Ann Coulter: Vindicating Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Posted by Damozel |  You all know I love Ann Coulter, right?  Right.  She and her kind have caused many sane actual conservatives whom I know and love---desperate not to be associated with her sort of "conservatism"--- to vote for Democrats.  Some have jumped ship altogether. 

As all her admirers and detractors know, Coulter gets her living by endlessly crying havoc on all her fellow citizens who dare to differ with her.  She is always threatening to ride us down and crush us beneath her iron stilettos.   And why?    

We dare not to share her values.  Let slip the dogs of war!  In the cause of crushing Liberals, is there ever such a thing as going too far? Why, no: Coulter, who once claimed in her colorful fashion that Senator Joseph McCartney was the "rosetta stone of liberal lies," is now waxing ecstatic over a book which---for Coulter and people like her---will now, once and for all, resurrect the reputation of McCartney from the ignominy in which it currently languishes.

After all, she tried to do the job herself.  In one of her bestselling extended diatribes, Coulter "wrote a ferocious defense of Sen. Joe McCarthy" but nobody listened. (HumanEvents.com) Which, according to Coulter, was due to the fact that she wears short skirts and dates "boys" (her words) and which you'd think would have made her furious at the readers of her books (clearly, they are either much dumber or much brighter than advertised).  Instead, she blames Liberals.  They seemed to think that her assertions lacked objectivity (or even the pretense of it). (HumanEvents.com)

McCarthy’s sorry reputation is, Coulter charges, simply the result of half a century of liberal lying. "It is the textbook on how they rewrite history -- the sound chamber of liberal denunciations, their phony victimhood as they demean and oppress their enemies, their false imputation of dishonesty to their opponents, their legalization of every policy dispute, their ability to engage in lock-step shouting campaigns, and the black motives concealed by their endless cacophony. (HumanEvents.com)  Apparently liberals also wrote the textbook for Coulter. But we’ll let that pass and get to Coulter's good news:

Now, at last, "the great M. Stanton Evans"  has written a book about McCarthy so definitive that it will skewer bleeding hearts everywhere on a poignard of  far right-wing "Truth," "Justice," and the "American" way.

The great M. Stanton Evans has finally released Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies. Based on a lifetime's work, including nearly a decade of thoroughgoing research, stores of original research and never-before-seen government files, this 672-page book ends the argument on Joe McCarthy. Look for it hidden behind stacks of Bill Clinton's latest self-serving book at a bookstore near you.(HumanEvents.com) 

I put the last line in because I didn't want you to miss the obligatory dig at Clinton (who has now NOT been president for---what?---seven years, to the great advancement of American prestige, peace, prosperity and all-round satisfaction).   

As I have not actually read Evans' book, I can't comment on it.  I leave such commentary to the great Jon Swift, who has not read many more right-wing treatises than I have not read, and has commented on them anyway.  But I can---and I will---comment on Coulter's review of it.  I love her too much to let this one go. 

So: According to Coulter, Evan's scholarly tome---presumably in contrast to her own presentation of the issue---"is such a tour de force that liberals are already preparing a "yesterday's news" defense -- as if they had long ago admitted the truth about McCarthy.... Thus, Publisher's Weekly preposterously claims that "the history Evans relates is already largely known, if not fully accepted." Somebody better tell George Clooney. (HumanEvents.com) 

Here's what Publisher's Weekly actually says, since you and George Clooney probably would like to know:

Evans's lively book seeks, first, to demonstrate that Communists worked, often successfully, to undermine American security during the Cold War. It tries, second, to defend Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the egregious scourge of American Communists and fellow travelers, against those who, in Evans's (The Theme Is Freedom) view, have unjustly ruined his reputation. On the first point, save for some new details, Evans, a contributing editor to Human Events, treads worn ground. Most scholars, having also used Soviet archives, concede his position and argue now only over secondary matters, like the guilt of Alger Hiss. On the second point, Evans has a tougher case, which he seeks to make as a defense attorney would: by conceding nothing to McCarthy's detractors. Evans is also given to conspiracy thinking—an approach that, by its nature, yields claims that can neither be confirmed nor falsified. Defense attorneys and debaters like Evans follow different rules than historians—they try to score points, not to advance knowledge. Evans is good at the former, his propulsive style carrying much of the argument's burden. But the history Evans relates is already largely known, if not fully accepted..(Publisher's Weekly; emphasis added)

Aha, so the great M. Stanton Evans is a contributing editor at Human Events---where Coulter's review is published---eh?  Never mind:  I'm sure that we can assume that Coulter---unlike the reviewer at Publisher's Weekly--- is entirely free of bias.

Is it "preposterous" for the PW reviewer to say that scholars were previously aware of facts on which Evans relies?  Since I haven't read the book, I don't know.  Clearly, though, contemporary scholars are aware of some of the facts.   After all, I found this at CNN.  They must have dug it up somewhere.

Thanks primarily to McCarthy, most Americans identify the anti-Communist investigations and hearings of the late 1940s and early 1950s as a shameful episode in American life during which a non-existent communist threat was used to pillory innocent people for their political beliefs. The McCarthy era is routinely portrayed in textbooks as an age of hysteria.

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of new archival sources have become available that throw much-needed light on the McCarthy era and the attack on domestic communism. More and more FBI files on the Communist Party have been released; Russian archives holding the records of the Communist International and the CPUSA have allowed access to American scholars; and the Venona cables, decrypted World War II Soviet messages between KGB offices in the United States and Moscow, have been released by the National Security Agency.

This new evidence is forcing the revision of many of the prevailing myths about the internal communist threat to American democracy in the postwar era. (CNN Cold War) 

So the threat was real.  But McCarthy's contribution to the ferreting out of Soviet spies seems doubtful.  CNN goes on to say:

None of it exculpates McCarthy. He remains a political bully who hurt a number of people. But his exaggerated and baseless charges also harmed the anti-communist cause. In a variant of Gresham's Law, his bad charges trivialized and weakened good ones. Genuine Soviet spies portrayed themselves as victimized by McCarthyism. They found sympathetic listeners, convinced that anyone accused of espionage or communism must be innocent because some innocent people were accused.  (CNN Cold War)

Here's what Coulter says about Evans' account of McCarthy.  I've inserted links for the assistance of any recent American high school graduates, who---I am given to understand by Jay Leno and others---aren't being taught any history these days and for the benefit of Coulter's regular audience. Again, all of the links are from me and not Ann Coulter.

The true story of Joe McCarthy, told in meticulous, irrefutable detail in Blacklisted by History, is that from 1938 to 1946, the Democratic Party acquiesced in a monstrous conspiracy being run through the State Department, the military establishment, and even the White House to advance the Soviet cause within the U.S. government.

In the face of the Democrats' absolute refusal to admit to their fecklessness, fatuity and recklessness in allowing known Soviet spies to penetrate the deepest levels of government, McCarthy demanded an accounting.

Even if one concedes to on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand whiners like Ronald Radosh that Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson didn't like communism, his record is what it was. And that record was to treat Soviet spies like members of the Hasty Pudding Club. 

Rather than own up to their moral blindness to Soviet espionage, Democrats fired up the liberal slander machine, which would be deployed again and again over the next half century to the present day. In hiding their own perfidy, liberals were guilty of every sin they lyingly imputed to McCarthy. There were no "McCarthyites" until liberals came along. (HumanEvents.com; all links INSERTED BY ME).

It's always the Democrats, according to Coulter.  Except that it wasn't. General (then President) Dwight Eisenhower---who helped to orchestrate his downfall--- wasn't a Democrat.  In bringing down McCarthy, Eishenhower used the claims of "executive privilege" and "national security" that have proved so very valuable to his Republican successors.  But at least Eisenhower used them to bring McCarthy down, not to conceal his own activities.  The American Experience (BZZZZT!  Liberal media alert!) website describes Eisenhower's relations with McCarthy as follows:

Dwight Eisenhower found Joseph McCarthy's demagoguery reprehensible. As a military man he had been able to distance himself from petty political crusades in the name of the greater cause. But in 1952, as a first time candidate for the office of the presidency, he found it would be a good deal more difficult to maintain his political purity. When McCarthy delivered a blistering attack against former Secretary of State George C. Marshall, calling him "a man steeped in falsehood," candidate Eisenhower was faced with a dilemma. A popular member of his own party was publicly disparaging a man Ike considered a valued mentor. Eisenhower's personal and political instincts came into conflict during a campaign stop in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin. Eisenhower was prepared to deliver a defense of Marshal praising him "as a man and a soldier," and condemning the tactics of McCarthy as a "sobering lesson in the way freedom must not defend itself." But noble intentions gave way to political reality. Aware of McCarthy's huge base of support and not willing to risk losing votes in a crucial state, Eisenhower delivered his speech minus the defense of Marshalland the condemnation of McCarthy. It was a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life…..

Eisenhower defended his refusal to denounce McCarthy publicly, claiming that to do so would only further polarize the nation and reward McCarthy with additional publicity. To his aides, Eisenhower vowed, "I will not get into the gutter with this guy." By the end of 1953, polls indicated that at least half of all Americans had a favorable impression of McCarthy and his tactics. Emboldened by such support, McCarthy set out to widen the scope of his investigations. This time, however, he would go too far…..

 When McCarthy, armed with little more than hearsay and innuendo, set out to expose communists within the U.S.Army, Eisenhower decided enough was enough. He instructed his staff to present information that would discredit McCarthy. It was revealed that McCarthy had petitioned the Army to award preferential treatment to his assistant, David Shine. Finding himself on the defensive, McCarthy demanded notes of meetings between Eisenhower administration personnel and Army officials. Eisenhower established a presidential precedent by invoking executive privilege in refusing to turn over the notes. Claiming that matters of national security might be breached if administration officials were forced to testify under oath, Eisenhower robbed McCarthy of the opportunity to perpetuate his inquisition. From that point on the Army-McCarthy hearings degenerated into a series of increasingly unfounded and paranoid accusations.

Eisenhower quietly exerted pressure on Republican senators to go forward with a censure of McCarthy. (American Experience; emphasis added)

I imagine that by Coulter's standards, Eisenhower was practically a Democrat.  Perhaps that's why Coulter feels justified in blaming McCarthy's reputation on a conspiracy of Democrats. 

In fact, nobody much liked him once they'd seen him at work---certainly not my extremely conservative, Communist-fearing, Eisenhower-loving Republican-voting father.  With one or two exceptions---who weren't exactly your standard-issue small town conservative---I never once heard during all of my South Carolina childhood a single Republican defend McCarthy.  Here---straight from the US State Department---are the essentials of  the McCarthy story as taught to me in high school in my little South Carolina milltown.  The woman who taught it to me---and who clearly believed what she was saying---was a Republican and a member of either the Baptist or the Methodist Church (I can't remember which). In all essentials, this is what I learned. Screw the liberal media; here's the official gov. version from the State Department's website of the history of Senator Joe (who, after all, gave them a hard time in his day). I added all the links.

Periodically American society has been gripped by fear, and its responses have not done credit to its democratic nature. In this century the Red Scare following World War I  saw hundreds of innocent aliens rounded up, imprisoned and deported, for no reason other than fear of their allegedly radical ideas. The Cold War unleashed another Red Scare in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But where there had been no great alien menace in 1919, communism did exist and did pose a danger to western democracy in the post-World War II era.

The hunt for subversives started during the war itself, and was furthered by congressional committees that often abused their powers of investigation to harass people with whom they differed politically. Then in February 1950, an undistinguished, first-term Republican senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, burst into national prominence when, in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, he held up a piece of paper that he claimed was a list of 205 known communists currently working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced documentation for a single one of his charges, but for the next four years he exploited an issue that he realized had touched a nerve in the American public.

He and his aides, Roy Cohn and David Schine, made wild accusations, browbeat witnesses, destroyed reputations and threw mud at men like George Marshall, Adlai Stevenson, and others whom McCarthy charged were part of an effete "eastern establishment." For several years, McCarthy terrorized American public life, and even Dwight Eisenhower, who detested McCarthy, was afraid to stand up to him. Finally, however, the senator from  Wisconsin over-reached himself.

In January 1954, in what were to be the first televised hearings in American history, McCarthy obliquely attacked President Eisenhower and directly assaulted Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens. Day after day the public watched McCarthy in action -- bullying, harassing, never producing any hard evidence, and his support among people who thought he was "right" on communism began to evaporate. Americans regained their senses, and the Red Scare finally began to wane. By the end of the year, the Senate decided that its own honor could no longer put up with McCarthy's abuse of his legislative powers, and it censured him in December by a vote of 65 to 22. (USA Info; links and emphasis added.)

The televised "Army-McCarthy hearings" were, some say, his political downfall.  You can read some selected transcripts of the Army-McCarthy hearings at the George Mason University history site.   You can listen to some famous American rhetoric, the famous "Have you no sense of decency?" exchange---arising out of an exchange between Senator McCarthy and army lawyer Joseph Welch--- here. Also at the State Department website, you can hear an audio clip of Edward R. Murrow (described as "anti-Communist but a McCarthy skeptic") broadcast on McCarthy and hear "the controlled fury." "Edward R. Murrow may not have scored the first blow against Joseph McCarthy, but he landed a decisive one. For that, he always will be linked inextricably with the Wisconsin senator, and remembered by Americans as a champion of liberty." (About America) 

Some say that Murrow's broadcast was McCarthy's downfall.

When the broadcast ended, CBS was flooded with telegrams, telephone calls, and letters. They ran 15 to 1 in Murrow's favor. By contrast, McCarthy's equal-time broadcast proved disastrous. He was obviously uncomfortable in the television studio, and, as Murrow suggested, prone to flinging wild charges, calling Murrow "the leader of the jackal pack." Millions of Americans watching at home had seen enough. McCarthy's political influence rapidly ebbed. On December 2, 1954, the U.S. Senate formally adopted a resolution censuring — formally reprimanding — McCarthy for conduct unbecoming to a senator.  (About America)

My father used to do a kickass imitation of Murrow and McCarthy.

As the foregoing notes, the Senate (including Republican) finally censured McCarthy.

Coulter says that the Evans book shows that every "conventional belief about McCarthy is wrong, including (1)  that he lied about his war record; (2) that he was an alcoholic ("He would generally nurse a single drink all night"); (3) that his charges were unfounded ("He produced loads of  Soviet spies in government jobs"); and (4) that he was motivated solely by political  advantage  ("He understood perfectly the godless evil of communism." (HumanEvents.com)

Actually, I'd forgotten items of conventional wisdom numbers 1 and 2 if I ever knew them and they wouldn't have mattered to me if  I did, especially the second one.  As a redeeming factor, the final one matters to me a tiny bit; I'd prefer to believe that McCarthy's actions were motivated by a true belief in what he was saying.  Sadly, though, the example of George W. Bush teaches us that the motives of political (or private) gain are not incompatible with True Belief.  In fact, quite otherwise.  And while I might think better of W (and Coulter) by giving them both the benefit of the doubt regarding their intentions---as I do---we know with what sort of intentions the road to Hell is paved.

So the middle one is the only one that matters.  Did he produce "loads" of Soviet spies in government jobs?  Certainly history indicates that  Soviet espionage was a reality.  I can't find that McCarthy unmasked "loads" of spies.  But suppose his every accusation had succeeded in doing so and suppose his tactics hadn't discredited the attempts of the government to identif them; would this change my opinion of him?

Not in the least.  I grew up surrounded by people who were terribly afraid of "godless communism."  As a child back in the early Sixties, I used to lie awake at night worrying about a terrifying monster I knew as “the atom bum.” We used to have bomb drills at my elementary school where we were made to get under our desks to protect ourselves in case of enemy attack. I'm not sure how that was supposed to protect us from being incinerated/dying from radiation sickness, but I suppose it made local officials feel they were doing something.

You can’t tell me that Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Department of State, the Department of the Army, Edward R. Murrow and every Republican who joined in the censure of McCarthy were one and all unaware of---or indifferent to---the threat of Soviet espionage. The censure of McCarthy was never about the reality of the things he feared and always about the tactics he used.

You can be right about a threat to the country's security and the need for action, and still  be gravely wrong about the appropriate action.

I wouldn't expect Coulter to understand this.  Today's right-wingers never do.

So while I give "the great Stanton Evans" all the credit he likes for trying, I can't believe he is going to succeed in rehabilitating McCarthy in the eyes of normal conservatives.

And I can see the attraction of McCarthy for Coulter. According to the George Mason University's website:  "McCarthy’s apocalyptic rhetoric made critics hesitate before challenging him. Those accused by McCarthy faced loss of employment, damaged careers, and in many cases, broken lives." (GMU) Poor Coulter, her "apocalyptic rhetoric" has so far failed to do any of those she hates any lasting harm, poor thing.  In fact, a lot of it tends to backfire.

 But those who don't learn the right lessons from history are doomed to repeat its worst mistakes.  Certain members of the right want to justify the tactics of McCarthy because, I presume, they wish to justify the use of similar tactics today.  Which---or so I imagine--explains the Evans book and Coulter's advocacy.   

In the meantime (and as I've argued), the bigotry, fear-mongering, and fury of America' far right is doing its part in our time to undermine national security, just as the bigotry, fear-mongering, and fury of Joseph McCartney and his ilk did in theirs.   By undercutting any reasoned discussion, and making it impossible for reasonable persons to discuss the issues seriously, Coulter, Michelle Malkin and the far right have discredited the very position they seek to espouse.  Once again, Gresham's law----"bad charges, like bad currency, trivialize and weaken good ones."  

RELATED LINKS

National Security:  Not the Property of the GOP (Updated)

The Church of Ann Coulter, Perfected Christian

Ann Coulter Says the Darndest Things

Ann Coulter.  She's so Outrageous. 

Elizabeth Edwards Asks Ann Coulter to be More Civil; Ann Interprets Request as Equivalent to Demand that She Stop Speaking.

Signs of the Times:  Ann Coulter Calls Bush an Unkind Name; Shows Disturbing Pro-[Right Wing] French Sympathies.  

LINKED

Coulter, McCarthyism:  The Rosetta Stone of Liberalism (Coulter)

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