Redstate

this movie was out everywhere already.

McCarthy really "did uncover a significant infiltration of communists?"   Are you serious?   What is your definition of infiltration?   An out of work screenwriter?

I think you could find something good in just about every demagogic politician.  Saddam and Tito managed to keep multi-ethnic states in relative calm.  Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union.  

Nonetheless, some of us hold an extremely rigid and uncompromising view of the Constitution that should not be jeopardized simply because it is politically efficacious.  

that remind how completely different I view the world than many Conservatives.

Infiltration of Communism? So without Gunner Joe were the Communists going to take over the country?

McCarthy wasn't even INVOLVED in the HUAC investigations of Hollywood... that being a House committee (McCarthy was a Senator), and that most of those hearings had occurred even before McCarthy got to Washington.  Get your facts straight.

I'm not a particular fan of McCarthy, but he did uncover some genuine spies
in our own government.

In addition to Service, other State Department China hands who gave aid and
comfort to the Communists were John Paton Davies, Edmund Clubb and John Carter
Vincent. Soviet agents in high positions included Harry Hopkins, who was so
close to FDR that he lived in the White House, Laughlin Currie, an economist
who was a top Roosevelt aide, and Alger Hiss, a high State Department official
who was at FDR’s elbow at Yalta and a key figure in getting the U.N.
started.

Source

The point of the post I think is that Hollywood has played up the HUAC hearings
like they were a great infringement on freedom of expression. They insist that
the "Red Scare" was just right-wing hysteria. They say this even today
after we have documented the brutality of Communist regimes.

That's a good question to start with.

Was Tailgunner Joe an alcoholic?

I think those bookend the situation - where do you fall on the spectrum between them?

It is absolutely correct to say that in Joe McCarthy's time there were communists attempting to infiltrate the U.S.  The ex-Soviet archives prove pretty incontrovertably that Alger Hiss and the Rosenburgs were no-question traitors in Stalin's pay, and surprisingly successful.  It wasn't a witch hunt.  The witches were real.  

But, and this is actually an important point, Joe McCarthy didn't find any of them.  Not one. In the process, he tarnished the anti-communist cause immeasurably.

He was on the right side, but a clown, and a fool, and ultimately did a thousand times more harm than good.  

I'll concur that McCarthy went to extremes and excess, but he did have a point, and was proven to be correct about the infiltration of communists in the government in many ways wth the declassification of the Venona files in 1995.  

Now, who knows what level of damage they were trying to cause, or actually caused, it's certainly debatable and largely unknowable.  But there were communists in the government trying to help the Soviet Union.

Having said that, he was most definitely not a good man and his legacy is a stain on the Senate, the government, and the country.

But I will never feel that the Senate is a place to conduct counter-espionage investigations.

I also don't believe that simply being a Communist warrants persecution, prosecution, incarceration,  and condemnation. How's that for some Jackie Chiles' alliteration?

I don't know how many of those people were Communist sympathizers and how many were actual spies.  As for as I know we are ALL against thought crimes?

In arguing about McCarthy.  Go read the article.  I'm  on a slow connection and could not watch the video clips, but if he represents them accurately, the chutzpah and ignorance on display is staggering.

You're comparing McCarthy to dictators who--in sum or in part (Stalin alone)--killed millions of people?  McCarthy may have had his faults, but I consider his failures more like some current U.S. Senators who get their panties in a bind over someone's Federalist Society membership (or in McCarthy's case, one's NLG membership) than the murderous thugs you mention.

he was using extreme examples.  

I also think that McCarthy's legacy is a bit more infamous than a Senator whining about the Federalist society.

Actually McCarthy's greatest weakness was that he vastly underestimated the communists, rather than the widely-held notion he was inventing the threat. The number of communists he cited during the infamous Wheeling speech as employees of the State Department was indeed wrong-- there were in fact at least 10 times as many as he thought.

Much more problematically, he underestimated the ability of radical leftists (who may or may not have been card-carrying communists- more on that in a second)to effectively manipulate the media and politial process. He probably lacked the resources to do much about it, but nonetheless should have been more concerned.

As it was, he assumed the public would not so easily be fooled, especially in the wake of FDR's treacherous bolstering of Stalin and the betrayal by the US of Eastern Europe. McCarthy was wrong, of course. He also paid too much attention to relatively unimportant communists, missing the forest from the trees to some extent. The real problem was anti-capitalist, anti-American leftism only occasionally tied to an official communist party (either the joke US version or the more serious international organizations).

Ideologically, though, he was completely and unalterably correct. The Soviet strategy was NEVER to defeat the West militarily-- Stalin was not particularly adverse to the idea and rather appreciated a chance to wipe out the Germans-- but Marxist-Leninist philosophy was totally contrary to such a direct approach. The whole point of a strict dialectical worldview is to let things happen that naturally should... i.e. the crisis of capitalism that theoretically was the 20th century.

In fact, McCarthy was really much closer to modern leftists when you consider the current conflict against radical Islam. Rather than merely fight the enemy, he correctly saw the true war as one of ideas-- and recognized that war as deserving the same resolute effort our foreign policy required. That's why the left (including many Republicans at the time) did not just defeat McCarthy politically and then say "mission accomplished." They didn't even stop when he died a few years after falling out of political grace.

They attacked him, and continue to this very day, because he represented a fundamental challenge to the anti-American ideals of the intelligensia and urban elite. Of course, that criticism is packaged in various ways, all of them totally without basis in reality... he infringed on civil liberties, he was a demagogue, etc. Eventually, the 'intellectual' left will try with increasing tenacity to discredit the entire history of American anti-communism; most scholarly accounts already do this (the USSR really wanted detente all along and the US was run by hardliners, etc.).

And the gullible and/or undereducated will continue to fall for it.

I'm more lurker than commentator, but this is driving me absolutely insane.

Alger Hiss was never found guilty of treason. He was found guilty of perjury.

In fact, if you go and see Good Luck and Goodnight, which I recommend because its a compelling movie, they mention that fact.

some people just don't like criminalizing beliefs.

Yes he was convicted for perjury, because the statute of limitations for treason had run out.  Do they mention that in the movie?  I'd be stunned.

Poor misunderstood Alger Hiss.

Of course, it certainly didn't help the process of declaring him a liberal saint burned at the stake of Republican excess when the Venona files were declassified and the Soviets were proven to have employed him as a spy and traitor.

What does that have to do with my point?

There's a statute of limitations on capital crimes?  

significant infiltration of communists and traitors in the American government and an effort to create Soviet backed propaganda and sympathy in Hollywood.

But everything else stands.

communist and traitor are NOT synonymous, although they appeared that way at the time.  

It always amazed me how many people STILL think that our nation was so fragile after WWII that a few agitators could do anything more than annoy people.  

What did McCarthy criminalize?

Also, working to destroy the US is not protected "speech," especially since McCarthy wasn't really attacking anyone for public discourse, but rather for actions and deliberations outside the public realm.

me that so many now want to rewrite History, and understate the danger that communism presented to the World....Uncle Joe was not a big teddy bear, and they really did want to dominate the Globe.

American government and an effort to create Soviet backed propaganda and sympathy in Hollywood.

In nothing shall I be so much a witness, in no way am I so much called upon to fulfill my task, as in trying to make clear to you (and to the world) the true nature of Communism and the source of its power, which was the cause of my ordeal as a man, and remains the historic ordeal of the world in the 20th century For in this century, within the next decades, will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed or completely changed. It is our fate to live upon that turning point in history.

The world has reached that turning point by the steep stages of crisis mounting for generations. The turning point is the next to the last step. It was reached in blood, sweat, tears, havoc and death in World War II. The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power. The chief fruit of the Second World War was our arrival at the next to the last step of the crisis with the rise of Communism as a world power. History is likely to say that these were the only decisive results of the world wars.

The last war simplified the balance of political forces in the world by reducing them to two. For the first time, it made the power of the Communist sector of mankind (embodied in the Soviet Union) roughly equal to the power of the free sector of mankind (embodied in the United States). It made the collision of these powers all but inevitable. For the world wars did not end the crisis They raised its tensions to a new pitch They raised the crisis to a new stage. All the politics of our time, including the politics of war, will be the politics of this crisis.

Few men are so dull that they do not know that the crisis exists and that it threatens their lives at every point It is popular to call it a social crisis. It is in fact a total crisis--religious, moral, intellectual, social, political, economic. It is popular to call it a crisis of the Western world. It is in fact a crisis of the whole world. Communism, which claims to be a solution of the crisis, is itself a symptom and an irritant of the crisis.

In part, the crisis results from the impact of science and technology upon mankind which, neither socially nor morally, has caught up with the problems posed by that impact. In part, it is caused by men's efforts to solve those problems. World wars are the military expression of the crisis. World-wide depressions are its economic expression. Universal desperation is its spiritual climate. This is the climate of Communism. Communism in our time can no more be considered apart from the crisis clan a fever can be acted upon apart from an infected body.

I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time.

Because today on NPR there was a piece about a new book that is an absolutely scathing treatment of Mao, written by one of the (female) survivors of the Cultural Revolution, who lost her family along with so many others in China when Mao killed approximately 70 million people.  The amazing thing about it is that liberal academics always have the same response to these people:  "Oh, Mao was a really bad guy, but this book's treatment is still flawed, because..."

I'll see if I can find the interview, it was on Worldview on NPR this afternoon, and reminded me a lot of how Saddam was treated by people like Lewis Lapham in Harpers not so long ago:  "Oh, I wouldn't be sad if Saddam fell into an open manhole..." and then he went on to lambaste the Iraq war.  

It's always the same story from these people:  Sure, the murderous dictators were horrible people, but if they just had another chance and in a little bit different situation, the Revolution would succeed!!  It's essentially a Trotskyist thinking:  Stalin betrayed the Revolution and everything that happened in the USSR wasn't real.  The bureaucrats became the Bourgeoisie and then the capitalist running-dogs invaded Socialist purity with their impious, selfish thinking.  

Lots of talk of agitators trying to destroy America.  Not so much evidence of such occurring.  

Joe McCarthy was a petty human being who used fear to promote his own power.  

The man who fought against Communism was the same man who once advocated for striking coal miners to be drafted into the military and shot for desertion if they failed to do their jobs.  Senator McCarthy was quite the capitalist.  Or we can talk about his advocating the burning of BOOKS because of what they said.  Did the books committ some sort of crime?

His attacks were nothing new.  The only real difference between his attacks and past fear mongerers was that the television allowed millions to see him.

The fact that his accusatons almost unerringly went after Democratic politicians, at a time when the Democratic Party was far from unilaterally defined as Liberal,  was pretty telling.  When he was willing to accuse George Marshall of being a communist sympathizer, I would think most would realize that he was petty tyrant interested only in his own power.

Just because there were a small handful of ACTUAL traitors and spies DOESN'T justify McCarthy's disgusting behavior.

You realize that Chamber's testimony was 4 years before McCarthy started his shenanigans?

When the Revolution comes to America, I fully expect to be hauled in front of the firing squad and dispensed with as quickly as possible for my heretical interpretation of the value of Marxist thinking.  In the meantime, I'll hedge my bets and let everyone have a look at the current state of World Progressivism, from Finland, which in addition to being the world center of Death Metal may also be one of the World Centers of Death Politics.

the Soviet Union posed a problem.

Uncle Joe is one of the most evil human beings to ever walk to the Earth.  However Uncle Joe was more interested about consolidating his own power than he was about spreading Communism throughout the world, a philosophy he found to be a useful tool and not much more.

Chambers  

Few men are so dull that they do not know that the crisis exists and that it threatens their lives at every point

exactly do you think that the Rosenbergs were working for?  

Communism was not the problem?  Maybe not, but it was the vehicle that those who want to destroy our nation employed at the time.

was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power. The chief fruit of the Second World War was our arrival at the next to the last step of the crisis with the rise of Communism as a world power. History is likely to say that these were the only decisive results of the world wars.

Granted, McCarthy should not be in the same sentence as these horrible individuals.  My point is that we should never get into "means justify the ends" arguments when the means involve trampling the document that has served as the shining example of what is good in America.  If we don't take it seriously, who can we expect in the world will.

  the focus of the concentrated evil of our time. You will ask: Why, then, do men become Communists? How did it happen that you, our gentle and loved father, were once a Communist? Were you simply stupid? No, I was not stupid. Were you morally depraved? No, I was not morally depraved. Indeed, educated men become Communists chiefly for moral reasons. Did you not know that the crimes and horrors of Communism are inherent in Communism? Yes, I knew that fact. Then why did you become a Communist? It would help more to ask: How did it happen that this movement, once a mere muttering of political outcasts, became this immense force that now contests the mastery of mankind? Even when all the chances and mistakes of history are allowed for, the answer must be: Communism makes some profound appeal to the human mind. You will not find out what it is by calling Communism names. That will not help much to explain why Communism whose horrors, on a scale unparalleled in history, are now public knowledge, still recruits its thousands and holds its millions-among them some of the best minds alive. Look at Klaus Fuchs, standing in the London dock, quiet, doomed, destroyed, and say whether it is possible to answer in that way the simple question: Why?

First, let me try to say what Communism is not. It is not simply a vicious plot hatched by wicked men in a sub-cellar. It is not just the writings of Marx and Lenin, dialectical materialism, the Politburo, the labor theory of value, the theory of the general strike, the Red Army, secret police, labor camps, underground conspiracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the technique of the coup d'etat. It is not even those chanting, bannered millions that stream periodically, like disorganized armies, through the heart of the world's capitals: Moscow, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Rome. These are expressions of Communism, but they are not what Communism is about.

In the Hiss trials, where Communism was a haunting specter, but which did little or nothing to explain Communism. Communists were assumed to be criminals, pariahs, clandestine men who lead double lives under false names, travel on false passports, deny traditional religion, morality, the sanctity of oaths, preach violence and practice treason. These things are true about Communists, but they are not what Communism is about.

The revolutionary heart of Communism is not the theatrical appeal: "Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." It is a simple statement of Karl Marx, further simplified for handy use: "Philosophers have explained the world; it is necessary to change the world." Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world. Their power, whose nature baffles the rest of the world, because in a large measure the rest of the world has lost that power, is the power to hold convictions and to act on them. It is the same power that moves mountains; it is also an unfailing power to move men. Communists are that part of mankind which has recovered the power to live or die--to bear witness--for its faith. And it is a simple, rational faith that inspires men to live or die for it.

It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.

The vision is a challenge and implies a threat. It challenges man to prove by his acts that he is the masterwork of the Creation-- by making thought and act one. It challenges him to prove it by using the force of his rational mind to end the bloody meaninglessness of man's history--by giving it purpose and a plan. It challenges him to prove it by reducing the meaningless chaos of nature, by imposing on it his rational will to order, abundance, security, peace. It is the vision of materialism. But it threatens, if man's mind is unequal to the problems of man's progress, that he will sink back into savagery (the A and the H bombs have raised the issue in explosive forms), until nature replaces him with a more intelligent form of life.

It is an intensely practical vision. The tools to turn it into reality are at hand--science and technology, whose traditional method, the rigorous exclusion of all supernatural factors in solving problems, has contributed to the intellectual climate In which the vision flourishes, just as they have contributed to the crisis in which Communism thrives. For the vision is shared by millions who are not Communists (they are part of Communism's secret strength). Its first commandment is found, not in the Communist Manifesto, but in the first sentence of the physics primer: "All of the progress of mankind to date results from the making of careful measurements." But Communism, for the first time in history, has made this vision the faith of a great modern political movement.

Hence the Communist Party is quite justified in calling itself the most revolutionary party in history. It has posed in practical form the most revolutionary question in history: God or Man? It has taken the logical nest step which three hundred years of rationalism hesitated to take, and said what millions of modern minds think, but do not dare or care to say: If man's mind is the decisive force in the world, what need is there for God? Henceforth man's mind is man's fate.

This vision is the Communist revolution, which, like all great revolutions, occurs in man's mind before it takes form in man's acts. Insurrection and conspiracy are merely methods of realizing the vision; they are merely part of the politics of Communism. Without its vision, they, like Communism, would have no meaning and could not rally a parcel of pickpockets. Communism does not summon men to crime or to utopia, as its easy critics like to think. On the plane of faith, it summons mankind to turn its vision into practical reality. On the plane of action, it summons men to struggle against the inertia of the past which, embodied in social, political and economic forms, Communism claims, is blocking the will of mankind to make its next great forward stride. It summons men to overcome the crisis, which, Communism claims, is in effect a crisis of rending frustration, with the world, unable to stand still, but unwilling to go forward along the road that the logic of a technological civilization points out--Communism.

This is Communism's moral sanction, which is twofold. Its vision points the way to the future; its faith labors to turn the future into present reality. It says to every man who joins it: the vision is a practical problem of history; the way to achieve it is a practical problem of politics, which is the present tense of history. Have you the moral strength to take upon yourself the crimes of history so that man at last may clove his chronicle of age-old, senseless suffering, and replace it with purpose and a plan? The answer a man makes to this question is the difference between the Communist and those miscellaneous socialists, liberals, fellow travelers, un classilied progressives and men of good will, all of whom share a similar vision, but do not share the faith because they will not take upon themselves the penalties of the faith. The answer is the root of that sense of moral superiority which makes Communists, though caught in crime, berate their opponents with withering self-righteousness.

The Communist vision has a mighty agitator and a mighty propagandist. They are the Crisis. The agitator needs no soap box. It speaks insistently to the human mind at the point where desperation lurks. The propagandist writes no Communist gibberish. It speaks insistently to the human mind at the point where man's hope and man's energy fuse to fierceness.

The vision inspires. The crisis impels. The workingman is chiefly moved by the crisis. The educated man is chiefly moved by the vision. The workingman, living upon a mean margin of life, can afford few visions even practical visions An educated man, peering from the Harvard Yard, or any college campus, upon a world in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a reason to die. No other faith of our time presents them with the same practical intensity. That is why Communism is the central experience of the first half of the 20th century, and may be its final experience-- will be, unless the free world, in the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of faith which will provide man's mind, at the same intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason to die If it fails, this will be the century of the great social wars If it succeeds, this will be the century of the great wars of faith.

If the Revolution ever does come to Amerika (isn't that how we're going to have to spell it?) you'll want to be shot.  Could you imagine having to listen to regular updates from the Glorious Leaders?  Yuck.

I intend to refuse the blidfold with a stirring clarion call to the value of personal liberty.

Of course, given the liberal proclivity to avoid guns, they'll probably miss us both...

 which most sincere ex-Communists share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of the question it poses. The daughter of a former German diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable anti-Communist. It was hard for her because, as an enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the irrationality of his defection embarrassed her. "He was immensely pro-Soviet," she said, "and then-you will laugh at me--but you must not laugh at my father--and then--one night--in Moscow--he heard screams. That's all. Simply one night he heard screams."

A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a logic that may be more compelling than the mind's. She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.

What Communist has not heard those screams? They come from husbands torn forever from their wives in midnight arrests. They come, muffled, from the execution cellars of the secret police, from the torture chambers of the Lubianka, from all the citadels of terror now stretching from Berlin to Canton. They come from those freight cars loaded with men, women and children, the enemies of the Communist State, locked in, packed in, left on remote sidings to freeze to death at night in the Russian winter. They come from minds driven mad by the horrors of mass starvation ordered and enforced as a policy of the Communist State. They come from the starved skeletons, worked to death, or Bogged to death (as an example to others) in the freezing filth of sub-arctic labor camps. They come from children whose parents are suddenly, inexplicably, taken away from them--parents they will never see again.

What Communist has not heard those screams? Execution, says the Communist code, is the highest measure of social protection. What man can call himself a Communist who has not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of policy, right if the vision is right, justified by history, enjoined by the balance of forces in the social wars of this century? Those screams have reached every Communist's mind. Usually they stop there. What judge willingly dwells upon the man the laws compel him to condemn to death--the laws of nations or the laws of history?

But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is going about his routine party tasks. He is lifting a dripping reel of microfilm from a developing tank. He is justifying to a Communist fraction in a trade union an extremely unwelcome directive of the Central Committee. He is receiving from a trusted superior an order to go to another country and, in a designated hotel, at a designated hour, meet a man whose name he will never know, but who will give him a package whose contents he will never learn. Suddenly, there closes around that Communist a separating silence, and in that silence he hears screams. He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul. He says to himself: "Those are not the screams of man in agony. Those are the screams of a soul in agony." He hears them for the first time because a soul in extremity has communicated with that which alone can hear it--another human soul.

Why does the Communist ever hear them? Because in the end there persists in every man, however he may deny it, a scrap of soul. The Communist who suffers this singular experience then says to himself: "What is happening to me? I must be sick." If he does not instantly stifle that scrap of soul, he is lost. If he admits it for a moment, he has admitted that there is something greater than Reason, greater than the logic of mind, of politics, of history, of economics, which alone justifies the vision. If the party senses his weakness, and the party is peculiarly cunning at sensing such weakness, it will humiliate him, degrade him, condemn him, expel him. If it can, it will destroy him. And the party will be right. For he has betrayed that which alone justifies its faith--the vision of Almighty Man. He has brushed the only vision that has force against the vision of Almighty Mind. He stands before the fact of God.

The Communist Party is familiar with this experience to which its members are sometimes liable in prison, in illness, in indecision. It is recognized frankly as a sickness. There are ways of treating it --if it is confessed. It is when it is not confessed that the party, sensing a subtle crisis, turns upon it savagely. What ex-Communist has not suffered this experience in one form or another, to one degree or another? What he does about it depends on the individual man. That is why no ex-Communist dare answer for his sad fraternity the question: Why do men break with Communism? He can only answer the question: How did you break with Communism? My answer is: Slowly, reluctantly, in agony.

each other.

Chambers  

Few men are so dull that they do not know that the crisis exists and that it threatens their lives at every point

what your question about the Rosenbergs was supposed to point out.  Can you help me out?

It was certainly a vehicle used by our enemies.  I would never suggest that we should embrace or even respect Communism.  

But I'm not willing to give up one of our core beliefs, the right of free speech, to combat terrorism, fascism, or any other ism.  I believe our way of life succeeds because it is superior, not because we simply receieved the "proper" propaganda.

The Communists won't ket the chance to execute me, because when the Revolution comes, I fully intend on exercising my Second Amendment rights on as many of them as possible one last time.

Since most Liberals I know, think they are going to be shot.

That is the way of most revolutions, the left kills liberals because they are are not pure enough and the right because they weaken the manhood of the State.

Sometimes you can flat-out write.

evidence a lack of real understanding of the threat that communism posed....and I dare say that Communism, as it was employed by people like Stalin, Kruschev and the Rosenbergs threatened more than just our ideals...or were all of our nuclear bomb drills during the 60's and 70's just an example of propoganda?

The Constitution would have been an afterthought had serious efforts to stop the spread of Communism not been employed.

McCarthy was a pathetic politician, and deserves most of the discredit he has received, but that doesn't mean that the anti-communist movement was without merit.

a Letter to my Children

Witness by Whittaker Chambers notgamecock

the anti-communist movement.  The anti-communist movement was a natural bi-product of our system.  

We are talking about McCarthy here.  Just because he tried to portray himself as a fellow traveler to the anti-communists doesn't mean his motives were anywhere near the same.

excellent essay I have read in a very long time. Thank you, gamecock.

I'm reading it now for the first time thanks to a friend, and I couldn't wait and skipped ahead to the Hiss trial.

It's strange, because for the past 30 years this country has been predominantly a liberal country.  It still is.  Bush isn't really much of a Conservative or a right-winger.  He's certainly not a racist.  And even though he's advocated tax cuts, he's also never vetoed a spending bill.  And nobody that I know at a University is in any trouble.  So what's their deal?  Are they just paranoid and projecting everything?

If you were just aiming you comments at McCarthy, I could understand, but on several occasions, you understated the nature of the communists movement, and the nature of their intent.

of my argument is targetted at McCarthy.

But I do believe that this country has, at least twice this century, become hysterically anti-communist.  That's not to say that Communist was no threat, but it wasn't nearly as much of a threat as it was perceived at the time.

"but it wasn't nearly as much of a threat as it was perceived at the time. "

Can you prove that...or did the anti-communist efforts work?

This is the same problem as criticizing anti-terror efforts, and then complaining that the threat wasn't really that bad...sometimes efforts to stop things like Communism and terror actually work.

But then the discussion is meritless on both sides.  Chickens and eggs are just as useful.

successful work in both counter-terror, and counter-espionage will always leave those doing the work open to criticism...

McCarthy was a hack, and Eisenhower gave him what he deserved...but the effort was still a worthy one...regardless of what the worst in the field did with it.

Are we going to talk about McCarthy, the anti-communists, or our counter-espionage agencies?  These are 3 separate entities.  

McCarthy made no impact on Communism. None.  The Counter-espionage groups made a significant impact on Soviets espionage.  The anti-commnist groups made an unquantifiable impact on the fight against communism.

own words....

"It always amazed me how many people STILL think that our nation was so fragile after WWII that a few agitators could do anything more than annoy people.  "

I think this pretty much sums up why I continue to view your posts as underestimating the threat that we faced...

Hindsight tells us that Communism failed, but at the time, it was not the obvious outcome...and what made it a reality was the efforts of many Americans.

My Political Theory professer, in opening her lecture on The Communist Manifesto, speculated that many of us in the room, being born at the close of the Soviet Era and not really remembering Communism, would not see the purpose of studying Marx and not take the reading seriously. The first thought that popped into my head was that anything that triggers 100 million deaths, I take very seriously.

Communism, for all its good intentions, is the most evil movement in all of history. Yes, even more evil than fascism, for it is far more insidious and lethal to the soul. Indeed, as you point out above, it is Original Sin perpetrated again, the rejection of God and the elevation of Man above Him. It is the rebellion of Lucifer, who desired to be free of God and to rule himself, and so fell into ruin and fire with many of his followers. Murder, genocide, war, and oppression are all transgressions of God's law, but Communism is the wholesale rejection and repudiation of that law, that Law of Nature which provides the basis for all that is good in our society, and the fundation of democracy and freedom. It is Man crying out to God, "We do not want you or need you!" It is a call to Christ on Calvary, "Die!" It is, in short, the rule of Satan.

why people at the time were afraid of the evils of Communism.  What I don't understand is why people are STILL arguing that it was such a huge danger.  

Communism can only succeed by convincing the hearts and minds of the people.  At no time during the 40s and 50s was this a real possibility, although there is a reasonable argument to be said that it WAS a possibility in the 20s and 30s.

So you admit he did not try to criminalize anything?

Also, I would say the destruction of the world is a legitimate "fear" to stoke. Most politicians have an ego, so McCarthy was not only normal in that regard but more willing to take risks in the interests of serving his country. He was told by pro-US elements of the CIA that he was in for a world of hurt, but pressed ahead anyway.

And, actually, in the past many Americans (often northern Democrats) openly praised the Soviet Union, particularly in the 1930s. Then we allied with them (via Democrat FDR) in WW2. McCarthy must be understood in the context of his environment.

Given that the potential harm of radical leftism was essentially infinite (as the Supreme Court ruled in the 50s when it upheld limitations on Communist Party activity), there was a clear and compelling state interest in preserving the US system of government and economy.

Not only did McCarthy violate no rights and, as you admit, conducted his affairs in the public eye, but he did so under the conditions long cited by the courts as legitimate for limiting certain "rights" not explicity set out by the Constitution. That remains the legal standard today... cocaine is illegal because the courts and legislatures agree a compelling state interest exists to limit its consumption.

While you and various leftists or dupes of different political stripes continue to cite 3rd grade-caliber propaganda, it is intrinsically flawed and based on pure manufacture. McCarthy took no rights away, invented no evidence, and operated as a model of transparency and straightforwardness. The all-consuming fear of the anti-American left with regard to his greatness still manifests itself today, as you yourself demonsrate (albeit unwittingly as someone merely lacking proper historical understanding).

Millions dead? Check. A constant war against us? Check. Souls and lives ruined? Check. A fifth column in the country? Check.

Gee, guess you're right.

Do you really believe what you just wrote?

McCarthy had no ABILITY to criminalize anything.  But he certainly took fear mongering to a new level.

the millions of dead Americans.  When did that happen?

One more time.  Soviet Union <> Communism.

The alleged 5th column achieved WHAT in this country?  Did it in any way dampen the fervent anti-communism that existed, and still exists, in this country

Or coexistence. Or glum resignation. And God knows no fifth columnists ever gave away any weapons technology secrets.

Gee, I dunno. Fascism never killed millions of Americans either. No threat, right?

Where did I say that Communism posed NO THREAT?

And let's separate military threats from ideological threats, ok?

Where did I say we should have EVER have stopped chasing spies?

I said

Millions dead? Check. A constant war against us? Check.

You said

I must have missed the millions of dead Americans.  When did that happen?

One more time.  Soviet Union <> Communism

So I said

Gee, I dunno. Fascism never killed millions of Americans either. No threat, right?

No fair now saying

Where did I say that Communism posed NO THREAT?

And let's separate military threats from ideological threats, ok?

Because the answers are

What I don't understand is why people are STILL arguing that it was such a huge danger.  

Communism can only succeed by convincing the hearts and minds of the people.  At no time during the 40s and 50s was this a real possibility, although there is a reasonable argument to be said that it WAS a possibility in the 20s and 30s.

and

Nazi Germany <> Fascism

And this

Where did I say we should have EVER have stopped chasing spies?

Is a non-sequitur. You asked what the Fifth Column ever did to us -- in your words, The alleged 5th column achieved WHAT in this country?  Did it in any way dampen the fervent anti-communism that existed, and still exists, in this country[.]

Now, I answered that, although all you need to is to wander over to my Arthur Miller diary to get an idea of what I think about that Fifth Column.

Dude. Seriously.

Hmmm.

At Yalta; Alger Hiss was employed as Roosevelt's advisor.  This is the same Yalta where Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe and a number of other concessions.  

And later on was one of the principal architects of the United Nations.  The same United Nations that has been nothing but trouble for the past 50+ years for America, and an effective tool for every dictator, despot and Communist/Socialist country in the world.

Tell me.  How useful was Hiss to the Soviets?

Chinese cultural revolution.  It is horrifying to listen to the stories she tells (her parents were Christians, and were targets during that time, at one point their home was destroyed and her parents were imprisoned and she lived with other relatives).  Sometimes reading about this stuff in books allows you to step back and justify some of that stuff, but when you see and know the face of those harmed, the evil that was communism becomes more real.

And I have no problems at all declaring communism an evil, and one that deserves no excuses the left likes to give it.

after all we are living in the age and time where everyone is a victim of something-the only people who aren't persecuted in some way are conservative white guys.  

other communist thugs around the world, or are you restricting your "communism wasn't the problem" to that exact period in time?

Have you read much about Mao?  Pol Pot?  Do you know what happened once the US left Vietnam to those who opposed communism?  Have you read anything about communism in the various Latin American and Central American countries?

Nope Stalin wasn't the problem, the USSR wasn't even really the problem, the problem was and is that communism promotes a godless, rudderless political philosophy that justifies the murder of millions in order to impose their way of thinking by fear on the populace.

Sorry, but you are going to have a hard time convincing me that communism would be perfect, if we just gave the philosophy a chance.

considering the toll of communism?

I don't buy the argument.  There are faces and people behind all those statistics.  I don't think we should brush off their deaths, because they weren't Americans.  

your statement can hold up under any degree of scrutiny.

However Uncle Joe was more interested about consolidating his own power than he was about spreading Communism throughout the world, a philosophy he found to be a useful tool and not much more.

Unless you are somehow taking the fairly exotic position that Stalin was not a communist and personal aggrandizement was his goal. This has two fallacies, first it requires you to know his mind. I'll submit that you don't and neither does anyone else. The second fallacy is separating the man from his works. Using the same formulation, I could say just as accurately that Hitler wasn't interested in the expansion of fascism but merely interested in consolidating his own power. Perhaps true but it begs the question of why fascist regimes were established in the states he conquered.

Stalin had secured his personal power long before Yalta. The purges, especially that of the Red Army 1937, removed all possible competing poles of power. He used WW II to further consolidate his uncontested hold on power by installing a system of political commissars in the Red Army, personally promoting the senior commanders, and forcibly deporting ethnic minorities he deemed disloyal (Volga Germans, Don Cossacks, etc) and crushing nascent nationalist movements in the Ukraine and Byelorussia as well as swallowing the Baltic states.

In the aftermath of WW II he actively aided Mao in China, Kim Il Sung in Korea, partisans in Greece, as well as absorbing Eastern Europe.

So maybe he didn't believe in communism but I find that theory tenuous given the nature of his pronouncements and actions.

...and so should you.  It's not even in play anymore.  He was a spy for the GRU.  The definitive evidence came out about ten years ago during the period when the ex-Soviets let Western researchers into the archives. Hiss managed to get a KGB guy to say that he hadn't spied for the predecessor to the KGB, and since Hiss had been working for Soviet military intelligence (IE, the GRU), said high-level ex-KGB guy failed to find anything in his archives.

Hiss was guilty as sin.

McCarthy, on the other hand, was barely capable of finding a gin bottle on his better days.

If I may quote Kowalski from his comment above:

"It's always the same story from these people:  Sure, the murderous dictators were horrible people, but if they just had another chance and in a little bit different situation, the Revolution would succeed!!  It's essentially a Trotskyist thinking:  Stalin betrayed the Revolution and everything that happened in the USSR wasn't real.  The bureaucrats became the Bourgeoisie and then the capitalist running-dogs invaded Socialist purity with their impious, selfish thinking."

Sounds pretty much like your comment to me.

And why is it that the delicate, perfect flower of Communism is always so brutally twisted and crushed by every tyrant who rules in its name?  You would think that after almost 100 years, some enlightened despot might get true communism right somewhere on this planet so we can usher in utopia.

You  said in another comment, "some people just don't like criminalizing beliefs."  Those people are the ones who are against Hate Crime laws.

When beliefs result in deliberate actions which are intentionally hostile or harmful, we rightly criminalize those actions based on law.

can't critique someone over facts, so just compare him to the most brutal thugs in history.

Are you a speech writer for Dr Dean or Sen. Durbin?>

As an independent country, what threat has the US ever faced as serious as that of post-WW2 communism?

"It always amazed me how many people STILL think that our nation was so fragile after WWII that a few agitators could do anything more than annoy people."

Yeah, I know what you mean. It always amazed me how many people STILL think that our nation was so fragile after the Cold War that a few terrorists could do anything more than annoy people.

Not Communism worldwide.

I have NO INTEREST in defending Communism.  I just want to describe events accurately.

you guys want to argue with assigned beliefs in which I am somehow defending Communism or arguing that Stalin wasn't that bad.

Was I unclear when I said that Stalin was one of the most evil human beings in the history of mankind?  

that I am speculating based on what I have read of Stalin.  

I certainly agree that he wanted to spread his power and influence.

After the Cold War?

the left in America and McCarthy is best described as a draw.  McCarthy helped destroy himself but after him the left was never the same.  No more Henry Wallace's, no more flocking to world peace conferences, no more hailing or participating in American-Soviet frienship alliances and a much more guarded approach to the left's romance with Mother Russia.  It doesn't say much for them that the best they could get out of their battle with Joe was a draw.  Long term if anything McCarthy won .

that till today there are people out there who are angrier at McCarthy than they are with the 50's clowns who thought that the Soviet Union was a slightly flawed experiment in socialism.  Much of what McCarthy did was done while Joe Stalin was still alive and even then today's leftist ancestors had more tolerance for the Motherland than the Senator.  Well I guess you have to pick your friends no matter how flawed.  But one should pause and reflect how choices tell us about the one who chooses.

was not the danger to the US: Soviet imperialism was. After all, we finally allied with Communist China, even though Mao was a far more brutal tyrant than Brezhnev, because the Chinese posed no real threat to us while the Soviets did.

I'll be right beside you.  

that remind me of how completely differently I view the world than many liberals.

I suspect that Hiss was guilty

You "suspect" that Hiss was guilty only because you are unwilling to either research the truth or believe it.  The left has so demonized Joe McCarthy that anyone he touched must be a saint.

How can you argue with the Venona cables as proof from the Soviets that Algier Hiss was definitely in their service?

I also don't believe that simply being a Communist warrants persecution, prosecution, incarceration, and condemnation.

Since you are discussing Hiss, I assume that this persecution, prosecution, incarceration, and condemnation is referring to McCarthy's treatment of him.  You should do some research before you state that Hiss was "simply a Communist."

The most apparent damage he did was as Roosevelt's advisor at Yalta.  He was whispering instructions to Roosevelt that he had received from "Uncle Joe."  Can you imagine how much different the world and the cold war would have been without this spy's influence on that post-war conference?

If I am reading your post correctly are you saying communism is "the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world ?  And you are saying that vision is evil?

If so that is interesting to me as it seems to me to be the very vision that Ms. Rand was exalting as capitalism - although it's been years since I've read old Ayn.

Interesting topic.

60s and 70s and today...

because this interests me greatly.  I'd always thought of communism as an economic theory and one to be contrasted with capitalism.

As such it seems to me that any country that relied on communism as its economic system was doomed to failure from communism's own internal flaws and likewise doomed to be overtaken by capitalist societies due to the inherent advantages of capitalism.  

As a hard core believer in the inherent superiorty of capitalism, I find it hard to imagine that anyone thought communism would ultimately prevail world wide.  I just don't have any doubt that in a free marketplace of ideas that capitalism would prevail.  Accordingly I don't need my government to persecute communists or suppress their ideas, all I need is my government to make sure there is a free marketplace for ideas.

Clearly I'm missing something.  Reading suggestions please.

All you Can do is imagine.

None of us knew Roosevelt personally.  None of us know exactly how much Hiss, or anyone else for that matter, actually influenced FDR.

None of us know.

Communism is lethal to the soul not because of it's rejection of God. It is lethal because of its rejection of our individual humanity. It elevated the State and the Collective above the individual. As much as it might surprise you, morality is possible without God. Individual freedom is an inherent human right regardless of whether God granted it or not. Our right to life, freedom and happiness exists regardless. It is simplistic to call communism devil's work or rule of Satan. If I believed in God I'd agree with you only on a very basic level where everything evil is from Satan, but it is the underlying philosophy of Communism that makes it evil. The philosophy of many over one. Remember - "from

each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need" - that is the evil of Communism. Communism rejects human rights and it was never well intentioned nor is it good in theory as some morons claim.

I fully agree that it is the most evil movement in all of history.

Let me put it this way for you:  You are dismissive of a few communist "agitators" back then, just as some are dismissive of a few Islamist "freedom fighters" today.  And yes, our nation, in a post Cold War delirium, was "fragile" enough to allow a few "agitators" to murder 3,000 of our citizens.

My dictionary does not define "fragile" as meaning "on the verge of collapse".  Fragile objects can last for thousands of years as long as they are protected from harm.  

According to you,it wasn't the communism that was bad, it was the evil  Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Ceaucescu, etc.  They all gave communism a bad rap. If you do not explicily defend Communism, then you certainly indulge it.

For those referencing the "Venona" decrypts in claiming that espionage by people like Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and hundreds of others has been "proven" you might be interested to visit Wikipedia and read Significance of Venona.

It contains the following "critical view":

The reader is left with the implication--unfair and unproven--that every name on the list was involved in espionage, and as a result, otherwise careful historians and mainstream journalists now routinely refer to Venona as proof that many hundreds of Americans were part of the red spy network. My own view is that thus far Venona has been used as much to distort as to expand our understanding of the cold war--not just because some researchers have misinterpreted these files but also because in the absence of hard supporting evidence, partially decrypted files in this world of espionage, where deception is the rule, are by definition potential time bombs of misinformation.

This "critical view" is excerpted from an article in The Nation magazine written upon the passing of Gus Hall, perennial Presidential candidate of the U.S. Communist Party:

a new cadre of cold war historians seems obsessed with perpetuating a counterillusion--seizing fragments from cold war archives, ambiguous intercepts from cables between Moscow and its US-based operatives, and other ephemera to prove that the CPUSA had indeed not been a bona fide political party but rather was control-central for a nest of spies, as "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy had charged--that McCarthy, despite his bad press, had been right after all.  "The matter, I would suggest, is still in dispute," I wrote, and I went on to say that although most illusions about Soviet-style Communism may be exhausted, the paranoia left over from those years persists.

This critical view, and the article from which it is drawn, was written by Victor Navasky.

Yes the same Victor Navasky on the panel sitting next to George Clooney and about 10 feet in front of me while I defended my question "Is today's media more like McCarthy than Murrow".

Shameless plug: If you haven't viewed the video I suggest you do in order to get a real sense of just how far to the left the high priests of the MSM really are so you can better understand how instrangient the problem has become.

Communism could work.  I have studied Communism (the theory, mainly) and dream of the day that it could actually work the way the theory says it should.

But there's one thing that constantly gets in the way:

Fundamental Human Nature.  Humans are Greedy, Selfish, Lazy, egotistical animals.

That plus Communism equals fascism and a dictator.

Communism requires better men than we are.

Capitalism, however, works no matter how greedy or lazy or selfish you are...

You dream of a day when we can all surrender our individuality and live for the collective? When nothing is private and you have no rights?

It's a beautiful dream.