This has been an incredible book, and I think it will stay with me for a long time to come. I was amazed at how much this book was a testimony to Chambers faith. I expected an inside look into Communism in the United States. I didn’t expect a description of Chambers conversion from Communism to Christianity. I think there are two messages that we | Read More »
With 50 pages left in Witness, it may be a little premature to claim to know the one lesson we should learn from this book. There are a number of incredible themes and lessons from this book I will take with me. However, during this week’s reading, I found what I think should be the lesson we take from this book as part of the | Read More »
I want to focus in on Chapter 12 this week. I was really impressed by what Chambers says in this section about himself and his faith. I also highlighted most of this section in my own copy, so I thought it was only appropriate to use it for my writing this week. After the August 25th testimony, Chambers writes: By then, I began to grasp | Read More »
In this weeks reading, I felt there were two really interesting sections that talked about the role of the press in the Hiss Case. I also thought these were important because we still see the press doing the same thing in today’s world. The first example occurs very early in this section. During the August 25th hearing Hiss was able to read ten questions into | Read More »
This weeks reading gets into the details of the first Hiss case. Richard Nixon features very prominently in that story. Chambers goes so far as to state that without Richard Nixon and Judge Thomas Murphy, the Hiss case may not have been possible: That the committee did not act on its fears is a fact of history that no one can take from it. Its | Read More »
This weeks reading gets into the Alger Hiss Case. However, in setting that up, Chambers talks about his time working for Time and Life magazines. In this week and last weeks reading, Chambers mentions a few articles by name that he wrote during this time. Turns out, Time’s online archives still have these articles. I wanted to discuss two specific articles he references that I | Read More »
“I saw that the New Deal was only superficially a reform movement. I had to acknowledge the truth of what its more forthright protagonists, sometimes unwarily, sometimes defiantly, averred: The New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and above all, the power relationships within the nation.”{emphasis mine} In this | Read More »
I am getting to this a day late, but I hope everyone had a great weekend. I am still enjoying Witness. There is an important warning in this weeks reading. Chambers is recounting how he explains that he and others were so willing to engage in espionage. He says he is often asked if people who engage in espionage suffer a “crisis of conscience”. He | Read More »
I want to look at two topics we have touched on in previous book notes that reappear in this weeks reading. Because the reading to date has largely taken place in the 1930′s, FDR’s New Deal has been touched on a number of times in the reading. Washington, and the freedom of Communists to move in and out of the Washington circles has also been | Read More »
My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear – those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed | Read More »
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