Posted on 07/07/2003 2:57:25 PM PDT by ArcLight
You can read all about McCarthy's downfall, and the alleged dupes and traitors responsible for it, in "Treason," a new book by Ann Coulter, the Maureen Dowd of the conservatives. It derides McCarthy's critics and brands the notion of McCarthyism itself as a myth and "the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times." She also thanks her publisher for his bravery--a suggestion that it took courage to publish this work. Here we are, only up to the acknowledgments page, and already enjoying a laugh. True, at one point a book representing the Democrats as the party of treason, and Sen. McCarthy as one of the greatest heroes of the age, might have given some publishers pause. Not today--the era that has put its money on outrage merchants and shock jocks. Imagine the delight Ms. Coulter's publishers (Crown Forum, a division of Random House) felt as they contemplated the possibilities. "Treason" had everything--attacks and dark revelations about eminences hitherto untouchable, such as CBS's Edward R. Murrow, author of the famous "See It Now" broadcast that struck the first blow against McCarthy, from which the senator would never recover. "On what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?" Murrow asked, in that searing indictment, delivered to a huge national audience, charging McCarthy with the reckless destruction of lives and reputations. It was, Ms. Coulter claims, a vicious and deceptive hatchet piece, "produced by Edward R. Murrow, friend of Soviet spy Laurence Duggan."
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Now that was low, cruel and uncalled for.
No, it is not a scholarly treatise...it is a polemic. But the "facts" as such are reported accurately, albeit with acid.
Agreed, she's gotten kind of shrill lately. Pity.
As for my perspective on Ann, I think she swings for the fences and so sometimes strikes out. A lot of what she says is rhetoric, but I also believe she makes her case.
It was an incisive, laugh-out-loud, and sometimes-dismaying, look at an old conclusion of mine, nameley that Leftists of ANY sort should NEVER, EVER be entrusted with a nation's power. They simply cannot handle it, and cannot deal with the world as it is.
Ms. Coulter asks the question all through her book; "YES, but were there Communist security risks and outright spies in the U.S. government or not?"
None of her detractors that I am aware of answer this, or even confront it, for obvious reasons. They also fail to state exactly why it is so "terrifying" for someone to lose work for a position that they CHOSE to take, whilst such amusements as gulags, purges, state-sponsored famines, show trials, and 100 million deaths were being merrily carried out.
Do these McCarthy-haters ever even ACKNOWLEDGE that having members of the Communist Party in high, security-clearance positions is dangerous? All I hear on that question is lame attempts to change the subject.
Sorry, but the VENONA cables conclusively prove that McCarthy and his counterparts on HUAC were largeley correct. As for the Hollywood crowd, actions have consequences. They chose to join groups which were outspokenly anti-American, and their employers decided that they did not wish to employ people with judgement so poor. Boo frickin' Hoo. Nobody arrested them or tossed them into the calaboose for it, as would have happened instanter in the nation they all pined for.
Ms. Coulter has not just set about rehabilitating McCarthy as a martyr destroyed by anti-American leftists--she has also set about rehabilitating the most notorious of his cases, the kind dramatized in famous film clips of the period. Cases like that of Annie Lee Moss, a black code clerk who had lost her job at the Pentagon when she was hauled before McCarthy's committee as a security risk and Communist Party member. She had been confused with a different Annie Lee Moss, the witness explained--and who Karl Marx was she could not even say. So evident was Ms. Moss's confusion at what she was doing there that applause erupted in the hearing room when Democratic Sen. Stuart Symington declared he believed her.
But the evidence against Ms. Moss was not insignificant, the author of "Treason" now maintains. The code clerk had said there were two other people called Annie Lee Moss listed in the Washington phone book--whereas the two others were actually Anna Lee Moss and Annie Moss. Dynamite evidence, as far as Ms. Coulter is concerned--case closed. After all, an FBI report had identified her as a Communist.
This is terribly, damningly dishonest reviewing by Rabinowitz, as any reader of Ann's book knows.
Ann makes the point, when discussing the Moss case, that (1)although Moss claimed that there were other "Annie Moss"'s in the DC phonebook, the Communist Party newspaper and other literature were delivered to the witness Annie Moss's house, not the other Annie Moss'es, and that whenever the witness Annie Moss moved the subscriptions moved with her -- seemingly eliminating the possibility that they were mailed by mistake.
(2) Annie Moss worked in the most highly secret area in the Pentagon, where secret messages were decrypted, the code room -- and as Ann pointed out in the book, some of the interception/decryption programs were so secret that their existence was withheld from Truman! (because Truman was not deemed trustworthy).
(3) Annie Moss's claim that there were other Annie Moss'es was factually untrue and easily verifiable, but the untruth was accepted by the investigating senators without any reasonable due diligence.
There are other examples -- but the point is made that Rabinowitz seems to not have even read THE BOOK.
Of course there are. But that is not the question. The question is how much power should government have to do something about it? And will they be held accountable when they overreach and cause injury to our citizens?
Were there communists? Yes. Was everyone who was labeled a communist actually a communist? No. Was it illegal to be a communist as a private citizen? No. Did the hunt for reds get out of hand? Well, I guess that's a subjective question.
The purpose of McCarthy's hearings was to show that Communist party members (an absolute security risk) were, in fact, being employed by government agencies. The problem was the exact opposite of what you fear...they were being too lenient with whom they hired.
"Are there terrortists in this country right now, with plans to kill Americans? Of course there are. But that is not the question. The question is how much power should government have to do something about it? And will they be held accountable when they overreach and cause injury to our citizens?"
I would hope so. But, as the book points out many times, the analagous situation today would be if known Al Queda members were being employed in secure spaces in DOD, CIA, and Department Of State, and no one had a problem with it!
We're not talking here about the government going after civilians on some witch-hunt. We're talking about rooting out enemies (and like it or not, during the Cold War, Communists were the Enemy) employed within the government, which various agencies of the period failed to do, as VENONA makes abundantly clear.
McCarthy was only using his position to point this out.
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