[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

I had an interesting conversation with a very old, very conservative friend of mine.

I brought up Ann Coulter's book and her views on McCarthy expecting him to be in 100% agreement.

He surprised me by cautioning that I need to better understand just how bad things were before WW II. People were suffering horribly from the depression and many were looking for a different approach, a different political solution because it certainly appeared that capitalism had failed.

Many people joined the Socialist Party thinking it was a fair and reasonable approach. I recalled seeing pictures from the 1930's of striking Iowa dairy farmers dumping milk and joining the Socialist Party. The average person also had no idea what was happening in Stalin's USSR.

Socialism is an ideology that is very attractive, very appealing to someone with little real world experience and to those with little hope for gain and nothing left to lose.

True socialism is a utopia that cannot be achieved. Communism is the proof that the Socialist model cannot work and has tragic consequences.

I don't begrudge those who, in the naivety of youth or desperation, turn even momentarily to socialism.

However, I have no respect for those 'worldly' people (Hollywood) who have access to knowledge, who have seen the truth and still chose to advance communism as a just cause.

[js1138]

The average person also had no idea what was happening in Stalin's USSR.

True, but the average intellectual did. Folks who read and kept up with the news had heard the stories, and there were plenty of refugees. those who took sides without checking the facts were responsible for their politics.

[DPB101]

That doesn't explain why most Americans did not join the Communist party USA and why the membership was almost entirely immigrant or first generation. A senate Committee chaired by Patrick Moynihan wrote:

There would be, as with Great Britain, a measure of success among elites, but in the pattern now already seen, an ethnic factor would be the most prominent.

In the beginning, most American Communists would be Russians. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was organized at Moscow’s behest in 1921, merging Reed’s Communist Labor Party with the Communist Party of America, organized by a former socialist, Midwesterner Charles Emil Ruthenberg. The membership was not large and was overwhelmingly foreign-born.

Theodore Draper, in The Roots of American Communism, estimates that 10 percent spoke English. Harvey Klehr et al., make that 12 percent.

Draper comments: “It is just to say that the American Communist movement started out as a predominantly Slavic movement. . . .” In a familiar pattern, immigrants brought their politics with them, or responded sympathetically to political changes in their homelands. He goes on to state that this situation changed as “Americans” and “other nationalities” joined the movement. But the ethnic dimension of American Communism never ceased, albeit at times it was overshadowed by the likes of John Reed.¹

Hard times does not explain the treason for two reasons: 1. The traitorous activity began before the depression. 2. Those we know who worked for the Soviet Union were not destitute--they usually had an excellent education (City College at least, often from there to Harvard) and above average jobs.

Poverty does not cause crime nor does it cause a degenerate morality which forces people to become Communists.