If you read M. Stanton Evan’s historical investigation into Joe McCarthy, Blacklisted by History, you will come away recognising how one of the bravest men in our history was taken down by the left and his name turned into the very essence of political wickedness. Which is worse in our day and age: McCarthyist tactics or Stalinist tactics? At best they might come out equal to anyone – left or right – who thinks about politics today, but of the two – again whether left of right – there would be a fair proportion who would think McCarthy did more damage. And what are the lessons that McCarthy has for us today? It is to keep one’s head down and under no circumstances try to take on the left because they will use every technique under the sun to do you in.
I have no answer to the question why McCarthy remains the villain he is portrayed as having been by the right. That the left villifies him is par for the course. They will never stop since it is a supposed weak point for the conservative side of politics so long as McCarthyism remains the epitome of political evil. But on the right there ought to be, you would think, some effort made to resurrect his memory, especially since virtually everything he said proved not only to be true, but largely understated. I wrote about the latest episode of the right using McCarthy once again as the arch villain here. Now, Diana West, who has also found herself on the outside looking in for writing the most extraordinary book on communist infiltration of the Roosevelt White House, American Betrayal, has taken up this theme by looking at the post I wrote.
She has written The Problem Isn’t “McCarthyism,” It’s McCarthymania. When I looked at the original article in the Weekly Standard attacking McCarthy for having used his influence to have one of his assistants receive a commission (which he didn’t get, by the way) as a parallel instance of Joe Biden’s son being thrown out of the army for cocaine use having received his own commission in the first place because his father is Vice President, I could say no more than this is not an issue that should be used as a form of self-flagellation on the right. Why allow this minor scandal to be shared in such a stupid way, to write as if we are just as bad as them, and to use McCarthy as the vehicle? But the fact is, I didn’t know any of the details of this particular instance, but Diana West does. And when you read these details, the supposed equivalence is more obtuse than you could possibly imagine. Here is what I found to be the crucial point:
Ironically, at one point in the proceedings, as Evans relates in his definitive McCarthy study, Blacklisted by History, famed Army lawyer Welch, thinking to discredit Cohn, moved to introduce into the record one of the many Army-transcribed conversations on the matter, in this case between Army Secretary Stevens and Sen. McCarthy. It was a conversation “in which McCarthy downplayed the importance of Schine [as an investigator on his staff], said he didn’t want any favors for him, and said Cohn was `completely unreasonable’ on the topic.”
There is no parallel. McCarthy once again comes across as a man of exemplary character. Others may then wish to toss this around, and do the left’s work for them by contesting West and Stanton Evans, but to what end? If they are the enemy what is Obama? My greater question is, where is our McCarthy today, someone who can take the fight up to the left who are ruining our civilisation in so many ways that it is almost impossible to see how this can ever be turned round. The institutions have been marched through to such an extent that even when you find someone like Diana West who writes a book that exposes the perfidy of the left, it is our side that does the trouncing while the left merely stands by and laughs at what fools we are.
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