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I'll save a detailed response for later, but it's worth noting that many individuals who are now the "go to" people for the history of post-WW II communism have origins on the left or were initially sympathetic to American Communists or Popular Front types. Radosh initially set out to prove that the Rosenbergs had been railroaded to their deaths, and Weinstein initially got access to and the cooperation of Alger Hiss for his definitive study of the Hiss-Chambers case "Perjury," because he was at first convinced of Hiss' innocence (to their credit, both Radosh and Weinstein let the evidence change their minds, and both have paid a price for such honesty in academia).
Whenever they have made a R or X movie knowing that a P or PG movie would be more profitable.
The Army-McCarthy hearings were televised and recorded. You can get them on videotape if you know where to look. I suggest that the Pro-Joe camp invite their friends and neighbors over some night for a private screening of "Joe in Action." If one picture is worth a thousand words, an hour of videotape should be worth a entire library of books like "Treason" and "Slander." If your friends and neighbors are not as repulsed by McCarthy's bullying and unfairness as the American public was when they first watched him in the early 1950s -- when, then, we've gone backwards as a Nation and as a People.In Treason Ann mentioned the tape, but indicated that it had been edited down to only show McCarthy in a bad light; all McCarthy's effective statements were cut out. Is the whole tape available, or is Estrich blowing smoke over a propaganda version of the truth here?
Estrich: In one of the reviews of Ann's book, it quotes her description of Joe McCarthy as someone ...
Let me get this right... is Estrich here actually admitting that she is caught having a critical discussion about Ann's book when she did not even read the book, much less think about what it says and look at the supporting footnotes? I believe this is what happens here, and that ought to be devastating to her credibility.
What she does to the other TRAITORS is fairly easy all it takes is speaking the truth with prejudice... many have done that, howbeit way too intellectually.
Ann reduces her truth/facts/reseach/snippets to one or two sentences, something that republicans even RINOs can understand..
**Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.- Albert Einstein
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Panicky lefties are on their heels -- their favorite term to shut down dissent with conservatives -- "McCarthyism" -- is (thanks to Ann Coulter) itself being exposed and ridiculed as total BS.
And as an aside, contrast any liberals' whining about McCarthy's "unwarranted and aggressive browbeating and censorship" of Communist sympathizers, with the vicious demonizing and virtual lynchings of Judge Bork, justice Thomas, and John Ashcroft during the AG's confirmation hearings for having the audacity to possess a pro-life, Christian belief system.
When will a conservative step forward to mutter those same famous words: "Senator Kennedy -- have YOU no shame??"
One example should suffice to discredit anything else this ignorant termagant had to say in the "symposium": In her opening screed, Estrich tosses out the old smear that McCarthy "was casting about for a Big Issue to ride into a second term. With the help of a rabidly anti-communist Catholic clergyman of the Father Coughlin-ilk, McCarthy found his issue: Reds in the Government!" This smear, so useful to liberals, Democrats, and "anti-McCarthyites," originated in a claim made by Drew Pearson, a liberal partisan dedicated to "bringing down McCarthy," that, not Pearson, but his lawyer had sat in on a luncheon in which McCarthy was supposedly casting around for an "issue" in a campaign for his re-election campaign which would take place four years later (McCarthy was elected to the Senate in 1948). The "rabidly anti-Communist Catholic clergyman of the Father Coughlin ilk" that Escrement so cravenly omits to name was according to Pearson's lawyer's recollection supposed to be the distinguished diplomat and foreign policy expert Edmund J. Walsh, who also happened to oversee famine relief efforts in the newly Soviet Russia in the 1920's and to have founded Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. (For the record, Father Walsh did consult with Sen. McCarthy but denied ever counselling McCarthy to adopt "anti-communism" as a campaign issue---it was a "campaign issue" for most Congressmen years before McCarthy was even elected). Estrich's vicious, bigoted, Catholic-baiting smear of a distinguished American who was indeed anti-communist but who could never credibly be charged with anti-Semitism is in itself a "McCarthyite" smear of the most despicable order, and both Horowitz and Glazov deserve condemnation for allowing this scoundrel to peddle her partisan attacks at this "symposium."
Now for Profs. Haynes and Klehr, whom as I said I will treat respectfully. Let me begin with Prof. Klehr's opener:
Klehr: Mr. Brennan claims never to have heard of any people falsely or maliciously attacked by McCarthy. How about James Wechsler, editor of the New York Post? Wechsler had long been public about his Communist background in the student movement of the 1930s and had for years been a vigorous and forthright anti-communist liberal.
Senator McCarthy went after him largely because Wechsler had criticized McCarthy and suggested that Communist denunciations of Wechsler were actually part of a Communist effort to make him appear to be an anti-communist.
Two points. One, according to transcripts in Herman's 2000 biography of McCarthy, McCarthy did not accuse Wechsler of continuing to be a communist---he admittedly belonged to the Communist Youth League in the '30's---but of serving "consciously or not" the communist cause. Second, if McCarthy's accusations "harmed" Wechsler, I'd like to know how. I can remember Wechsler's columns in the NY Post long after McCarthy had died. By the way, when McCarthy died in 1957, Wechsler of course called him "reckless" and all the usual epithets, but also denied that McCarthy was personally responsible for the militantly anti-communist spirit of the late '40's and '50's in America, and even called McCarthy "not unlikeable" as a person.
Even when he was attacking Communist sympathizers or fellow-travellers, McCarthy was often reckless and wrong. Did it do the anti-communist cause any good to accuse Owen Lattimore, a despicable man to be sure, of being the top Soviet spy in the United States? Whatever Lattimore's sins, that was not one of them.
There are still plenty of questions regarding Owen Lattimore's true role in Soviet espionage in the '30's and '40's--surely Ann is right to emphasize this point in her book. It is documented, and through a Chinese Communist source published in 1988, that Lattimore used Comintern channels to hire a Chinese Communist for the staff of his magazine Amerasia in 1936 who managed an espionage ring. Thousands of classified documents were found in Amerasia's New York offices in 1945. Although it is true that references to Lattimore have apparently not been found in Venona cables deciphered so far, Klehr's concession that Lattimore was merely "despicable," as if he owed back child support, does not do justice to the sheer stench emanating from the guy.
And now for Prof. Haynes:
Haynes: Let's get the dates straight. Joseph McCarthy did not emerge as an anticommunist spokesman until 1950. By that time the back of the domestic Communist movement already had been broken and anticommunism dominated both major parties. President Truman in 1948 set up a massive loyalty program to remove Communists from federal employment.
With all due respect to Prof. Haynes, this statement contains quite a bit of "spin." McCarthy "did not emerge as an anticommunist spokesman" until 1950, but it is wrong to imply that McCarthy had not paid any attention to the issue until 1950, or that he was not himself a strongly identified "anti-communist."
Haynes' assertion that the "back" of the CPUSA had been broken by 1950 is consistent with the thesis in the 1992 book he and Professor Klehr authored "The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself," that the 1948 campaign in which the CPUSA backed Henry Wallace for President effectively destroyed it as a political force. However, no one outside of the Communist party (and certain wings of the Democrat party obviously) ever expected the CPUSA to ever become an electoral force in American politics---the real concern was over Communist infiltration of, influence over, and espionage of the Federal government.
Truman did indeed set up a "loyalty program" in response to Republican pressure---remember the Republicans had taken control of Congress in 1946 in part based on their attacks on Truman's security policy. At the same time, Truman made sure that Federal employee files under the program would not be made available to Congress, not even under subpoena. It was this policy of instituting a "loyalty program" that was not subject to Congressional oversight that was one of the things that drove McCarthy into action.
Let's remember something else about that year 1950. McCarthy's Wheeling speech came right at the beginning of 1950, and the worst news about security breaches was yet to come. Later that year, the arrest of Klaus Fuchs in Britain would lead to the Rosenberg spy ring and its successful efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union to obtain nuclear secrets from top secret US installations. The security problem was by no means "handled" by 1950, and Prof. Haynes is wrong to imply it was.
Truman's Justice Department convicted the leadership of the CPUSA under the Smith Act, convicted Alger Hiss, and in 1950 arrested and later convicted the Rosenbergs, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell for espionage.
Spin again. Much of the CPUSA leadership was convicted only after McCarthy's speech, and as I noted, the Rosenberg ring was uncovered fortuitously and only after McCarthy's speech. As for Alger Hiss, anyone who knows the history of the Hiss-Chambers case knows that the initial response of the Truman Administration to Chambers' revelations was to threaten to indict Chambers for perjury! It was only after Chambers came up with the famous "Pumpkin Papers" that Truman's Justice Department had no other choice but to indict Hiss.
Most importantly, Truman, Cold War Democrats and anticommunist liberals in 1948 smashed the bold attempt of the Communists and Popular Front liberals to carve out a major role in mainstream politics through Henry Wallace's presidential campaign and the Progressive Party.
"Smashed"? Wow, sounds like Prof. Haynes has been taking rhetorical points from the Communists he's been studying. The truth is that in their "BC" (i.e., "Before Coulter") book "Storming Heaven Itself," Profs. Klehr and Haynes use nowhere near as lurid language to describe Truman's efforts---they attribute the defeat of the Wallace candidacy to a combination of boneheaded moves by the CPUSA, labor's desire to see the Republicans lose the election, and (let it be said) the honorable efforts of groups like the ADA to combat Wallace. And once again, what does the electoral demise of the CPUSA have to do with the continuing security problem that was McCarthy's focus?
The expulsion of Communist-led unions from the CIO completed the destruction of the institutional base of Communist influence in 1949.
As Richard Gid Powers makes it clear in "Not Without Honor" (Free Press, 1995), the expulsion of communists from the UAW and CIO was the direct result of the passage by a Republican Congress, over Truman's veto, of the Taft-Hartley Act, which required union leadership to swear that they were not communists in order to get the protection of the NLRA. Truman didn't have anything to do with it.
Abroad, Truman enunciated the Truman Doctrine of aid to nations facing Soviet aggression, committed America to war in Korea to stop Communist aggression, and launched the Marshall Plan that restored European prosperity and contained the internal Communist threat there.
Again check the historical record---these programs were put forth under pressure from a "partisan" Republican Congress elected in 1946.
That's all for now. Let me repeat: Profs. Klehr and Haynes are deserving of respectful attention. But they should also be challenged when they are being more polemical than scholarly, as was unfortunately the case in this "symposium."