Treason: Horowitz v. Coulter

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”?

You have missed some great threads It began with the NYT scandal which tied into the Stalin apologist/liar Duranty's Pulitzer and all the spies and fellow travellers of the 20s and 30s til now.This was also the Rosenberg execution anniversary period which led to more exploration,HCUA,McCarthy,Hollywood,Alger Hiss,many others one finds by googling and of course the Venona files.Gareth Jones did expose the dreadful famine that Duranty covered up which DPB really does have personal ties to.(correspondence with family)Then Ann's book.

Come on, come clean.You're too slick to be an amateur.

Slick? You mean I could have been a contender? A somebody? A Democrat President of the United States instead of just another crank with a computer which is what I am. . .

Jackie was a HUGE Francophile ! The French loved her in return. The elite, of Vietnamese were French, down to their fingertips ( as some, well...most actually, of the Indian elites/exRhajas, princes, etc. were more English than the English ! )and Jackie loved /was impressed by them. Diem and " THE DRAGON LADY " met quite a number of times, with the Kennedys. The French wanted help with the mess they had created and fled from. My post makes sense, because it is historical fact. Living through an era and having a great memory, is better, sometimes, than reading a history book, which will leave out some pretty important, yet subtle facts. Glad to have been of some help, in filling in the gaps for you.

I have read most of those threads, which makes me think we have someone who has a whole bunch of info at his/her fingertips beyond being a mere amateur.Kinda like someone who may have been researching Communism in preparation for a book release.

The plethora of threads about this one authoress and the drumbeat on FR over every wee review are...hysterical and hyped.

The air is getting fetid around FR with all the Ann Coulter posts, like it's being.....created....

The Duranty,Rosenberg and McCarthy threads I was referring to were before the book release.Also a Gareth Jones thread.I don't care who someone is if they keep me up nights researching and reading on an interesting subject!I didn't have a clue who Emma Goldberg was..now I do.

McCarthy was right- former KGB operatives confirm they had hundreds of agents in most American govt. bureaucracies, including the State department. McCarthy was savaged during his life and demonized afterwards by the leftist mongrels that McCarthy tried to hold accountible while alive. Communists had sunk their tentacles into the US (just as we tried to influence the USSR) and New Dealers were aiding and abetting them. One man was brave enough to stand up to them- it's unfortunate that the leftist media and historians have branded McCarthy a villain for his courageous efforts.

Maybe I paid more attention, then you did, or was just a wee bit more aware of the subtle details. Who knows ? Anyway, I come from a long line of news/current events/political junkies and that's a good part of the topics,that were always hashed over the dinner table/get togethers. Perhaps I picked the info up there. *shrugs*

In any event, it's true, an historical fact, and evedently, something most people seem to not know. LOL

I signed up when the sealed McCarthy transcripts were released in May. Had a hunch some conservatives would jump on him, rely on media accounts and not read the transcripts. I was correct in that.At that time I might have known, certainly assumed, Coulter was writing a book but had no idea McCarthy would be mentioned. A pleasant surprise. One of my first posts is below, very good I thought, but few read it. (A disappointment because the transcript is huge and cutting it down to even the size I did was a PIA). 05/17/2003:

Thirteenth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities--California

Been following this for a while too:

Open Letter to revoke Duranty's Pulizer on behalf of Gareth Jones (bad PR for the New York Times)

The Duranty story is not going away as much as Arthur Sulzberger would like it too. By the fall, it will be a bigger story than it is now.

You'd never heard of Emma Goldberg before ? Oh well, better late than never! That's part of the importance of FR...it's a better educ ation, for most, than even the best schools give. :-)

For a Conservative site, it is of vast importance and relivancy,to discuss/learn about Communism in all of its permutations.

You do GREAT scut/posting work and should be applauded; not vilified and impugned !

Shame on the few, who care so little about history, the importance of the Communist threat, and choose, instead, to suspect/heap calumny on a tireless anti-Commie new member.

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