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”?
OK. I'm not trying to "lock horns" with you. Let me simply state this: In 1955, William F. Buckley organized an editorial staff for a new magazine, National Review, that he wanted to make the flagship publication of a revived, mainstream conservative movement consciously purged of anti-Semites---in fact, Jews were on the original staff. Freda Utley was a member of that original National Review staff, and I sincerely doubt she would have made it if she were a Jewish conspiracy theorist or Nazi sympathizer. That's all.
I don't "worship" Ann---I like her writing, and I agree with her points of view. I've read "Treason" cover-to-cover, think that her research and conclusions are impeccable, and have challenged you to rebut them. You have responded by calling me "naive," a "village idiot," and a "worshipper" of Ann Coulter---you even darkly suggest that I am trying to deprive you of the right to express your opinion. What I am trying to do, "if I'm still allowed to do that in the United States," is to challenge you to back up your opinion with substance. If you can't, you can't---you don't have to start crying.
You seem to have a problem with my opinion of the book. You aren't going to change my mind. Let it rest.
I have a problem with vituperative "conservatives" like you who attack a well-researched, well articulated book like Ann's on a topic like "McCarthyism" (which by the way is not the sole topic of her book, contrary to what so many people who haven't read her book seem to think) that is still relevant thanks to the War on Terror and which needs revisiting, with "opinions" they refuse to back up with anything but spleen and epithets.
I don't want to change your mind. I just want you to read Ann's new book. Fair enough?
Have you read Treason? If so then why is this half page article a perfect reason for having a problem with it. The writer starts in 1950 then two lines down is in 1954 at the censure. What happened in between and as the most important question "Were there communist spies in the government?". The answer is yes -- and so McCarthy for whatever faults you want to attribute to him was correct and nobody cared.
A very clever tactical retreat, Major Strasser! You could have avoided this whole damn sandbox snit by saying that in the first place. Now here's my opinion---don't jump on a thread dealing with whether or not Ann's book is factually accurate if you just want to bitch about her "smashmouth" style. It's not topical; it's irrelevant; it's dishonest; it wastes time.
So you can reply to this and have the last word, because I'm sick of going around and around with you.
And you think this pointless exchange has been a bowl of cherries for me?
Funny how no one seems to have read Ann's book on his own or to be able to refute any of the assertions or conclusions in her book. In columns, in reviews, and in posts like yours, we're simply "redirected" to a website, very often "spinsanity," supposedly "objective" because somewhere, sometime it objected to some of Michael Moore's work.
Well, you know what? I've been to "spinsanity," I've read Brendan Nyhan's hit pieces, and I'd like to know exactly which "point" he made that you think shows Ann is "inaccurate" in her book "Treason"? Both Nyhan and Alan Colmes (whose exchange with Ann is extensively quoted as if Colmes had effectively refuted any position Ann had taken by badgering her to name "traitors" in the Democrat Party) simply take up the now standard quibble with the title of Ann's book "Treason." It amounts to nothing but a childish whine: "Mommy!!! She called me a 'TRAITOR'!!!!! WAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
Is there anything specific you want to address, or are you just going to disappear now in a cyber-*POOF!*?
"Do not intend to"??? "No opinion of her or her book"??? Strange way to try to establish your objectivity, keg.
I simply pointed out a web site with a column that, if you read the whole thing, has some very specific instances where they (not me) say she misquoted, got some facts wrong, or wrongly attributed things. Yes, they start with a general criticism of her style and her book, but then they get down to some very specific things. It's not just whining about her calling Democrats traitors.
"Very specific" WHAT? Did you read the article? Why should anyone care if Ann can identify a single Democrat as indictable under the Constitutional definition of "treason"? That's not the point of her book---she probably didn't even pick the title of the book, because she didn't pick the title of her last book, "Slander": her editor did. The whole article is a giant red herring. Once again, what specific point?
You, on the other, hand indicated in earlier posts that her book is virtually flawless. So I'm asking you, since you've read the book, what about some of the very specific instances where they say she blew it? Just grab a few. For instance, where they say that she criticized the NYT for calling Reagan a cowboy when in fact it was somebody in his administration who said that. I'm curious because these "little" things do matter. They go to credibility.
"Somebody in Reagan's administration called him a cowboy"? Here's the exact quote you're referring to in "Spinsanity":
In one particularly dishonest case, she claims that the New York Times "reminded readers that Reagan was a 'cowboy, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat'" after the invasion of Grenada (p. 179). However, the "cowboy" quote is actually from a Reagan administration official quoted in a Week in Review story who said, ''I suppose our biggest minus from the operation is that there now is a resurgence of the caricature of Ronald Reagan, the cowboy, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat.''
"Dishonest," hunh? Read what Ann wrote: the NY Times "reminded readers" of the "cowboy caricature" of Reagan. You mean the quote didn't present Reagan as a cowboy caricature? You mean the "Week in Review" section of the Sunday Times is not published by the New York Times? You mean the reference didn't "remind readers" of Reagan's "cowboy caricature"? I'd say her quote was 100% accurate---as Bill O'Reilly would say, "Tell me where I'm wrong."
You see, funny guy, "little things" like this do matter---the kind of stupid, trivial quibbles over phrasing and diction that stupid, trivial leftists try desperately to elevate into epochally consequential lies, cover-ups, misstatements and deceits. They go to credibility, you see, and your citation of this purported "inaccuracy" on Ann's part doesn't do much for your credibility or "Spinsanity's".
"Is there anything specific you want to address, or are you just going to disappear now in a cyber-*POOF!*?"
Believe it or not I have a life off the Internet. I don't hang around breathlessly waiting for replies.
Hey, listen, pal, you made the first move. I'm not going to go through every one of Spinsanity's trivialities and "refute" them---it's a waste of my time to do so. If you don't want to talk about a substantive "inaccuracy" in Ann's book that's bugging you--and you obviously don't want the responsibility---go back to your "life" and leave this field to serious, knowledgeable debaters.
Thanks for your reply. Freda Utley is mentioned numerous times in George H. Nash's 1996 book, "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945" published by ISI, a very good history, as one of the founders of the modern conservative movement. She was one of a distinguished number of highly educated ex-leftists, even ex-communists, like James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Eugene Lyons, whose experience of the "Evil Empire" led them in the '30's and '40's to the right side of the political spectrum and leadership in modern conservatism.
--Wm. Shakespeare - King Henry V, Act II Scene III
I try to engage you about allegations in a website you post, and which you hotly defend, and now all of a sudden I have an "anger management" problem? This is a thread about allegations that Ann Coulter is guilty of "inaccurate" statements. If you jump on, I'm going to assume you want to discuss whether or not she is chargeable with making false statements in her book---not simply post a link, challenge me to "grab a few" allegations thereon of "inaccuracies" and refute them, and then run away crying that I "need therapy." If you're not prepared to discuss this topic on a mature, substantive level, then please do go away in a cyber-*POOF*!, just like I always knew you would.
Ann's style is to convey the truth with frequent hyperbolic stingers aimed at the left and liberals. She uses hyperbole and acid humor to great effect. What she does not do, in my experience of reading her and watching her, is lie.
Her message marginalizes, in my opinion, only the left and liberals (and who cares, because they deserve it), and those unfortunate conservatives who want liberals to like them and respect them. I gave up on that back in college.
"She says what she means, and she means what she says,
Ann Coulter is faithful---One Hundred Percent!"
(adapted from "Horton Hatches the Egg" by Dr. Seuss [Theodor Geisel])
Ann Coulter didn't "concede" he injured the anti-Communist cause because she doesn't believe he did. Treason Page 70
"The rote smirking at McCarthy by conservatives is linked to their own psychological compulsion to snobbery. McCarthy was a popularizer, a brawler. Republican elitists abhor demagogic appeals to working-class Democrats. Fighting like a Democrat is a breech of etiquette worse than using the wrong fork. McCarthy is sniffed at for not playing by Marquis of Queensberry Rules--rules of engagement demanded only of Republicans. Well, without McCarthy, Republicans might be congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior from the gulag right now. He may have been tut-tutted on the golf course, but McCarthy made the American workers' blood boil.
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