The Trouble with Treason (David Horowitz regarding Ann Coulter)

I have always admired Ann Coulter’s satiric skewering of liberal pieties and her bravery under fire. Not many conservatives can fight back with as much verve and venom as she can, and if politics is war conducted by other means, Ann is someone I definitely want on my side.

I began running Coulter columns on Frontpagemag.com shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself,this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe – that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter’s phillipic as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts.

Another reason I have enjoyed Ann’s attacks on liberals is because they have been so richly deserved. No one wields the verbal knife more ruthlessly than so-called liberal pundits like Joe Conason, to cite but one example. I have been the subject of many below-the-belt Conason attacks. If people Joe Conason admired were the objects of acid Coulterisms, so much the better. If Conason was outraged, I was confident that justice had been done.

But now to my dismay, I find myself unable to find such satisfaction in Conason’s reaction to Ann’s new book Treason, or in the responses of other liberals like The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen (who has also attacked me in the past). In a review in the Post, Cohen dismisses Ann’s book as “Crackpot Conservatism,” reflecting the fact that their responses are not so much yelps of outrage as cackles over what they view as an argument so over the top that only true believers will take it seriously. It is distressing when someone you admire gives credibility to liberal attacks. But that, unfortunately, is what this book has done.

Here is the opening of Treason: “Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don’t. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence.”

As polemical satire this passage may work. But what if is not satire? Is it the case that liberals like Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy sided with the enemy? Of course not. They were anti-Communists, hated by the left as “cold war liberals.” And they were not alone. There were many liberals – Scoop Jackson and Jeanne Kirkpatrick among them – who were just as worthy defenders of America and prosecutors of the anti-Communist cause.

Until 1963, Ronald Reagan was a pro-Kennedy, anti-Communist, cold war liberal. In Coulter’s book, Democrats (whom she inexplicably conflates with liberals) come under blistering attack for their perfidious role in the so-called “McCarthy Era.” A lot of what she says about Democrats is true, but nearly half the members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Internal Subcommittee (McCarthy’s vehicle) were Democrats.

Bobby Kennedy was a McCarthy staff lawyer. Not all Democrats were liberals and not all liberals sided with the enemy. In 1968, Tom Hayden – a radical supporter of the Communist cause in Vietnam -- organized a riot at the Democratic Party convention in order to destroy the presidential candidacy of Humbert Humphrey. The reason? Humphrey was an anti-Communist, pro-Vietnam War liberal.

By failing to draw a clear line between satirical exaggeration and historical analysis, by refusing to credit the laudable role played by patriotic, anti-Communist liberals like Truman, Kennedy and Humphrey, Coulter has compromised her case and undermined her attempt to correct a record that desperately needs correction. Liberals have – just as she charges – distorted postwar history to protect the guilty. Franklin Roosevelt did laugh off the information that Alger Hiss -- one of his top aides -- was a Soviet spy and did -- despite the warning -- elevate Hiss to be his one of his chief advisers both at Yalta and at the founding conference of the UN.

Democrats did allow the Communists to penetrate their party and their administrations in the 1930s and 1940s. The Truman Administration did dismiss Republican charges of Communist influence as partisan politics and was lackadaisical before 1947 in taking the internal Communist threat seriously. But in 1947 all that changed. Truman instituted a comprehensive loyalty program to ferret out Communist influence in government. It was the Truman Administration that prosecuted Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs.

In fact the decisive battles of this era took place inside liberalism. It was Walter Reuther – a socialist – who purged the Communist from the CIO and it was Truman’s anti-Communist policies that provoked the Communists into leaving the Democratic Party and forming the Progressive Party to oppose his re-election in 1948.

By ignoring these complexities – or dismissing them -- Coulter makes her case seem indefensible, even when it is not. It is true as Coulter maintains, that the accusation of “McCarthyism” has been and still is used as a cover for treachery by the political Left. To pick a contemporary example she does not mention, leftwing groups like the ACLU, the American Association of University Professors and the National Lawyers Guild are currently defending the terrorist Sami al-Arian as a victim of “McCarthyism.” Al-Arian is one of three founders of the terrorist organization Palestine Islamic Jihad and responsible for the murders of 99 innocent people. No one familiar with the facts can doubt this. But the Left has chosen to defend al-Arian and put John Ashcroft and the Justice Department on trial instead. The anti-McCarthy left did provide aid and comfort to the Soviet enemy and its agents inside the United States and is still doing so.

It is a shame that Coulter mars her case with claims that cannot be sustained. In making McCarthy the center of her history, ironically, she has fallen into the very liberal trap she warns about. It is the Left that wants McCarthy to be the center of (and in effect to define) the postwar era so that it can use his recklessness to discredit the anti-Communist cause. In fact, as Coulter herself points out, McCarthy began his anti-Communist crusade after the decisive battles of 1947 and 1948, surfacing only in 1950, after the onset of the Korean War. By then, even Henry Wallace, the Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, knew he had been duped. This is why McCarthy did not unearth any Communists in government or out (all they had all been previously identified by the FBI), and why FBI officials engaged in counter-intelligence work despised McCarthy for damaging their efforts. Hopefully, Treason will not have a similar effect.

On the other hand, there are many apercus in this book that are memorable. It was only in reading Coulter’s text that I realized what a fraud Joseph Welch -- the hero of all anti-McCarthy histories – was, and how his moment of glory in “exposing” McCarthy was a hypocritical sham. Coulter reminds us that one of McCarthy’s great “sins” was to have identified Owen Lattimore as Stalin’s chief agent in America. In fact, Lattimore was a supporter of Stalin’s and Mao’s political agendas and a willing tool of their policies, and that having been identified as such, he was hired by Harvard.

It is indignantly reported that McCarthy exaggerated. His claim that Owen Lattimore was a Soviet agent – as opposed to behaved like a Soviet agent – is hyperbole deserving of a hundred-year condemnation. [But] liberals’ threshold for outrage dropped when it came to McCarthy. In fact, McCarthy’s rhetoric was mild by the standards of his time. In President Truman’s 1948 campaign, he railed, ‘If anybody in this country is friendly to the Communists it is the Republicans.’ [Coulter]

Yet even the fact that Lattimore behaved like a Soviet agent is somewhat different from McCarthy’s claim that he was the chief Soviet agent. How did McCarthy’s mis-identifying Lattimore this way serve the anti-Communist cause? In fact, it served to discredit the anti-Communist cause. But Coulter wants us to think of McCarthy as the anti-Communist hero of the era: “In his brief fiery ride across the landscape, Joe McCarthy bought America another thirty years.” Quite the opposite has been argued by many anti-Communists, whom Coulter brusquely dismisses:

But, if this was true, why did the totalitarians abandon the Democratic Party en masse in 1948? The answer is that McCarthy’s thesis was incorrect, and Coulter is just wrong about his political impact. He exploited the anti-Communist sentiment that was already the popular wisdom of the time, and by giving flesh to the fears of open-ended witch-hunts allowed the Communist Left to regroup and ultimately – in 1972 to be precise – return to the Democratic Party fold.

Many of the inaccurate generalizations of Treason are indeed the hyperbole of Coulterian satire, but unfortunately the most crucial ones are not. I realized this when I saw Ann defending her claims on Chris Matthews’ Hardball:

Ann Coulter: What I mean is that the Democratic Party, as an entity, has become functionally treasonable, including what you’re talking about, turning over documents to the enemy….

Ann Coulter: I wish it were that easy a problem, but that trivializes the point of my book, which is not that there are just a few dozen traitors out there. It is that the entire party cannot root for America.

Chris Matthews: Well, let’s talk about the leaders of the Democratic Party over the years. Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? Was he guilty of treason?

Ann Coulter: He was not as strong a president as a Republican would have been. But I’m referring, as I say again, I’m referring to a party that is functionally treasonable….

Ann Coulter: His heart was in the right place but he was surrounded by bad policymakers and he harm[ed] the country and its national security.

This exchange made me extremely uncomfortable. When somebody as smart and as gutsy as Ann Coulter equivocates over so direct a question – Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? -- you know (and they know) – that something is very wrong with the position they are defending. Equally disturbing was Coulter’s use of the phrase, “functionally treasonable” – as in “[the Democratic Party] has become functionally treasonable.” This is a problematic phrase on several counts. In the first place, “treasonable” is not a word but seems to suggest “capable of treason,” which is different from being actually treasonous. The distinction is important.

But “functionally treasonable” is also disturbingly reminiscent of the old Stalinist term “objectively fascist.” This was how people who swore their loyalty to the cause were condemned (often to death) if they deviated from the party line. Stalinists defined all dissent as “objectively” treacherous. This is not a path that conservatives should follow. When intent and individuality are separated from actions in a political context, we are entering a totalitarian realm where Ann Coulter does not really want to be.

Why is she equivocating about Jack Kennedy anway? Kennedy was not only not a traitor, he was not even a weak anti-Communist, as she claims.

He was arguably stronger than Eisenhower or Nixon in prosecuting the Cold War. His politics were that of Ronald Reagan. He was a militant anti-Communist and a military hawk, authorizing the largest defense buildup in peacetime history.

What can she mean when she says that Kennedy was “surrounded by bad policymakers” – i.e., policymakers who were presumably liberals and therefore harmed the country and its national security? Kennedy was surrounded by Republican policymakers. His secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury – the three key foreign policy posts – were all Republicans. He launched his administration by declaring that America would pay any price to defend the cause of freedom. He tried to overthrow Castro by force. It’s true that he bungled the invasion but Dwight Eisenhower failed the Hungarians in 1956, while Nixon and Kissinger betrayed the Vietnamese in the infamous truce of 1973.

In 1961, Kennedy stood the Russians down in Berlin – risking nuclear war to do so – and a year later he again risked nuclear war to force the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He put 16,000 troops into Vietnam rather than write that country off to the Communists. Why is Ann equivocating on the question of his loyalty and commitment to the anti-Communist cause?

It is important for conservatives to make distinctions between those on the Left who were (and are) traitors or self-conceived enemies of the United States, and those who were (and are) the fellow-travelers of enemies of the United States, and those who are neither traitors, nor enemies, nor friends and protectors of enemies, but are American patriots who disagree with conservatives over tactical and policy issues. It is important, first because it is just, but also because it is a condition of democracy. Citizens will disagree over many issues and matters. In order for the democratic process to survive, all parties must refrain from attempts to de-legitimize those who disagree with them, provided they have legitimate concerns and dissents. If every Democrat is a traitor, if “the entire party cannot root for America,” we are left with a one party system.

The final reason for making these distinctions is that this charge – that no Democrat, apparently including Jack Kennedy, can root for America -- is obviously absurd, and if conservatives do not recognize that it is absurd, nobody is going to listen to us. That is why Conason and Cohen are cackling rather than yelping. That is why Conason doesn’t even think he has to answer her claims, only list them:

“Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America,” according to [Coulter’s] demonology. “They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.” And: “Liberals relentlessly attack their country, but we can’t call them traitors, which they manifestly are, because that would be ‘McCarthyism,’ which never existed.” (Never existed? Her idol gave his 1952 book that very word as its title.)

Fortunately, Conason’s bad faith is also showing in this passage, which underscores why a defense of the anti-Communism of the “McCarthy Era” (but not McCarthy) is in order. Of course McCarthy titled his own book “McCarthyism.” Liberals had made the term an issue. Is Conason really suggesting that McCarthy’s book is a defense of the liberal caricature of himself? Does Conason really think that the tactics of guilt by association and prosecution by committee – the hallmarks of “McCarthyism” – are exclusively the vehicles of anti-Communists and not weapons of choice deployed by liberals themselves?

If liberals abhor “McCarthyism,” why are they such worshippers of Hillary Clinton who is the unrepentant author of the most famous McCarthyite smear since the Senator’s censure fifty years ago? In fact, liberals like Joe Conason were eager abettors of her lie that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” invented her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky in order to destroy his liberal good works. Liberals like Conason indulge in related “McCarthyite” tactics like “guilt-by-association,” gleefully linking political opponents (myself for example) to those they have demonized like Richard Mellon Scaife -- the alleged kingpin of the alleged conspiracy – with the express purpose of discrediting those they have so linked.

Where was the liberal opposition to prosecutions by congressional committee when Col. Oliver North and others were in the dock? Who on the Left objected when Senator Inouye, chair of the Iran-Contra investigating committee, in true McCarthy fashion condemned North as a “traitor” before a national television audience and without the protections of a court proceeding? The only difference between the Iran-Contra victims of Senators Kennedy and Inouye and the Communists who were pilloried by Joe McCarthy was that the Iran-Contra witnesses were patriots and the Communists called before McCarthy’s committee were not.

The fact is that if so many liberals and Democrats had not covered so assiduously for Communists and Soviet spies like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, there would have been no “McCarthy Era” -- no wave of loyalty oaths and no congressional investigations. Derelictions like Roosevelt’s, the sense of insecurity created when the public realized that there was an enemy within who had thoroughly penetrated the Democratic Party and which was indeed controlled by the Kremlin, and the refusal of Democratic leaders to take the threat as seriously as they should have -- created the demand for investigations and made the exploits of demagogues like McCarthy inevitable.

The problem with Coulter’s book is that she is not willing to concede that McCarthy was, in fact, demagogic in any sense at all, or that that his recklessness injured the anti-Communist cause. Ron Radosh, Harvey Klehr and John Haynes have distinguished themselves as historians by documenting the Communist menace that many liberals discounted. But they have also documented the irresponsible antics of McCarthy, which undermined the anti-Communist cause. Coulter dismisses such conservative criticisms of McCarthy as caving in to the liberals. She is wrong.

But the fact that she is wrong should not obscure the way in which she is right in the larger argument about whether McCarthy and McCarthyism have been used by the Left to cover its own indefensible tracks. Here is a way to assess the merits of that argument: As a quick Google search will show, there are two periods in American history that have become known as the era of “The Red Scare” –the so-called McCarthy period and the period of the Palmer Raids, when anarchist radicals were rounded up in the 1920s as “subversives” and “terrorists.” This first “Red Scare” provides a good yardstick for judging the one under review because it is free of the presence of the controversial Senator and his antagonists, yet involves parallel claims by liberals that an anti-radical “hysteria” led to an assault on civil liberties and the persecution of individuals “for their political beliefs.”

In fact, the Palmer Raids were triggered by a massive domestic campaign of terror conducted by anarchist organizations. It involved a hundred mail bombs and an attempt to blow up the Attorney General of the United States (Mitchell Palmer) and J.P. Morgan among others. One anarchist bombing killed 40 people – the biggest terrorist atrocity in American history until then. Another plot -- to poison 200 members of the Archdiocese of Chicago who were attending a dinner party -- failed when the guests only became sick.

Given these facts it would more reasonable to designate this episode as the Era of the Red Threat than a red “scare.” It is not so designated because the institutions that make the cultural record – the academic history profession and the high brow media are dominated by the political left which is protecting its own. That is also why the New York Times – one of Coulter’s justly favorite targets – has spent so much newsprint promoting contemporary terrorists like Kathy Boudin, Billy Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and why it has fudged the guilt of Alger Hiss and played down the significance of the Venona decrypts.

The McCarthy Era has been written into college and high school curriculums and even government history standards as a time of “witch-hunts” instead of a time of fifth column treason for the same reason. Coulter is right to emphasize this point. The opening of the Soviet archives and the release of the Venona decrypts have established beyond any reasonable doubt that McCarthy’s so-called victims – with few exceptions (James Wechsler would be one) -- were people who either served the intelligence agencies of the biggest mass murderer in history or supported the despotic empire he built, or were fellow-travelers of the same. The remedy for preventing such injustices as occurred through the hearings of McCarthy’s subcommittee and the House Committee on Un-American Activities would be to close congressional hearings to the public. But no one to my knowledge – liberal or otherwise -- has ever proposed this.

Today the same “liberals” (I have in mind those liberals who are really leftists in sheep’s clothing) are busy whipping up hysteria about a government threat to civil liberties in regard to incarcerated terrorist suspects. Here is Coulter’s take: “[After 9/11 liberals] wailed about ‘McCarthyism’ and claimed to be ‘very very concerned’ -- not about terrorist attacks on America but about ‘civil liberties.’ Liberals’ idea for fighting domestic terrorism was to hold folk-song rallies with Muslims. When they aren’t complaining about alleged threats to civil liberties, they are complaining about us. Two days after the [9/11] attack, novelist Norman Mailer, whose last successful novel was written fifty-four years ago, said the crumpled World Trade Center was ‘more beautiful than the building was,’ and America was ‘the most hated nation on earth.’ As Mailer saw it, the terrorist attack was retaliation for the Happy Meal: ‘We come in and we insist on establishing enclaves of our food there, like McDonald’s.’”

Not all critics of Ashcroft should be put in this category however. There are many genuine patriots who are concerned about the balance between liberty and security. William Safire is one from the Republican side; Nat Hentoff is another from the Left. Making such discriminations is important, and to the extent that she hasn’t made them Ann Coulter opens herself to the criticisms that have been leveled against her. But in the long run, this will turn out to be a lesser fault than emphasizing the wrong problem or promoting America’s enemies as America’s victims – which is what her liberal antagonists have done.

Coulter is a gadfly compared to the emerging Michelle Malkin, who actually has a family and, as far as I know, never dated the son of a porno king. In that sense, her lifestyle is generally urban neoconservative, but she has certainly learned the language of us rubes in fly-over country.

That said, watching the establishment distance themselves from Coulter's latest screed is a welcomed sight and should help draw the line a little clearer amongst Mainstream Rightist who have tended, in recent months, to ignore that their new neoconservative friends are not particularly conservative.

Let's see....Horowitz defends "liberals" as patriotic by pointing to anti-communist Democrats from 30-40-50 years ago.

30-40 years ago I was an anti-communist Democrat.

Because of the hatred, pandering, ever-increasing Anti-Americanism and seismic shift to the left of the Democratic Party, I became a Republican.

Looking at the two Parties today, Ann is spot on and Horowitz, as is usual, blows smoke to obfuscate the political landscape. The Democrats (and if anyone doesn't think they are liberal, look at who their leaders and candidates for President are) are still full of hatred, pandering, anti-American and still moving to the left with even more alacrity.

Unfortunately, they have now established a "Three Class" system in the United States.
The first class is the workers. Two salaries are now equal to what one used to be. One salary now goes for food, clothing, shelter, transportation and the other salary goes to pay taxes, health and child care.
The Second class is the "Gimme" class. A collection of minorities, government employees, union workers, deadbeats, ne'er-do-wells, single welfare mothers that are nothing more than bastard factories, feminists, sexual deviants and other assorted kooks that feel if they shout loud enough they will get eveything they want. And so far, they are correct.
The third Class is the "Ruling elite" whether elected, anointed or just members of the Lucky Sperm Club. They pay lip service to the first class, but mostly the lip service is to disparage them as not knowing what is best for them and their families. So they take the money from that class and give it and preferential treatment to the second class so the ever-increasing numbers of the second class will keep them in power.

Meanwhile, the first class keeps looking for a Deliverer from the burden of supporting the other two classes.

And remebers that Horowitz was on a team of lawyers that took the race card to a despicable new low in making sure that one more murderer can walk among us with impunity

Even if she only "preaches to the converted" -- and I strongly disagree with you on that -- even that alone would "help the conservative cause" by providing us with tons of factual ammunition to use when *we* "preach to the unconverted".

I completely agree with that. I think that the substance of what Ann does is incredibly useful in many cases. But she could accomplish the exact same thing without intentionally antagonizing people who might otherwise listen to her. You don't sway opinions by intentionally pissing off the people you are trying to convince.

As for the liberals out there, I could care less. They're not open to reason anyway. But there are an awful lot of people who may be open to reason if you can present them with your arguments in a reasonable manner. You don't have to be bland and boring to do that. Limbaugh toes that line well. He gets attention by saying things that tick off liberals. But the moderates chuckle, and consider the substance of what he says. That's how he's built such a huge audience, and even some libs admit they listen to him.

But Ann doesn't do that. She says things that piss off moderates, even when she could make the exact same substantive point in a manner that wouldn't piss them off. Regardless of whether you personally feel her methods are effective, the fact is that a lot of conservatives are not happy with her style. And if goes too far for some conservatives, how in the world can we expect her ideas to get through to moderates?

Horowitz, if anyone, certainly understands the need for hyperbole and exaggeration.

I'm two thirds of the way through "Treason" and I think I know why Horowitz and that Dorothy babe don't like it. (Hint - I was an East coast red diaper baby with Oberlin/Yale (over) educated parents with such an ultra liberal family still that I escaped when I was 16 and live 3 thousand miles away):

Ann doesn't write like a hoity toity scholar. She writes in a vernacular that a GED auto body worker can read, appreciate and laugh at. Hoity toity types also hate humor.

And Eisenhower did nothing when the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Reagan skedaddled out of Lebanon after the Marine bombing and did nothing when the Soviets shot down that airliner over Korea. If you want to search for examples of Republicans who didn't react when the commies did something bad, there are a number of examples.

The unfortunate fact is that some conservatives are unwilling to give a Democrat or liberal credit where credit is due. The question is what was Truman's overall record fighting communism not particular errors he might have made. His overall record was outstanding. Yesterdays Dems are not the same as todays as Horowitz, hardly a liberal apologist, has pointed out.

The reason why is because nobody challenges Matthews' tactics-- he interrupts, he doesn't allow people to answer, he argues in a really pugnacious, condescending and dishonest way. And someone should say just once, "Chris, if your so damn confident in your beliefs, occassionally let your opponents talk." Matthews is far more outrageous than O'Reilly. The way the Left describes Mccarthy is the way Matthews is. He goes after Neo-Cons like a junkyward dog, has the most lopsided panels and he unfairly targets Dick Cheney. And he hates the (conservative esp.) jews like any good Uber MC from Philly does. This man obssesses over ethnic id in a Hitlerian way, it's not normal!

Looks like Ann's book is accomplishing an impossibility- - rousing us conservative sleepwalkers to stand up and be heard. It's way past time to rescue our dead from the liberal memory-hole and honor them with proper respect.

No question Tailgunner Joe was ridden out of Washington on trumped-up charges while intimidated Republicans stood by and watched, to their everlasting shame and regret.

And yes, Truman knew all about Alger Hiss and participated in the cover-up. An eye-opening book from the sixties, THE ORDEAL OF OTTO OTEPKA, describes Truman's furious reaction when he read the intelligence reports describing Hiss' spying activities - - - "Why, that sonoffa b**** betrayed his country!" Truman sputtered over and over again.

Failing to be honest about the real threat of internal espionage, combined with firing MacArthur, cost him the '52 election, and perhaps justly so. I was a child at the time and was shocked one day to hear my uncle declare to the whole family that Truman surely must be a Communist. After that I started watching the evening news, and clearly remember the promises made by the Republicans to "clean out the State Department." Still waiting for that one.

Horowitz detailed Truman's fierce opposition to communism. Is Horowitz wrong?

Coulter says that Truman had as much anticommunist credential before the Republicans took Congress in '46 as Clinton had a welfare reform credential before the Republicans took Congress in 94. That is, essentially 2 years elapsed before Truman did anything to control the subversion menace--and that, he did grudgingly.
The Army undertook the decryption of the Venona files on its own initiative and against Truman's orders. The project--and its findings--had to be kept secret from the POTUS; it revealed things that Truman was patently unwilling to hear.
After Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in America, Truman had Acheson snub Churchill--and offered Stalin a ride to America on the USS Misouri to respond to Churchill.
Truman was probably better than Roosevelt, but that is hardly any praise at all--the fact that Eastern Europe ended up under Stalin was according to FDR's plan. FDR started trying to get Hitler to fight the US from the moment Hitler invaded the USSR. From FDR's POV WWII was essentially a war to save the Soviet Union.

Eisenhower did nothing when the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Reagan skedaddled out of Lebanon after the Marine bombing and did nothing when the Soviets shot down that airliner over Korea. If you want to search for examples of Republicans who didn't react when the commies did something bad, there are a number of examples.

Those were all tactical and strategic decisions made in the fight against communism.

Hear the liberal talking point comparing the JFK, the Bay of Pigs and Cuba to Eisenhower's inaction during the Hungarian revolution a lot. There was one huge difference: Soviet tanks were not going to roll through the Fulda gap into Key West Florida. Besides, had Ike acted, traitors in the Democrat party would have bitched and screamed.

No comparison between what you cite as the GOP being soft on communism and having a Soviet spy in your administration, knowing about it, and promoting him--as Truman did. Republicans were not the ones who gutted the CIA and FBI in the 1970s, Republicans were not the ones who squealed like stuck pigs when Reagan decided not to contain but to bust the Soviet Union.

Remember, Democrats passed the Boland Amendment, making it ILLEGAL to fight Soviet expansion in Central America.

What else do you need to know about the Rat party than that?

I still maintain that yesterdays Dems are different than todays. You simply can't cite a few examples of Truman's missteps early on in his presidency, and deny his Marshall Plan, support for loyalty oaths and other anti-communst measures, and his response to communist aggression in Korea. The same with Kennedy. To believe that the Dems have always been subversive leftists waiting for the chance to install communism is absurd. There is a Cult of Coulter on Free Republic. And let me state to her loyal fans even Coulter can be wrong, and I'll further state that I too am a fan of hers. But read Horowitz's comments about Coulter's book on his website. And try to keep an open mind about things.

But read Horowitz's comments about Coulter's book on his website.

Horowitz flat out misleads and mistates what Coulter wrote. The debunking of Horowitz starts here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/944360/posts?page=1#1

George Crockett, a Democrat House member from Michigan, refused to sign a resolution condemning the Soviet Union for shooting down Korean Air Flight 007. Crockett began his career as a lawyer for the Communist Party USA.

Ron Dellums, a Democrat who chaired the House Armed Services Committee and sat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said in 1993: ""We should totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country,piece by piece, brick by brick, nail by nail."

Samuel Dickstein (D-NY) served 11 terms in Congress. He was a Soviet agent. It is difficult to believe no other RAT in the 1930s, noticed Dickstein's agenda was very close to that of the Soviet Union. It is also improbably that the agents exposed by VENONA were the only spies in the Democrat party. What we don't know, even today, is most likely worse than what we have discovered about the Truman and Roosevelt administrations.

You are of course correct about the cult of Coulter, and also equally correct that she too can make mistakes. Frankly, I have seen FAR MORE repeated mistakes by Horowitz than Ann has ever made. Disquieting and disturbing mistakes. Frankly, Ann is a considerably more diligent researcher than Horowitz, but she is too tied to Lexis/Nexis. She needs to crack some old books occasionally. And as for overstating the case, it is okay for the Left to ALWAYS be calling conservatives Nazi's and 'McCarthyites', etc. but apparently it is NEVER okay to be over-the-top of a conservative to be over-the top in rhetorical retaliation. Everyone has some flaws.

President Reagan's flaws can be recounted for pages and pages, but still, all and all, he was still the most magnificent and loved president we have had since Teddy Roosevelt...and some would argue since Lincoln!

Coulter is a like-minded fire-brand, who, if she inadvertantly overstates a case, does not diminish the conservative movement in any way, as it would tend to be her own credibility impaired not the philosophy. And she knows she is not perfect in all things. She knows all the above. We know that. And the liberals know that, but have lied since day one. They are the one's attempting the ad hominem attacks based on lies and guilt by association. So all in all, the firebrand in these times of PC insanity is more than welcome. She is essential if we are to make ANY progress at combatting and reversing our losses in the culture wars. The instance where Horowitz slams her for her momentary hesitations and mentally stammering about JFK's place are normal in ON-AIR debate. Not everyone can have the razor-wit ALL THE TIME. Undoubtedly Ann was equivocating to try and predict how the interlocutor would MISUSE her defense of JFK to attack her thesis, and so was not sure whether to buy into the question, or challenge its premise. This one instance of normal, rather than superhuman rhetorical performance is neither disappointing...or totally unexpected.

I pray and hope that she be prosperous and effective in her efforts to restore the republic. She is doing more than any of us.

The left claiming there is a "cult of Coulter" is straight out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

8.Pick the target. Target an individual, personalize the attack, polarize and demoralize his/her supporters. Go after people, not institutions. Hurting, harassing, and humiliating individuals, especially leaders, causes more rapid organizational change.

The history of conservatism since FDR (probably before) is the history of one person, time and again, being picked out for demonization by the left while what that person said and stood for is mistated or ignored. Weak conservatives become rattled by the attacks, polarized, and do the left's work for them.

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