a historical event.
Moreover, I agree with you regarding the fate of eastern europeans. But, blaming that on WWII is based on yet another false premise. It was not the war which gave Russia eastern europe, but the West's failure to stop the USSR from taking the east.
I'm not blaming WW2. I'm just saying that all WW2 did was trade one form of enslavement for another. There is no way we could have stopped the Soviets from taking Central and Eastern Europe in 1945. It would have meant another war, and they had a lot more men, guns, and armor on the ground than we did.
Since you believe that he purposefully goaded Japan into attacking us, you probably also believe that he had prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor, but did nothing so as to get us into the war?
The evidence for this is pretty sketchy, so no.
Overall, according to your post, the total elimination of all jews in Europe and Russia and Nazi Germany controlling Russia would have been an acceptable outcome.
It is not an acceptable outcome, but it is no less an acceptable outcome than Stalin controling half of Europe and murdering tens of millions of people after the war, many of them Jews.
And you say that you believe that Hitler would not have gone after France, Italy, Poland, etc. had we done nothing? Interesting take on history.
Hitler was not interested in France and Western Europe. He certainly was going after Central Europe, i.e. Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. Nearly all those parts of Europe he wanted fell under Communist control later, and there was nothing we could do to prevent that.
Based on the reasoning in these posts, I'm guessing that you would support us abandoning Isreal as a way to stop terrorism?
We should not give them $3 billion a year in aid. I would phase it out. They could afford to pay for their own weapons if it were not for their bloated welfare state, so in a sense, even though most of our aid is military, it goes to subsidize their welfare state. I have no objections to selling them weapons, however, and cooperating with them in the war on terror. We have a common enemy who threatens us both.
What about Korea and Vietnam? Should we have been involved? What about the Cold war? Should we have fought it?
Yes. Global Communism was a global threat that had to be contained.
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