Redefining McCarthyism; Coulter's bid to resell Joe as hero is a damnable lie

AZ Republic ^ | AZ Republic Editorial Staff

[hsmomx3]

Revisionist history. That's the kindest description you can give columnist Ann Coulter's attempt to portray Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy as an American hero.

But it's more accurate to call it a lie. A damnable one, at that.

But there it is, in black and white. In her columns and in her new book, Treason.

[blam]

The Book, Witness by Whittaker Chambers is one of the most moving books I have ever read. I recommend it to everyone.

[L.N. Smithee]

McCarthyism never has referred to anti-communism. McCarthyism means making reckless accusations and public smears without real evidence.

I don't read the Republic, so maybe an AZ resident can inform me -- has the paper made any editorial condemnations about President Bush's "deception" in his State of The Union speech?

[Tribune7]

The Book, Witness by Whittaker Chambers is one of the most moving books I have ever read. I recommend it to everyone.

Worth repeating.

[annyokie]

OK. You don't "win" one. It's not a lottery.

[E=MC²]

Evidently, there are STILL commies sprinkled liberally throughout this country. (Many of the neopats^* spring to mind.)

*Neopats: short for neopatriots...the new breed of patriots that define true patriotism as rabidly criticizing Bush.

[annyokie]

Read "Whittaker Chambers" by Sam Tannenbaum. It is excellent.

[blam]

Henry Luce the original owner of Time magazine paid all of Chambers' legal fees in the law suit filed by Hiss. Chambers quit Time so that the commies would not come after Henry and the Magazine. I'm Sure Henry is spinning today over what Time has become.

Also, when Bill Buckley Began National Review, he invited Whittaker Chambers to go into a partnership on the magazine. Whittacker declined out of fear that the commies would come after Buckley. None-the-less, Chambers did write a lot for National Review in the early days.

[blam]

"Read "Whittaker Chambers" by Sam Tannenbaum. It is excellent."

Thanks. I already did ...and Red Hunter by William F. Buckley.

[DPB101]

I understand. But..there is a reason many are so passionate on this subject.

Received an email tonight from Nigel Colley, Gareth Jones' great nephew. His family just translated a few letters ethnic Germans in the Ukraine wrote in 1933. Nigel posted them on this website earlier today. Jones was given the letters by the German Consul in Danzig. Unlike most letters during the Holodomor, these were not censored.Excerpt from a letter written by a 33 year old women with 3 children and a dying husband:

We have been eating grass for the past two weeks. I even went to a little hill where a dead horse lay, and ate some of it. My husband is ill, his body is swollen, my children are swollen.

The doctor claims that the people will be dropping like flies, due to the hot weather. Forty people have already been buried every day in a neighbouring Russian village. A German village lays claim to fifteen dead per day. Whole families lay unburied on the paths of the steppes for weeks. No one cares. Cats and dogs are eaten.

An underground trade organisation has been formed in the nearby town of Armawir, where people are slaughtered and are turned into sausages and cutlets, to be sold for food.

Some of our neighbours in our village have desecrated graves by digging up bodies and pulling out gold teeth with pliers, to sell in Torgsin for products. The Bible says: The Ashes should lay in peace! Even the dead have no peace.

Why do we suffer so much? Winter is over. Very heavy restrictions were made in December, and this resulted in us becoming helpless and destitute. December, January, February, for three whole months we were tortured, and now we have to starve to death if no one helps us.

Bread was taken from us, grain, everything that we call corn; different types of seeds, vegetables, everything was collected and taken away by the State. All the potatoes, meat, eggs and dairy products.

We have nothing! Oh Lord, where can we find help, who will pity us? Oh dear uncle, please find help for us unhappy people. Oh, pity us. Oh brothers and sisters, may the Lord put this letter into your hands. Please put your hands together to save us from starvation. Oh, help, help, please, please! Soon I will no longer exist, soon the flood of death will wash over me, I will die soon, oh Word (of the Lord)! Soon I will be carried away! Oh uncle, please, please send us alms, even just a little piece. Oh, if only I had some corn bread, I would always be thankful and would praise the Lord for ever. In eternity we will take your hands and thank you... more

Dorothy Rabinowitz critiqued Treason by relating how Phillip Loeb was driven to suicide when he could not get a job.

Loeb was fired from his TV show because no one wanted to watch a Soviet sympathizer when American troops were being killed in Korea. He was paid $85,000 (over half a million in current dollars)for not working. He killed himself a few years later when he could not pay a tax bill of around $1,000.

Where is the sense of proportion in all this? Those McCarthy called supported a system which murdered the woman who wrote the letter above. They wanted that brutal system to come to America. Yet they are now the victims and McCarthy, who didn't want a Holodomor in America, is the villain.

I don't get it.

[onedoug]

Regardless of how one regards Joe McCarthy, American officialdom is yet crawling with communists.

[Spiff]

Again, they hate the book, they hate Ann Coulter, they hate Joseph McCarthy, but they don't counter the fact that the government was infested with soviet spies and sympathizers who were security risks and that the Democratic Party stood at the forefront of aiding, abetting, and defending them.

[GregoryFul]

to AZ Republic Editorial Staff:
TRAITORS!

[blam]

"Regardless of how one regards Joe McCarthy, American officialdom is yet crawling with communists."

Amen.

[Sans-Culotte]

What a lame article. Hell, it isn't even an article. Or a rebuttal. Just some loser saying she's lying.

[thulldud]

I liked Allan Weinstein's book better than Tanenhaus's, but I think it's out of print now.

[Hornetsrule]

Shouldn't that be Sam Tanenhaus?

[c-b 1]

The editorial staff at the Arizona Repugnant is long on leftist opinions, and short on research. They swallowed the Revisionist history, hook, line, and sinker.

[Freedom4US]

I think Coulter purposefully spread the paint on a little wide. Everyone knows that there were good patriotic democrats. And everyone knows they were marginalized in the 60's when the Tom Hadyn crowd arrived on the scene,that ilk.

The communists killed Kennedy because he was a hawk. The commies (aided by modern day marxists like ollie stone) successfully sold a bill of goods to the american people and got our citezenry to blame the FBI and the CIA, UFO's, the masons, the mob, whoever. Anyone but who was really responsible. The best place to hide something is in plain sight.

The government's silence is deafening, because if the american people knew what really happened there's no telling what would happen. So they had to cook the books.

The JFK era is absurdly simple, there is no mystery.

[ladyinred]

McCarthyism means making reckless accusations and public smears without real evidence."

Then the media is McCarthyisming all over the place right now over Bush's SOTU address. I feel much better now, thanks.

[steplock]

Damn! are those left-wing radical extremists in the "progressive democrat party" running like scared cowards or not!

The full frontal verbal assault (usually by nameless/faceless cowards) is, in a way, amusing to hear and watch.

Their time to go is nigh!

ps. I was curious to the term "nigh" so I looked it up for some background. Interestingly enough, two of the meanings of NIGH:

Being on the left side of an animal or vehicle: pulling hard on the nigh rein.
Being the animal or vehicle on the left: the nigh horse.