Posted on 07/11/2003 9:35:43 AM PDT by DPB101
David Horowitz has published a long critique of Ann Coulter’s blockbuster Treason. While David goes to great pains to express admiration for Ann’s work, he also makes it clear that he believes parts of Treason are wrong. The heart of his concern is that the Democrat Party is indicted as a co-conspirator in Treason.
Horowitz believes that Democrats are not recognized in Treason for the role that they played in thwarting communism, and he points out a number of important facts which someone who only read Treason would not know.
Democrat Senator “Scoop” Jackson of Washington State was as an implacable a foe of Soviet imperialism. Democrat Jeanne Kirkpatrick was an eloquent defender of American resistance to totalitarianism. Ronald Reagan was a Democrat until 1963.
That list is not exhaustive. George Meany, longtime boss of the AFL-CIO, was a steadfast enemy of Soviet machinations. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a principled liberal Democrat from New York, is responsible for Ann Coulter having the very Venona decrypts essential to exposing the depths of Soviet penetration of America.
Does this mean that the Coulter has reached a false conclusion about the role of the Democrat Party in the communist subversion of America? No. Treason does not necessarily mean ideological treason of sort now proven conclusively by Venona. Bill Clinton’s draft-dodging was because he was pragmatic treason. This sort of pragmatic treason infested the Democrat Party.
Scoop Jackson was a liberal from a swing state whose career was clean as a whistle and who could appeal to anti-communists. He stood a good chance of winning the presidency, if Democrats would have ever nominated him. Scoop ran for the nomination, but he never had a chance. His anti-communism - and only is anti-communism - doomed him from the beginning.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick was a Democrat, but her most famous speech echoes the language at the beginning of Treason which bothers Horowitz. What were those resonating refrains from Kirkpatrick’s 1984 speech to the Republican Convention? “But they always blame America first.” What was the context of her remarks? Reelect a Republican president.
Which Republican president? The one who began his political activities as an anti-communist in Hollywood, and who came to realize that principled anti-communism was welcome only in the Republican Party, which he joined in 1963. Joe McCarthy also began as a Democrat and then became a Republican. Anti-communists never leave the Republican Party to become Democrats, but often have abandoned the Democrat Party or, like Kirkpatrick, become apostate Democrats.
Horowitz correctly points out that the New Left in 1968 opposed Hubert Humphrey because Humphrey opposed communism and supported the Vietnam War. But this overstates the seriousness of the anti-communism of LBJ and Hubert Humphrey. It also presumes a symmetry between the two political parties which simply did not exist.
The two national party conventions in 1968 approached the Vietnam War from dramatically different positions. Humphrey - Vice President and heir apparent, the party’s leading champion of civil rights, darling of the AFL-CIO, and universally recognized as a good and decent man - faced a passionate and ferocious attack for his anti-communism.
The New Left did not attack racial bigots within the Democrat Party like J. William Fullbright or Albert Gore Sr. These illiberal Democrats were anti-anti-communists who opposed the Vietnam War. That alone made them heroes, just as Humphrey’s support for the war alone made him a villain.
Richard Nixon began his political career as an anti-communist, but many delegates at the Republican Convention in 1968 worried that he was not anti-communist enough. When Barry Goldwater, the most passionate and radical anti-communist modern in American politics, stepped before the Republican Convention, the delegates burst into thunderous applause.
Ronald Reagan, who would win the Cold War, had only held elective office for only two years. He had only been a Republican three years. But Republican delegates seriously considered nominating him as the logical successor to Barry Goldwater.
The New Left did not even bother to show up at the Republican Convention. While the SDS and its crypto-Marxist siblings carried great clout among Democrats, these pro-communist groups had no support at all among Republicans.
The pragmatic treason of Democrats is well illustrated by LBJ during the 1968 presidential campaign. While America fought a totalitarian communist enemy, President Johnson announced, a few days before the November election, that he was unilaterally suspending bombing operations against North Vietnam.
The motivation was simple: swing the increasingly close election to Hubert Humphrey by creating an the impression that peace was at hand. Who paid the price for that political pragmatism? America and the South Vietnamese, who were deprived of critically important air power.
Was 1968 the pivotal year in how Democrats approached communism? No. Although David is correct that much of the communists infestation of the federal government was rooted out by the time Truman left office, Truman did not begin in earnest until 1947. Truman had been president for two years - why did the housecleaning begin in 1947? Republicans in 1946 won Congress in a huge landslide. Truman pragmatically decided that anti-anti-communism was a political liability.
But Truman continued to defend people later shown to be communists and to attack anti-communists. Truman, as Ann notes, opposed Churchill giving his famous Iron Curtain speech in Missouri. Truman famously sacked MacArthur for trying to win the Korean War, rather than simply produce a stalemate.
Eisenhower directed his Attorney General to go n television and announce that President Truman had promoted to the leadership of the International Monetary Fund an individual known to be a communist. Why? Eisenhower was hardly a rabid anti-communist, but he also understood that Harry Truman had taken the easy course regarding communism in America.
And, of course, the problem of communism in America did not go away simply because the greatest actual traitors - Hiss, White, and the rest - left the most sensitive posts in the federal government.
The Soviet Union funneled funds into the anti-war movement in America. Communists and communist sympathizers within Hollywood and academia continued to warp American opinions and policies. Would the SDS, Ramparts and the other entities so reflexively supportive of communism have been able to bedevil Hubert Humphrey in 1968 without support from communists in America and without help from Moscow?
If Democrats were not particularly keen on anti-communism before 1968, their attitude after 1968 was profoundly anti-anti-communist. George McGovern favored unilateral disarmament. Jimmy Carter did not discover that the Soviet Union was bad until the last year or his presidency. Clinton, visited Moscow during the Vietnam War and stating his loathing for the military during that war against communism.
Perhaps the clearest indiction of how Democrats have felt about communism is the tepid, almost annoyed, attitude Democrats take toward President Reagan’s bloodless victory in the Cold War. This is in sharp contrast to how Republicans have acted under Democrat presidents when America faced enemies. Republicans supported FDR in the Second World War, JFK in the Cuban Missile Crisis and - unlike his fellow Democrats - Republicans supported LBJ in the Vietnam War.
The single real example of Democrats being tough on communism was John Kennedy. It is revealing that Chris Matthews asked three times if Ann Coulter felt JFK was a traitor. She denies that he was, then adds that his heart was in the right place, but that is not enough for Matthews. It is not his repetitive questions that seem to trouble David; it is her answers.
JFK was strongly anti-communist and he did resist Soviet aggression. The critique that Ann Coulter makes has less to do with JFK’s intentions than with his general incompetence at achieving those goals and with his essentially immoral and dishonest personal life.
Senator McCarthy was presumably censured for bad behavior, when that was clearly not the reason. What is the best evidence of Democrat hypocrisy on the real reasons for destroying McCarthy? John Kennedy - faithless husband, drug addict, pal of crime bosses, vote stealer...and the list seems to grow each year - was made a martyr, when he was actually simply a victim.
McCarthy was an actual martyr, denied even the dignity of a victim. He stood up to the elites of Washington, Hollywood and New York, aware that his enemies were both powerful and unscrupulous. Horowitz notes that McCarthy was right on almost everything. McCarthy certainly acted no worse than several thousand other congressional committee chairmen, except that McCarthy fought a real dragon. Does that not deserve some honor, even posthumously?
The Kennedy Klan looks increasingly less benign as times passes. Bobby Kennedy (aka St. Bobby) grew so hostile to anti-communism that by 1968 he was the principal focus of those very anti-anti-communist efforts intended to keep Hubert Humphrey from winning the Democrat nomination. Ted Kennedy never pretended to be anti-communist, and he formed a core of resistance to Ronald Reagan’s plan to win the Cold War.
Were Democrats all traitors - ideologically or pragmatically - during the long decades of struggle with communism? No, of course not. But was there a profound and fundamental difference in the courage and tenacity that America’s two major political parties displayed in our long battle with the evil empire? Yes, of course there was.
Perhaps the lexicon of the New Left is helpful. During the 1960s, those timid souls who feared the real power of communism called themselves “non-communist” as opposed to “anti-communist”or “communist.” In the war against communism, Republicans leaders were “anti-traitors” and Soviet agents in America were “traitors.” What then were the Democrat leaders? How about calling “non-traitors”?
I'm not really sure how one qualifies as a member of the "religious right," but I do know that Ann appears to believe not only in God, but in Christianity---she even gives the Lord an acknowledgement at the start of "Treason." I believe she's Catholic, which is cool, because so am I.
I don't know whether there's any truth to the rumors that Ann has been this or that person's "paramour." However, I do know that people who profess Christianity---be it Catholicism or Presbyterianism---know that sinning, repentance, and divine forgiveness are part of the profession. I also know that Ann has never espoused violation of Christian tenets about sexual morality. Recalling the Lord's challenge in John Chapter 8, I find it hard to believe that a fellow Christian (not to mention at this point a fellow conservative) would try to make an issue of Ann's private conduct on a thread about whether or not her book "Treason" is factually accurate or stylistically appropriate.
I respectfully disagree with your point. I think Ann is incontrovertibly "right," and I will warmly credit her religious profession. For me then, Ann is part of the "religious right," and one of its most precious members.
"Liberals published Chamber's book so liberals are good people...see?...see?...see?"...geezzz....
The useful idiot who wrote that hadn't read Coulter's book either. If he did, he would know why the GOP finally gave up and that doesn't mean McCarthy was what liberals claim he was.
Unlike many, I've always known the difference between truth and propaganda about this stuff. It's taken a very long time; but, now, with Ann's book, the facts and truth will out. Everyone, who reads this book, should be compelled to tell evereyone he or she knows and spread the word. Most have been living in the fog of duplicity and lies;now that fog needs to be cleared blown away.
In fact, there may well have been subversives in the State Department, but McCarthy's allegation was about as helpful as proclaiming that there are criminals in Los Angeles.
"may well have been". This, from a writer who brags that everyone knows Hiss was guilty as sin. And Hiss was right there at Roosevelt's elbow! But it wasn't only Hiss; commies were working with and for each other in the FDR and Truman Administrations as thick as thieves. The point is not that FDR and Truman weren't careful enough to check that infiltration; the point is that the Democrats didn't even think ill of Stalin or his acolytes in their midst.We know that because of Venona, but Venona was basically a "rogue" operation run by patriots in the Army against Truman's directions. It was secret from POTUS--and practically everyone else--for the very good reason that telling Truman about commies got you on his excrement list. He like as not would hand your report to someone you had just told him was a paid Soviet agent, and order him to deal with it.
You have been cowed by the big lie into thinking that defending McCarthy is beyond the pale. The truth is that defending Truman and Roosevelt belongs in that category; FDR was dying to get us into WWII against 80% public disapproval. Why? A couple of hints:
FDR's first diplomatic move as POTUS was to recognize the USSR.Liberals have to blacken McCarthy's name to obfuscate that record, and much worse. Ann calls it 50 years of treason, but 50 years ago some Republicans were calling the FDR/HST Administrations "twenty years of treason" and would have been shocked to learn how right they actually were.FDR had the Navy harassing the Atlantic U-boats "throughout the summer of 1941." (The New Dealers' War, Thomas Fleming)
Hitler invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941.
If the relation between the Bush Administration and al Qaeda were remotely similar to that between the FDR Administration and Stalin, you would hesitate not an instant in demanding the impeachment of the president and the vice president. Not an instant.
"Ironic" indeed. And McCarthy was criticized for having a gay assistant, now a resume enhancement.It would indeed be sweet if Ann got McCarthy a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bush. Then we'd know that the treason was broken. But that would mean that the Democratic Party was shattered.
It's a perfect explanation why some of us conservatives have a problem with "Treason."
An article by James Pinkerton? The man who insists that the Republican Party abandon its pro-life position every chance he gets? Oh, yeah: rock-solid "conservative."
Leaving aside his girlie man ad hominem jibes at Ann ("Terminatrix," etc.), Pinkerton's slimeball article attacks Ann's book with two alleged points. First, he takes issue with Ann's assertion that Whittaker Chambers, a genuine hero who exposed communist penetration of the Federal government before McCarthy, "continues to be dismissed, if not despised." Pinkerton retorts that Chambers "is not forgotten," that his book Witness is "still in print," and that the "MTV Generation" can go snap up their own copies. Wow, some point to score against Ann! Just like the kind of nit-picking trivialities and non-sequiturs you find on websites purporting to "expose" Ann's "factual errors." I challenge Pinkerton or anyone else to find where Chambers is mentioned, much less mentioned favorably, in American history school textbooks. Chambers is in fact "dismissed and despised" by our academic and media elites, for telling the truth.
Pinkerton's second point simply takes him back to the well-worn leftist liturgy about "McCarthyism." Pinkerton cites McCarthy's "Original Sin" of the Wheeling WVA speech citing 57 communists in the State Department, blaming him for NOT giving out the names of the alleged Reds, and condemning Ann for praising McCarthy's refusal to disclose---hmm, I thought one of the "evils of McCarthyism" was the disclosure of names. Pinkerton gamely concedes that "there may well have been subversives in the State Department" [!!!!!!], but that that was no excuse for McCarthy raising the subject. After all, McCarthy went so far as to "slander" the Army and "World War II hero" George C. Marshall, and made the "architecture of containment" being laid down by that anti-communist stalwart Harry Truman more difficult, etc. etc. Straight from the left-wing playbook.
Thanks for the link, Count Chocula. Reading Pinkerton's slimy prose just boosted my faith in Ann.
You don't mention the author's name---you know that was one of Joe McCarthy's "sins"---do you mean Freda Utley? What exactly are your doubts? That she's a "Holocaust denier"? Could you provide us with a cite, please? And while you're at it, maybe you can provide us with a reason why your "doubts" now mean Rabinowitz' revival of an ancient smear against McCarthy must be credited. Please be more specific, unless your object is simply to conduct your own little smear.
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