The Origins of McCarthyism

The Weekly Standard ^ | 06/30/03 | Robert Novak

[nwrep]

Three cheers for Robert Novak for writing this. Patriotic conservative bump.

[THX 1138]

Interesting article.

Truman has always been an overrated nobody, a lightweight, a political bungler.

[StatesEnemy]

Why is this surprising?

The ruling class (not to be confused with the bourgeois [which I admire]) have ALWAYS hated the middle class's demand for transparency in government.

[DPB101]

Truman despised Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers as informants . . .

What a sick, twisted little man Truman was.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Bump for a later read. (Looks fascinating!)

[elbucko]

Dewey reluctantly agreed to keep silent, and FDR was elected to a fourth term.

Had Dewey been a Democrat and FDR a Republican, Dewey would have used the information to defeat a Republican. The first duty of a Democrat is, above all, win elections, the nation be d*mned. The Democrats believe any harm done to the country in doing so can be repaired by them, once they are in office.

[DPB101]

The book was an outgrowth of Moynihan's service in 1995 and 1996 as chairman of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy . . .

The entire report is on-line here.

It states that on January 22, 1920, John Reed recieved over $1 million in jewels, gold and other valuables from Lenin to fund the Communist Party USA and that for the next 70 years, "the United States Government would be the object of a sustained Soviet campaign of infiltration and subversion."

The payment to Reed only became known after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

No wonder so many on the left became wealthy with no apparent effort on their part.

[elbucko]

Truman obviously did not understand the brief explanation of how Soviet messages were decoded.

Truman has always been an overrated nobody,.....

I agree. Truman was the Jimmy Carter of his time.

[elbucko]

In 1950, Bradley informed Truman that Venona had identified two senior U.S. government officials--Alger Hiss at the State Department and Harry Dexter White at the Treasury--as Soviet agents.

Interesting. The IMF's web site has quite an honorable mention of all the "valuable service" Harry D. White did for the International Monetary fund at its founding. It's no wonder that wherever the IMF is, economic chaos is there too.

[u-89]

I can't remember who said it or exactly when but I saw a program on C-Span about Truman and the topic of communist agents in the government came up. One historian - a biographer of Truman if I remember correctly, said that Truman left known communists in place because he did not want to give the Republicans any more ammo to use against the Democrats for being soft on communists. In other words best leave enemy agents in places of influence than to admit they were there, active and that the Dems hired them. National security took a back seat to partisan power politics. Typical of the Washington mentality.

[DPB101]

White was probably the worst traitor in American history. On Stalin's orders, he helped write the Morgenthau plan which prolonged WWII. He pushed for a hard line on Japan (again on Stalin's orders) so the Japanese would attack American and not the USSR. After the war, he held up money to the Nationalists which allowed Mao to take over China. White has the blood of tens of millions on his hands.

[DPB101]

Truman left known communists in place because he did not want to give the Republicans any more ammo. . .

At a press conference, Truman denied Alger Hiss was a traitor. His aides were stunned because they knew Hiss was a Soviet agent and they, of course, knew Truman knew. He explained it to them by saying, "Everyone knows Hiss is a god damn traitor but I'm not going to give those Republican bastards the satisfaction of saying so."

Thanks Harry. Because of you, America was torn apart for 50 years as liberals followed your lead and refused to admit what, they too, knew to be true.

[MEG33]

I had no idea Truman was so dense.He was part of the Pendergast machine but I thought he was not such a party hack as to endanger our country.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

ping!

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Had Dewey been a Democrat and FDR a Republican, Dewey would have used the information to defeat a Republican. The first duty of a Democrat is, above all, win elections, the nation be d*mned. The Democrats believe any harm done to the country in doing so can be repaired by them, once they are in office.

Brilliantly said :)

[I_Love_My_Husband]

What I believe I learned on one of our other threads was that Truman knew that Oppenheimer and others working on the bomb were CPUSA people and he did not want to pursue it, thereby keeping our nation at risk.

[MEG33]

I think perhaps a closer look at Truman shows he was anti communist.

[HISSKGB]

I can't find any Harry Dexter White article from Time's feature of him in 1953.

Meg33; There were lots of odd things about Harry Truman in those days.

When it was announced that President Truman was a card carrying member of the KKK, we were told the reason he joined was that he really didn't know the KKK was bad and, soon after this announcement, he returned his membership card and asked for his dues money to be refunded.

I lived in an area where Republicans were as scarce as hen's teeth yet, at the time of the 1948 Truman-Dewey election, the voters despised Truman. We were really surprised that Truman won that election. Back then it would not have occurred to the average voter in my area that an election could be fixed, so we just thought Truman's win was an odd fluke.

[DPB101]

Why were Democrats in your area anti-Truman? Korean War?