Posted on 05/16/2003 11:21:02 AM PDT by Remedy
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 truethat McCarthy bullied witnesses and accused men of disloyalty who only made mistakesthat 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 learnhorror 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 dont 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 McCarthys theories that, in the 1950s, communist spies were operating in the highest levels of government."
Perhaps not, Ms. Stolberg. 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 transcriptsthe intercepted coded messages from Soviet agents to Moscowwere 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:
On and on the list goes. For an unbiased account of McCarthys life, Arthur Hermans Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of Americas Most Hated Senator is indispensable.
McCarthys 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%? 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 Trumans "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% 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.
Mr. Buchanan is the author of The Death of the West.
The Hidden Truth About Joseph McCarthy Documents from the Soviet Unions archives, USSR spy messages deciphered by the U.S. governments Venona program, and declassified FBI files and wiretaps all prove that hundreds of U.S. officials were agents of an international Communist conspiracy. If these previously inaccessible documents shed light on only a few of McCarthys specific charges, they certainly vindicate his general charge that security in the U.S. government was lax and that large numbers of Communists penetrated positions of great importance.
Joe McCarthys real crime was calling Communists precisely what they were: Communists.
The New American - The Real McCarthy Record - September 2, 1996 McCarthyism was a serious attempt to remove from positions of influence the advocates of communism, the willing and unwilling supporters of communism and communists, and persons who would prevent the removal of those who give aid and comfort to the enemies of America. Communist conspirators and their friends do not fear those who denounce communism in general terms. They do, however, greatly fear those who would expose their conspiratorial activities. That is why they hated and fought Joe McCarthy more than any other public figure in this century. That is why they have preserved his name as a club to hold over the head of anyone who dares to expose communism.
Joe McCarthy was a brave and honest man. There was nothing cynical or devious about him. He said and did things for only one reason - he thought they were the right things to say and do. He was not perfect; he sometimes made errors of fact or judgment. But his record of accuracy and truthfulness far outshines that of his detractors. His vindication in the eyes of all Americans cannot come soon enough. Medford Evans put it well when he said: "The restoration of McCarthy is a necessary part of the restoration of America, for if we have not the national character to repent of the injustice we did him, nor in high places the intelligence to see that he was right, then it seems unlikely that we can or ought to survive."
McCarthyism -- No Longer a Dirty Word The deciphered Venona cables confirm that the American Communist Party successfully established secret caucuses in government agencies throughout the 1930s and 1940s. They prove that 349 Americans had covert ties to Soviet intelligence much as McCarthy had charged. They also indicate that Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1949 of spying for the Soviets, did leak material even though he denied his guilt. On top of this, the number 349 is clearly a low estimate, because out of 25,000 intercepted telegrams, only 2,900 were decoded.
The bottom line is that, if McCarthy had engaged in the same behaviour against the Nazis, and their sympathizers, statues of him would be prominent in many of our cities today. Because of political correctness, however, there will be no statues of McCarthy in the near future. But at least we now know that accusing someone of "McCarthyism" is no longer necessarily a putdown.
MediaWatch -- 12/01/1996 -- Janet Cooke Award: Alger Hiss, ... The threat of expanding slavery and death under communism ended with the Soviet Union in 1991. But the network obituaries of Soviet spy Alger Hiss on the night of November 15 suggested that ignorance lasts forever. For inaccurately remembering Hiss that evening with tales of red-baiting hysteria and Russian-based vindications, ABC, CNN, and NBC earned the Janet Cooke Award.
AIM Report - March A, 2000 Romerstein, author of a forthcoming book on Soviet espionage, contended that Senator McCarthy is largely irrelevant to the phenomenon known as McCarthyism. McCarthy was chairman of a Senate committee that investigated communism for just one year, and he made several important speeches on the subject and conducted valuable hearings. But Romerstein said that several other Congressional committees did far more work on the problem.
Nevertheless, McCarthy was transformed into a demon by the Communists, who were desperate to mislead the public about their efforts to penetrate the U.S. government. Accusing McCarthy of making inaccurate or exaggerated statements, they promoted the term "McCarthyism" in an effort to discredit investigations into the Communist movement.
Romerstein, who worked in various capacities for the U.S. government for about 25 years, specializing in the fields of internal security and intelligence, still marvels at the ability of the Communists to make "McCarthyism" into a phenomenon that lingers to this day. He found it significant that McCarthy is still vilified while modern-day politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore, get away with major gaffes and exaggerations on a regular basis. Romerstein commented, "Can you imagine an American politician today saying he invented the Internet? Or that he and his wife were the subject of the book Love Story? Or that he discovered Love Canal? No politician would ever do that or say thatunless you're Al Gore of course. But you don't hear anything about Goreism. You hear about McCarthyism."
Romerstein said the term "McCarthyism" appeared in the title of a 1951 booklet written by a top Communist Party member which attacked both Trumanism and McCarthyism. Harry Truman was President at the time and his administration had the power to weed the Communists out of the government. Romerstein said Truman was more of a threat to the Communists than Joe McCarthy ever was, but he didn't want Republicans in Congress, including McCarthy, to make hay out of the issue of Communist penetration of the government. He told his staff that Alger Hiss was "guilty as hell," but he told the press that the charges against him were a red herring. He explained to his staff that he didn't want to say anything that would help the Republicans.
Romerstein said that a high level member of the Communist Party, who wrote a booklet in which he attacked both "Trumanism" and "McCarthyism," was severely criticized and expelled from the party over this. The leaders wanted to focus on "McCarthyism" as the term to use to smear those who were exposing Communists in government. They believed that coupling it with "Trumanism" would weaken the chances of popularizing "McCarthyism."
The Heritage Foundation: Research: Political PhilosophyEM735: ... Whittaker Chambers: Man of Courage and Faith
In 1952, Chambers published his magisterial, best-selling autobiography, Witness. The work argued that America faced a transcendent, not a transitory, crisis; the crisis was one not of politics or economics but of faith; and secular liberalism, the dominant "ism" of the day, was a watered-down version of Communist ideology. The New Deal, Chambers insisted, was not liberal democratic but "revolutionary" in its nature and intentions. All these themes, especially that the crisis of the 20th century was one of faith, resonated deeply with conservatives.
Among those who agreed with and often quoted Chambers' uncompromising assessment was a future California governor and U.S. President--Ronald Reagan. Indeed, Witness may have enlisted more American anti-Communists than almost any other book of the Cold War. They included, in addition to our 40th President, William A. Rusher, longtime publisher of National Review; veteran journalist John Chamberlain, who worked with Chambers at Time; and columnist-commentator Robert Novak.
Chambers continued to make significant contributions to the conservative movement until his death in July 1961. Publisher Henry Regnery recalled that he sent page proofs of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind to Chambers, who immediately urged the editor of Time to devote the entire book section to a review of "one of the most important" books he had read "in some time." Regnery never forgot his "sense of exultation" when the long, laudatory Time review arrived.
Chambers was also a private critic of Senator Joseph McCarthy. He told Buckley that McCarthy was "a slugger and a rabble-rouser" who "simply knows that somebody threw a tomato and the general direction from which it came."
CACC - Christian Anti-Communism Crusade The situation in the universities was appalling. The Marxists and socialists who had been refuted by historical events were now the tenured establishment of the academic world. Marxism had produced the bloodiest and most oppressive regimes in human history--but after the fall, as one wit commented, more Marxists could be found on the faculties of American colleges than in the entire former Communist bloc." David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, 1997, p. 405
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