Book review: Coulter calls it 'Treason'

News Max - UPI ^ | Friday, July 18, 2003 | Peter Roff

[Forgiven_Sinner]

A rather objective review. I get the impression the author wants to slam Ann, but grudgingly admires her.

[Support Free Republic]

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much!

That's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me.

It isn't every day

good fortune comes me way!

I never thought the future would be fun for me!

And if I had a bugle

I would blow it to add a sort

o' how's your father's touch.

But since I left me bugle at home

I simply have to say

Thank you very, very, very much!

Thank you very, very, very much!

Thank you for your donation!

[CyberAnt]

NYT - The worst lie of all: Hitlery's book at #1 and Treason at #2. But ... there's no bias in the media ..!!

[Noumenon]

These are strong words, perhaps too strong.

Do tell. Shakespeare understood treason and treachery:

You have conspired against our royal person,
Join'd with an enemy proclaim'd and from his coffers
Received the golden earnest of our death;
Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,
His princes and his peers to servitude,
His subjects to oppression and contempt
And his whole kingdom into desolation.
Touching our person seek we no revenge;
But we our kingdom's safety must so tender,
Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws
We deliver you. Get you therefore hence,
Poor miserable wretches, to your death:
The taste whereof, God of his mercy give
You patience to endure, and true repentance
Of all your offences! Bring them hence.

--Wm. Shakespeare - King Henry V, Act II Scene III

Yes - bring them hence.

[marron]

. There have been some, certainly, who really were traitors... But there are also those who have simply been foolish, ignorant or persuaded by political passions that the United States, as it was, represented the wrong side in the Cold War – or was at least the moral equivalent of the Soviets.

If that is the best defense one can offer for the Democratic Party, then the debate is over. Some were treasonous for malignant reasons, he suggests, while others simply were foolishly, ignorantly, passionately treasonous. That they were on the wrong side of history Roff doesn't attempt to refute. I would say that he read Coulter and grudgingly agreed with her.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

It is truly amazing that Ann Coulter's book, "Treason" remains week after week on the best selling charts. This book has legs. Ms. Coulter has been besting Hillary Clinton's book for weeks, and still is going strong as Hillary's tome settles into the sunset of forgotten writings. Good job, Ann Coulter! Your book will be remembered long after Ms. Clinton's fades into the oblivion it so well deserves!

[DPB101]

Check out this archive of the papers of Samuel Dickstein (D-NY). No mention Dickstein was a Soviet agent. Only praise for his efforts to uncover "most of the major figures in the U.S. Fascist movement."

If anyone is responsible for conservatives being labeled Nazis and Fascists, it is Dickstein. For 11 terms in office, he kept up that drumbeat--all on the orders of Joe Stalin.

[wayoverontheright]

There have been some, certainly, who really were traitors: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and Jonathan Pollard are just three out many. But there are also those who have simply been foolish, ignorant or persuaded by political passions that the United States......

Ah, and here lies the reason for the in-your-face blanket accusation by Ms Coulter. It is precisely this cohort, prone as they are to acquiesce with the left for whatever reason, that she is trying to shock out of their sleepwalk.

What, pray tell, is the difference from a practical standpoint, between vociferously opposing actions which are needed to defend this country, and sitting back passively, allowing your side to undermine your own country's defense?

I was a commie-lefty at one time, and I can tell you that to become one requires a process, the first step of which is to acquire the ability to step out and look at your country from the outside, as if you weren't from your country at all, but a citizen without a country. The goal, of course is to become more objective, but one simply becomes more overly critical over time, until one morning you wake up and America is the enemy. I changed, but that 's a story for another day, my point is that Ann is attempting to hit these people with a two-by-four embodied in her accusation that what they are doing is treason.

The two-by-four is the same one used on the proverbial donkey (isn't that ironic!) and is quite necessary in my view, it's not so much that democrats will be reading the book, but the rest of us, having read it and absorbed its conclusions, will be bolder now, and therefore more effective in opposing those who oppose our country.

[sauropod]

"Almost 20 years working in or writing about politics has aught me many things, one of which is that the American people have an innate sense of right and wrong. That sense extends into the way they process political debates. To paraphrase the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, they may not be able to explain where the line between acceptable and unacceptable discourse lies but they know when someone has crossed it."

I believe that Clinton is a traitor. He singlehandedly polarized the country. He oversaw the sale of nuclear missile guidance technology to China (or at least did nothing to stop it.).

This person writing the article does not know WTF he is talking about.

[jedwardtremlett]

Howdy, Ant

I fail to see why the NYT would bother to lie about this. Remember that both of Rush Limabugh's books and WIlliam Bennett's The Book of Virtues were #1 for ages and ages. If them, why not her?

Besides, if they did lie, it would be one that would be very easily uncovered. Just find out what the orders are and go from there.

Do you have any 'in' with the publishers whose orders (and not actual book sales!) are what gets books put on that list in the first place?

J

[CyberAnt]

Actually, Rush was concerned about the sales numbers, and called S&S, because they published one of his books, and he had connections within their offices. When he ask an insider (not the publicity people), it seems the claim that S&S printed 1 mil books was a little inaccurate - because (according to the insider) "we have no place to store such a huge supply". Then, S&S let it be made public they had ordered "another" 300,000. I don't believe the "truth" about the number of books printed or sold has ever been released. If S&S doesn't release the numbers - then the NYT could lie with impunity - which is the liberal style.

According to Rush - S&S is not required to publish print or sales orders.

I am aware that Hitlery is very popular in Europe - mainly because Europe is very liberal in it's thinking. Her sales there are probably 10 times what they were here in the USA. I don't believe (even in this day and age) the people of Europe are aware of all the evil and dispicable things the x42 goons have done here in America. I believe a lot of her numbers could have been made up there - and maybe, just maybe - it could have put her at #1.

The other problem I'm having with the #1 at the NYT is that Amazon.com is such a great barometer. Currently, Treason is #2, and Hitlery's book is #12. The real problem will be when Treason hit's #1 at Amazon - and that appears to be happening within a week or so.

And ... you don't see "why they would bother to lie". I can think of several good reasons.

First - Since the Jayson Blair scandal cut into their credibility - it also cut into their sales - a 5% drop in the last few months.

Second - The NYT believes they are the premier newspaper - they aren't. The Washington Times and the NYPost have increased their sales by 20-30% in the past year.

Third - The NYT believes their opinion mirrors what the general population thinks - that's not true - in fact the NYT is about 180 degrees in opposition.

Fourth - The NYT lies, and lies, and lies.

Since the NYT has already established a pattern of lying - why would it be such a big leap to put Hitlery's book at #1 on the Best Seller list. The NYT SUPPORTS LIBERALISM - not TRUTH.

The only reason Rush's book did so well was because there wasn't a Clinton with a book out at the same time.

[Jack Black]

I've never heard of him before. It is interesting the he introduced the legislation to create the House Committee on Unamerican Activities to investigate the German Bund and that 15 years later is was used to investigate Communists by Nixon and McCarthy. His paymasters must have been unhappy how that turned out.

Where is the story of him being a soviet agent told?

[CyberAnt]

Thanks for that info - I have saved it!

[DPB101]

Those archives must be fascinating. There had to be other agents in Congress at the time. Notice how he ran Immigration in the House just after Palmer shipped back a bunch of Bolsheviks to Russia. The Reds were certainly on top of the situation in America.

Just read some fascinating testimony from the sealed McCarthy transcripts which were released this spring. Our information service, of which Voice of America was a part, had a Hebrew language desk. Somebody eliminated broadcasts in Hebrew just when the purges of high ranking Jews in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block started. The committee was dumbfounded. McCarthy could not get a straight answer out of anyone as to why broadcasts were halted at the time they would have done America the most good (and might have saved the lives of a few Jews in the USSR).

The testimony, by Reed Harris, deputy administrator, United States International Information Administration, is in Volume One of the transcripts (huge file, Harris is about half way down)

[DPB101]

Where is the story of him being a soviet agent told?

In "The Haunted Wood" by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. He was uncovered by Venona.

[CyberAnt]

Thanks!

[Bob]

I've never heard of him before. It is interesting the he introduced the legislation to create the House Committee on Unamerican Activities to investigate the German Bund and that 15 years later is was used to investigate Communists by Nixon and McCarthy.

And the House Committee on Unamerican Activities was used by Senator McCarthy how?

[squidly]

This guys more or less gets it. While Ms. Coulter says that all liberals are treasonous per se, that isn't necessarily true. Some are treasonous, but most are just stupid and follow the treasonous ones because they believe their lies.

[DPB101]

A social thing too. Like a religion. Eric Alterman was on MSNBC and remarked how he doesn't even know anyone in his social group who is not for gun control, not for "reproductive choice", not for gay rights and so on.

Most people just go with the flow.

[Bernard Marx]

Now, more than a quarter of a century later, Ann Coulter, the pundit and author of several best-selling books include last year's "Slander," has done what Stormer alleged none would dare do: She has called it "treason."

I take issue with this, although the title of her book and many of her comments follow that line. But the path was blazed by Whittaker Chambers whom Ann quotes as follows on page 189:

"Other ages have had their individual traitors -- men who from faint-heartedness or hope of gain sold out their causes. But in the 20th century, for the first time, men banded together by the million in movements like Fascism and Communism, dedicated to the purpose of betraying the institutions they lived under. In the 20th century, treason became a vocation whose modern form was specifically the treason of ideas."

Coulter does nothing more than document when and how that happened and, like Chambers, gives the acts the correct name.