I actually didn’t know much about Ann Coulter before this book came out.  I saw the hype and wondered if it would be ‘good’ read.  The exerpts I’ve seen so far are disappointing.  While I do not believe in the liberal agenda for making America a socialist state, and I don’t think McCarthy was as nearly as bad as Hollywood or the left has made him out to be, I don’t find her book appealing.

I don’t think all liberals want to turn America into anything close to a socialist state. I certainly don’t and I can’t think of any folks I know personally that I would consider liberal that would want to turn America into a socialist state either. I tend to have serious libertarian leanings in addition to my liberal tendencies myself.

Again, let’s try to avoid painting with such a huge brush.

Jo and Eric,

I’d like to offer a little insight regarding your debate over the label “terrorism”.  This equivocal term and its constantly shifting definitions are a crucial issue at this time, as it is currently being used as the boogeyman du jour justifying American military belligerence.

Definitions currently being thrown about involve the focus on civilians as targets, and/or the perpetrators being unaffiliated with a recognized state.  As for motives, political scientists generally attribute coercive goals to acts of terrorism, while our leadership seems happy with the attribution of “hatred of freedom” or some sort of evil gleeful mischief.

As for the focus on civilian targets, it should be clear to all that states frequently attack civilians to get the enemy to comply in some way (the Nixon/Kissinger bombing of North Vietnam in order to leverage our position at the negotiating table is a textbook example).  Therefore, this definition would expand the definition of the term “terrorism” into areas our leaders and their propagandists don’t want to go.

This leaves us with the criteria of state-affiliation - anyone engaging in aggressive warfare without the blessing of a state will be labeled a terrorist.  This, however, introduces serious logical challenges to the convoluted rationale our administration concocted for the war on Iraq.  They want to link Saddam with terrorists, but the very fact that he represented a state would negate his labeling a terrorist.  Furthermore, why should the poor and disenfranchised be given emotionally charged labels when their beefs may be every bit as legitimate as those of groups who, through accidents of history, happen to have a seat at the UN?

Anyway, a far better way to look at the whole mess is laid out by Schelling in his discussion on the distinction between general war and coercion.  “General war” refers to a military action with a clear goal (territory, resources, population) achieved only by clear victory -very few policy convolutions are involved.  Coercion is the threat of pain and suffering with the goal of eliciting compliance - this threat typically is preceded by demonstrations of the ability and will to inflict this pain.

I have always thought that it would be beneficial to frame discussions regarding political conflict around the world in term such as these, as opposed to muddying up the water with loaded and essentially meaningless terms like “terrorism”.  that way we can avoid some of the knee-jerk factors and actually deal with the causes of the problems.

While you argument was well written, I did notice your only examples were American (specifically Republican) Presidents actions.  And I also noticed your use of the word ‘concocted’ with regard to our war with Iraq.  I was hoping to have better people to debate with, or at least people with an open mind.  That is obviously not the case here.  Talk about towing a party line.

Sounds like these people were educated at the Janeane Garofalo school for intellectually challenged.

Actually “liberal” is not a party so just because I hold some liberal views does NOT mean I am towing any party line. The Democratic party is not progressive enough for my tastes so I really don’t keep up with the news letter. As far as using the word concocted in association with our war of aggression with Iraq, I think that is being generous. I would say that the president lied to the American people. Either that or he is criminally ignorant.

And Lonnie, we can’t all be obedient little ditto-heads now, can we?

You haven’t been trying to debate in the first place. You showed up, made some snide comments about us all living in a fantasy world as though this declaration would somehow suddenly cause us to see the error of our viewpoints and turn over a new leaf and shower you with gratitude and adoration for revealing some kind of ultimate truth and then acted all hurt when responded to in kind.

Don’t give me this crap about hoping to find “better people to debate with” when it’s clear that debate was the furthest thing from your mind in the first place. I can’t speak for everyone here, but I do try to keep an open mind about things. Having an open mind, however, is not the same as swallowing every bit of twaddle that someone hands you. You make a lot of claims, but you offer little to back them up. Having an open mind means I’m willing to be persuaded by a good argument, but you haven’t given a good argument you’ve just bitched and moaned a lot. Your last sentence is ironic as hell considering that that’s all you’ve done here is push the standard Republican bullshit. You’ve obviously not bothered to look into any other posts around here or the sidebar or you’d see that I’m not a Democrat OR a Republican so I don’t have a “party line” to tow.

Before you go insulting the intelligence level of others you might want to make sure you don’t make yourself look stupid in the process. Lonnie brings so much more to the conversation. Nice quip, but it doesn’t help promote your viewpoints in any way.

Jo,

You are a sharp one!  Yes, I did use the word “concocted” in regard this war.  Touche. 

Now that we have established your literacy, let’s calmly discuss why I chose to use that particular verbiage.

It’s because I recognize that our leaders are substituting marketing for statesmanship as they create foreign battlefields to serve as ripe business opportunities for Haliburton and Bechtel.  I’ve come to the realization that the kind of military aggression we’ve been undertaking may actually be less about oil than about the fortune that a hand-full of chickenhawks can make from the privatization of the full gamut of services required by our armed forces overseas. 

Think about it.  $100,000,000 of our tax dollars (at a minimum) has been earmarked for the war and reconstruction of Iraq.  Already, at least 10% of that amount has been funneled into the pockets of these private companies and a few others who are providing infrastructure and logistics for our troops - without competitive bidding in the sacred marketplace, and with the clear efforts for secrecy on the part of the administration.  Profits from the provision of services would be a lot easier to rationalize than oil profits from a conquered country.  You are aware that Cheney still has a huge profit-sharing egg incubating in the Haliburton nest, aren’t you?  And that George Herbert Walker Bush stands to make a butt-load of money off of some of these deals?

I use words like “concocted” because of my belief that a major consideration in the policies of our president and his band of neoconservative pirates is the financial enrichment of themselves, their families, and their friends.  And the deaths of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis, Afghans, Brits, and Canadians don’t seem to get their way a bit.

As for your other complaint about my previous message: sure, I chose a Republican administration for my example - in part because of its clear equivalence with the concept I was discussing, but also because I always loathed Nixon and Kissinger as black-hearted murderers and extortionists.  However, as you corrected implied, I fully agree that plenty of Democratic examples could also be thrown up with equal propriety.

Like Les and Eric, I do not recognize any party�s dogma as a legitimate substitute for my own judgment.  So please, we all might find it informative if you would recognize that and try to frame your questions and criticisms in such a way that you can figure out why we see things the way we do.

YOU CANNOT WIN A WAR AGAINST TERRORISM.

Whenever I hear the phrase “war against terrorism,“ I think of “1984.“  The most overworked eponym in political discourse may be “Orwellian,“ but the Bush administration has made it truly applicable. 

The three super states in Orwell’s dystopia maintained perpetual war with ever-shifting enemies.  Oceana used war as a way to keep the population in an agitated state of paranoia and jingoism. Sound familiar?  War is good for this, but the trouble is, war ends.  The solution: never ending war.

Beyond good and evil, terrorism is the power of the powerless.  Destroy Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Quaeda, et al., and MORE terrorist groups will replace them.  The Bush administration must understand this at some level, if they don’t, I don’t know what!

How many times have you heard pundits and politicians say “You shouldn’t criticize Bush when the country is at war.“  HA! Remember when we were kids playing tag and we made that rule that you couldn’t be tagged out if you had your fingers crossed?  Everybody ran around with their fingers crossed, right?  So, if you can’t criticize the government while there’s a war on, then there’s a GIANT incentive for the government to stay at war.

Has Israel one the war against terrorism in 55 years?  Has Britain one the war against terrorism from Northern Ireland in 90 years?  Why do people buy this horsepucky about the “war against terrorism”?  The only we to protect your people and your state against terrorism is to remove the conditions that cause people to commit terrorism to begin with.

Worse than the war against terrorism its dumbed down Orwellian abbreviation, “The War on Terror.“ Don’t get me started on that one!

Max: “remove the conditions that cause,,,,terrorism” 

And those conditions would be what?  If I were to guess,,,,it would be,,,,give in to thier demands.

Britain vs IRA: Free Ireland, no problem.  Should’ve done it long ago.

Israel vs PLO/Hamas etc etc:  Kill all jews, take back land Israel currently has.  I see a problem with this one.

USA vs Al Quaeda: Lets see.  What do they want? Death to all infidels?  That would me,,,all non-Muslims.  Hmmmmmm.  I see a problem with this one too.

And Ken,,,,I am not going to frame my questions and criticisms in a way to ‘see’ the way you do.  I DON’T see things your way.  I’ve seen the reality of life outside of our precious USA where many of the liberal minded in this country would never tread or have never heard of.  This reality is what gives me ‘my’ point of view. 

If you give your lunch money to a bully in school, what is the result?  He’ll take from you again.  If you beat the living shit out of him,,,he won’t bother you again.  Terrorists and MANY cultures outside of America and Old Europe are the same way.

Jo’s right. The Nazi’s in Germany took that same philosophy of beating the shit out of people so they wouldn’t mess with Germany anymore and look how successful that was for them. Obviously the might makes right approach is the only sensible way to handle things.
[/sarcasm]

The Nazi’s WERE the bully back then.  But I’m not surprised to hear you say this considering the other distortions of fact and history that take place in academia and the medai this days.

And Might doesn’t always make right.  Diplomacy and negotiation should always be pursued to the fullest extent possible. But there comes a point when Might in defense of your security and way of life become the only alternative.

Hey Les, there must be something wrong with your HTML tags, the sarcasm didn’t make it through…Wait I see the problem:

[sarcasm]George Bush is an outstanding president![/sarcasm]

Hmm, seems to be working alright.

OK.  I didn’t get it.  I admit it.

So I guess you think Gore would’ve been better?

How do I know, we were robbed of the chance of finding out. Better is completely subjective but I think he would have been much better on some things like protecting the environment and not giving the wealthy the economy busting tax cuts (at least to the degree Bush has, let’s face it Gore ain’t no working class slob himself). And while I am wholeheartedly against Bush’s vendetta with Saddam thinly veiled as a “War on Terrorism” I think that Gore probably would not have responded to 9-11 with a military strike. It may not make sense to you when I say this but I think we were justified as a country to squash Al Queda like the maggots they were after the attack, they hit us we hit them back, that’s fair. What Bush Co. is doing/did in Iraq was a criminal act by a power-mad administration; many people have died and continue to die based on the apparent lie that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

I am pretty sure that with all of his faults Gore would not have led our country on the aggressive campaign of unlawful regime change. Personally I am working to break the two party system and get some fresh blood into Washington, Republican or Democrat…what is the difference? It is the same old stink.

While you may not believe this, I don’t/didn’t agree with the timing of the war against Iraq.  I think there was ample justification on the basis of non-compliance with UN resolutions.  Unless he and his know something we ‘weren’t’ told, he never sold me on the USA going it alone.

I also don’t see how Gore was robbed of the election.  After all the counts, a clear number of electoral votes in favor of Bush,,,,I don’t see it.  Many say the Supreme Court gave Bush the presidency.  all the SC did was tell the Florida SC it couldn’t REWRITE Florida law.  Florida law stipulated that if one county is recounted,,,ALL county’s are recounted.  But Gore and the democrats didn’t want that.  But this is an old argument, people have made thier decisions on how to look at it, (Michael ‘idiot/hypocrit’ Moore for example) and people will not change thier minds.

I don’t think Gore could’ve led us after 9/11.  Liberman I like, but not Gore.

Have you heard about Ann’s next book! I believe the title is HITLER: Genius Misunderstood

“It’s always so comforting when Muslims cite the precise verse from the Quran that tells them killing is wrong. Don’t all empathetic human beings understand that instinctively? What if they lost their Quran that day and couldn’t remember?“ (Ann Coulter in “My Name Is Adolf”, 9/11/2002)

“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.“ (Ann Coulter in a New York Observer interview, 8/20/2002)

Enough said.

She’s a dangerous, reactionary idiot whose mouth vomits whatever hatred her pea brain is contemplating at the moment.

Anyone who considers anything she says without serious reflection is simply “not thinking”.

Another personal favorite of mine is how Ann Coulter attributes the fall of the former Soviet Union to Ronald Reagan…he was just the lucky idiot in charge when they went broke. There was 40 prior years of politics involved in it’s bankruptcy that seems to escape her revisionist views of history. That addle brained actor couldn’t orchestrate the tying of his own shoes, let alone the fall of a super power. Yet she sings his praises as savior of the free world whenever possible. Her revisionist history lesson to the “uneducated masses” on McCarthyism are not suprising to me. What suprises me is that so many supposedly highly educated professionals buy her crap.

Ann, Go sell crazy someplace else. I ain’t buying.

Rahjur

I don�t much care for pundits on either side of the political spectrum.  I wouldn�t mind giving Ann Coulter a nice spanking, but that�s as far as my interest in her goes.  I take slight exception to the comment you made about Reagan:
�Another personal favorite of mine is how Ann Coulter attributes the fall of the former Soviet Union to Ronald Reagan�he was just the lucky idiot in charge when they went broke.�

Actually that would have been GHW Bush who was the lucky idiot in charge.  What specifically did 40 years of �politics� have to do with the fall of the Soviets and why only 40 years?  I just want to try to understand where you�re coming from. Until about the time of the Carter administration, we pretty much played the same old game with the comrades.  From my observations during the time, Reagan�s policies had a great deal to do with finishing off the Soviets.  To use a WWII analogy, the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway was the turning point in the Pacific Theater.  Japanese forces obviously were not totally defeated, but it was when the initiative shifted in our favor.

Reagan saw opportunities to undermine the Soviets and took advantage of them.  There were many contributing factors to the Soviet�s demise, but recall that Ronnie �Raygun� was the guy who increased defense spending and significantly modernized the military.  Some of the things he did to pressure the Soviets were:

Resurrected the B-1 bomber, which was canceled during the Carter administration

Stationed intermediate range nuclear missiles in England and on the European continent

Upgraded ground launched and submarine launched strategic nuclear platforms

Pushed for a 600-ship Navy

Supported the Afghans against the Soviet invasion there (boy did that come back and bite us in the ass!)  Soviet military spending increased significantly during that period.

The comrades had to divert too many resources to counter us and ultimately spent themselves out of existence.  The Soviet system was inefficient and corrupt and doomed to failure from the beginning.  Clearly they didn�t intentionally cause their own demise, they were kind of helped along by several US administrations, most prominently Reagan�s.  Having lived through it, I�m a little dumbfounded by your assertion that Reagan just happened to be the guy in charge.  I never saw more significant political and military pressure applied to the Soviets than I did during Reagan�s terms.

It�s unfortunate that people label Reagan as an irrational warmonger and dismiss his accomplishments as incidental to his �lust for blood�.  He just thought that a strategy of engaging the Soviets head-on, through intense military and political pressure, was key to defeating them.  It appears that he was right�

Hey guys—let me join in the fray

*rolling up sleeves*

First off, I think it very telling that Ann is calling for the actuall killing, ie bodily harm, of people who don’t agree with her—and that 3,500 conservatives exploded with applause when she said it.

Seems to be a conservative way of life—let’s refer to the Civil Rights movement shall we?

Non violent protestors were shot out, and beaten simply for wanting to be treated like human beings.

Wow—how loving kind and compassionate.

How horribly misunderstood were they…?

I stole this post from another forum—and it echoes my sentiments perfectly:

If Coulter were a liberal and said all the vile things she says in reference to conservatives, some conservative whack-job would have shot her long ago.

For some reason, however, liberals don’t seem to have any violent nutcases who brutalize the people on the other side.

Examples:

Anti-abortion freaks are known for harassing clinic staff and patients, and even killing them or blowing up the clinics.

On the flip side, I’ve not heard of any liberals who go to the anti-abortionists’ churches and blow those up, or harass people trying to enter the church by showing them pictures of children murdered in holy wars.

The KKK is undoubtedly conservative. They’re known for harassing blacks & jews, killing them, and generally spreading the seeds of hatred under the banner of “racial pride” (I guess in order to be proud of something, you are required to hate everything else. So if I’m proud of my homemade chocolate chip cookies, I have a duty to my cookies to go out and destroy all other cookies? Seems kind of stupid to me? Why not enjoy ALL cookies instead?)

The only black group I can think of with an anti-white, violent slant were the Black Panthers, and they didn’t do a fraction of the damage that the KKK has done. They were also a reaction to the KKK… One could argue that had there been no KKK, there would be no Black Panthers.

Gay-bashers. People who kill homosexuals for being homosexual are inevitably conservative. I have yet to hear of a liberal homosexual killing a straight person because they were straight.

It seems to me that all the truly intolerant, violent, and irrational people are on the conservative side of the fence. Most of the people who believe that the solution to their not liking somebody else is to kill them come from the conservative viewpoint. Ann Coulter herself has suggested that Liberals should be driven to extinction… Rush Limbaugh has suggested that the conservatives kill almost all of the liberals.

And the liberals? We are all too well-adjusted to murder in the name of a difference in ideology… Until it comes down to a do-or-die choice.

All these people calling for the deaths of various liberals (i.e. jews, blacks, homosexuals, feminists, etc.) would do well to remember that when liberals are pushed up against the wall and finally start fighting back, we’re not the passive lambs they like to pretend we are. We have a history of combining brains and love of freedom into a desperate and effective defence against the intolerant and hateful members of our species.

The difference is that we hold back until it’s almost too late, while the conservatives are always violent, greedy and willing to harm others to get what they want. Do we have a killer instinct? No- Instead, Liberals have a last-ditch survival instinct.

Given the type of person who has the former, I’d rather have the latter.

Very interesting points.  I must say though that you don�t properly recount history�both �liberals� whatever they are and �conservatives� whatever that term means, are equally whacked out!

You said:

The KKK is undoubtedly conservative. They�re known for harassing blacks & jews, killing them, and generally spreading the seeds of hatred under the banner of �racial pride�

Well I could have sworn that a senior �liberal� Democrat, Robert Byrd, was once a card carrying member of that �esteemed� organization.  When Lyndon Johnson proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was largely supported by �conservatives� in Congress and vehemently rejected by southern �liberal� Democrats.  In fact, southern Democrats were the driving force in establishing �Jim Crow� laws and denying Blacks their rights.

You said:

It seems to me that all the truly intolerant, violent, and irrational people are on the conservative side of the fence

So it is non-violent to place steel spikes in trees to maim or kill loggers who cut them down?  It�s tolerant to attempt to block the movement of military equipment because �you� disagree with the war?  It�s rational to �Masturbate for Peace�?

I have no time for people on either extreme of the political spectrum.  My personal opinion is I�m glad there are people espousing different beliefs and views�sometimes the liberals are right and sometimes the conservatives are.  When people are into their ideologies, defending the ideology becomes paramount and rational thought is often a casualty.

Being the kind of person I am., I’d rather have people who try to do what’s right, not people trying to prove their positions are right.

Just to clarify, AC is my first 2 initials, nothing to do with the 6 foot blonde. (She scares me btw…)

I see the firing back of each side and see very valid points on both sides such as Eric’s “cavity search reference” and Jo’s “Nothing to hide” I agree with both but before I say something that will light a fuse… my political affiliation is none… not even independent… Why you ask…

George Washington fought and pleaded with his fellow forefathers in the idea of DO NOT MAKE POLITICAN FACTIONS!!! (parties) He saw into the future and nailed it on the head… nothing gets done when people blame their rivals for everything… Ms/Mrs. (whatever she maybe) Ann is a perfect example, as well on the liberal spectrum Al Franken, of why we should have listen to our first president.

I personally am white. (I hate bring in race to arguments) And when I say white I mean WHITE… I live in the Sand Hills of Central Kansas and the two big wild plants growing are pot and posion ivy. I nothing against pot or pot smokers… I often find there stoned manner very inspiringly/ humorously hospitable. But forget the pot part… I AM EXTREMELY ALLERGIC TO THE EVIL IVY… Ive spent many of my years inside and away from it during the summer, so when I say I’m White… the Klan would prolly turn me down for recruitment… I’d make them look “impure”... hehe.

What does my creamy-pasty-whiteiness have to do with anything… my former comment on Eric’s and Jo’s vaild points… I dont have anything to hide and will willing let my car be searched by cops if they ask. (My father 25 year with the Dept. of Corrections might attribute to this). I am prolly one of the least likey people to be searched when getting on an airplane if Racial Profiling was the rule of Law. But I would be extremely disappointed/prolly even pissed if I got cavity searched for a random screening. (I’d at least like them to buy me a few drinks first and maybe a phone number afterwards if they were any good… j/k)

It may seem like Ive been ranting on and making no sense.. but there is a method to my madness… I saw the very hostile messages vollied back and forth between “Liberals & Conservatives” on the above posts. That is a problem, nothign will get done when the other side blames everything on their rivals, and the history books need a fall guy/patsy to point its finger at. (Look at the 9/11 communication failure between the FBI/CIA/NSA etc… Spent Umpteen Million $$$ on searching for who’s failure it was when that money could be used for work in preventing this again and/or into Homeland Security to patch up all Agency loopholes/cracks in communication…

The method to my madness is very simple: (All the following pertains to Liberals & Conservatives)FUCK MINOR DETAILS!!! Grow some balls on each side take Half the Blame, Acknowledge the other sides successes and good ideas (dont point out the little shit/character flaw type things, only promotes animosity) and at the very least (Allah, Odin, Zues, Jesus, Sheeva, etc. forbid) act like you’ll LET BY-GONES BE BY-GONES When you don’t, or at least the very least make it appear, that a grudge won’t be held… IT EASES TENSION… (Another ice breaker/tension stress-dropper thingy-ma-bob I use(d) is humor. And not in a sarcastic “Fuck you/Suck my dick” manner…

I hope I made some sense in my Heathen Idiology of Mutual Respect and (I guess) Pacifism/Pot Smoking Hippie/Love, Peace & Chicken Grease Rant…

But in the very likely chance I am wrong, full of shit, and should shut up… just let me know…

The view of history that simplistically treats McCarthy as a demon or fool on a “witchhunt” relies on a discredited version of history that paints McCarthy as one who hunted for Communists and spies that didnt exist.  That view has been dramatically disproven by the release of KGB files and the opening of spy documents (such as the Venona transcripts) that shows that American Communists actively assisted Soviet intelligence efforts in the United States and elsewhere.  Senator Joe McCarthy confronted government officials engaging in a concealment of communist involvement,  and uncovered an excessively lax security posture with regards to Communists in sensitive U.S. Government posts.  We now know that Alger Hiss, a high level State Department official in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations,  was indeed a Communist and a Soviet spy, and that the Venona files reveal several hundred Soviet agents in the US Govt,  so the fears of anti-Communists like McCarthy were well-founded.

Arthur Herman, in his is new book, “Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator,“, goes some way in restoring balance to our views on McCarthy from the familar broad-brush phony treatment of him as a bogeyman.  He says that the accuracy of McCarthy’s charges “was no longer a matter of debate,“ that they are “now accepted as fact.“  And The New York Post�s Eric Fettmann has noted:  �growing historical evidence underscores that, whatever his rhetorical and investigative excesses � and they were substantial � McCarthy was a lot closer to the truth about Communism than were his foes.�(1)

(1) (source:  http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=2386)

Here is a more detailed examination of these points:

1. Were Communists in Government a real security threat?  Was Soviet spying and influence a danger? Yes and Yes!
The Venona transcripts prove that many (perhaps in the hundreds) of Communists in the US Government were spies for Stalin’s USSR.  Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, which in the 1950s the Left claimed were being falsely accused, were indeed spies for the USSR and gave the atomic bomb and other deadly secrets to the USSR.  Alger Hiss was the most senior traitor in the US Government since Benedict Arnold, yet the left defended him and defamed his accusers, for 50 years. The Venona transcripts identified over 300 spies for the USSR that infiltrated the US Government, over 100 of them named.  In many cases, the Soviet spies were commited Communists.

Some examples: “ The 1940s Democrat Congressman Sam Dickstein (D-NY) it has been discovered was a Soviet agent (codename was crook). ... Harold Glasser, a US Treasury Department official (code-named Ruble) who passed scores of key State Department and Treasury policy documents to Soviet intelligence.“
http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/books/weinstein_vassiliev.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dyk.html
http://intellit.muskingum.edu/spycases_folder/venonaa-c.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html
“The Venona Secrets:  Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors,“ (Regnery, 608 pp, $29.95).

2.  But did McCarthy help to uncover real security risks to the US?  The claims that the targets of McCarthy were innocents or the wrong ones is false.

“Any list of identified communists uncovered by McCarthy would have to include Lauchlin Currie, Gustavo Duran, Theodore Geiger, Mary Jane Keeney, Edward Posniak, Haldore Hanson, John Carter Vincent, Owen Lattimore, Edward Rothschild, Irving Peress, and Annie Lee Moss.
... McCarthy also exposed scores of others who were causing harm to national security from their posts in the State Department, the Pentagon. The McCarthy probe resulted in the removal or further investigation by the FBI of 77 employees and a complete revamping of the security system at the GPO. Of the 110 names that McCarthy gave the Tydings Committee to be investigated, 62 of them were employed by the State Department at the time of the hearings. The committee cleared everyone on McCarthy’s list, but within a year the State Department started proceedings against 49 of the 62. By the end of 1954, 81 of those on McCarthy’s list had left the government either by dismissal or resignation.“
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm

Take the case of Owen Lattimore: “Lattimore had been Roosevelt’s key advisor on China policy. Yet Evans showed evidence from 5,000 pages of FBI files on him—files released only a few years ago to the public, although the White House had access to them.  However, evidence before the committee showed that Lattimore had supported Soviet policy at every turn, even declaring that the Stalin purge trials in Russia, “sound like democracy to me.“ With then-Vice President Henry Wallace in Russia, Lattimore compared concentration camps to the Tennessee Valley Authority, and later urged Washington to abandon China to communism and to withdraw from Japan and Korea.“
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jmc.htm

Owen Lattimore was rightly accused of “losing China” for his actions.  The loss of China led to the loss of over 50,000 Americans defending the Korean peninsula against the million-strong Red Chinese Army fighting with the North Koreans,  so to say his actions were did not unmine America and had benign consequences would be very foolish.

“It was also during the mid-to-late 1940s that communist sympathizers in the State Department played a key role in the subjugation of mainland China by the Reds. “It is my judgment, and I was in the State Department at the time,“ said former Ambassador William D. Pawley, “that this whole fiasco, the loss of China and the subsequent difficulties with which the United States has been faced, was the result of mistaken policy of Dean Acheson, Phil Jessup, [Owen] Lattimore, John Carter Vincent, John Service, John Davies, [O.E.] Clubb, and others.“ Asked if he thought the mistaken policy was the result of “sincere mistakes of judgment,“ Pawley replied: “No, I don’t.“
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm

3. The US State Department had been compromised by Communist infiltration in the 1940s, and McCarthy brought that serious problem to light:

“Communist infiltration of the State Department began in the 1930s. On September 2, 1939, former communist Whittaker Chambers provided Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle with the names and communist connections of two dozen spies in the government, including Alger Hiss. Berle took the information to President Roosevelt, but FDR laughed it off. Hiss moved rapidly up the State Department ladder and served as an adviser to Roosevelt at the disastrous 1945 Yalta Conference that paved the way for the Soviet conquest of Central and Eastern Europe. Hiss also functioned as secretary-general of the founding meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco, helped to draft the UN Charter, and later filled dozens of positions at the UN with American communists before he was publicly exposed as a Soviet spy by Whittaker Chambers in 1948.

The security problem at the State Department had worsened considerably in 1945 when a merger brought into State thousands of employees from such war agencies as the Office of Strategic Services, the Office of War Information, and the Foreign Economic Administration - all of which were riddled with members of the communist underground. J. Anthony Panuch, the State Department official charged with supervising the 1945 merger, told a Senate committee in 1953 that “the biggest single thing that contributed to the infiltration of the State Department was the merger of 1945. The effects of that are still being felt.“ In 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall and Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson engineered the firing of Panuch and the removal of every key member of his security staff.

In June 1947, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee addressed a secret memorandum to Marshall, calling to his attentiom a condition that developed and still flourishes in the State Department under the administration of Dean Acheson. It is evident that there is a deliberate, calculated program being carried out not only to protect communist personnel in high places but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity. On file in the department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States which involves a large number of State Department employees, some in high official positions.

The memorandum listed the names of nine of these State Department officials and said that they were “only a few of the hundreds now employed in varying capacities who are protected and allowed to remain despite the fact that their presence is an obvious hazard to national security.“ On June 24, 1947, Assistant Secretary of State John Peurifoy notified the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that ten persons had been dismissed from the department, five of whom had been listed in the memorandum. But from June 1947 until McCarthy’s Wheeling speech in February 1950, the State Department did not fire one person as a loyalty or security risk. In other branches of the government, however, more than 300 persons were discharged for loyalty reasons alone during the period from 1947 to 1951.“
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm

4. What about the abuses of “McCarthyism”? Communists in Government posed real security risks, and as Sen McCarthy pointed out: “There is no reason why men who chum with communists, who refuse to turn their backs on traitors, and who are consistently found at the time and place where disaster strikes America and success comes to international communism, should be given positions of power in government.“

Here is what some Government workers who were faced with :

TESTIMONY OF HOWARD FAST (ACCOMPANIED BY HIS COUNSEL, BENEDICT WOLF)

Mr. Cohn. Mr. Fast, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?
Mr. Fast. I must refuse to answer that question, claiming my rights and protection under the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.9

Is this an unfair question to ask a US Government employee?  Was it an unfair question to ask during the Korean war, when American
soldiers were fighting and dying in a war against a Communist military from China, North Korea and the USSR? Well, some Communists seemed to think so, this is why Owen Lattimore invented the term “McCarthyism”, to discredit and mischaracterize the demand for loyalty among US Government officials as an assualt on free speech. It was not.  McCarthy was not concerned we any citizen’s views, he was concerned with the views of those who could betray secrets or influence American foreign policy.

4. Didnt McCarthy go too far in attacking the Army?  No!  McCarthy was investigating real security lapses at Monmouth bases, that were not properly attended to by the Army.  The US Government knew Soviet spy Julius Rosenberg had recruited friends to work for the Soviets, many of whom were apparentely at the Monmouth Army base, and so were the targets of questioning and investigation. But the Army was covering up rather than cleaning up this situtation.  McCarthy’s investigation into it went up against powers larger than he was in Eisenhower and the Defense Dept,  and in alliance with Democrats, they used it to destroy him.

But after McCarthy was destroyed politically,  even his enemies did know that security at Monmouth had been compromised:

“The Army Signal Corps installation at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey was one of the nation’s most vital security posts, since the three research centers housed there were engaged in developing defensive devices designed to protect America from an atomic attack. Julius Rosenberg, who was executed in 1953 for selling U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, worked as an inspector at Fort Monmouth from 1940 to 1945 and maintained his Signal Corps contacts for at least another two years after that. From 1949 to 1953, the FBI had been warning the Army about security risks at Fort Monmouth, but the Army paid little attention to the reports of subversion until the McCarthy investigation began in 1953.

During 1953 and 1954, the McCarthy Committee, acting on reports of communist infiltration from civilian employees, Army officers, and enlisted personnel, heard 71 witnesses at executive sessions and 41 at open hearings. The Army responded by suspending or discharging 35 persons as security risks, but when these cases reached the Army Loyalty and Screening Board at the Pentagon, all but two of the suspected security risks were reinstated and given back pay. McCarthy demanded the names of the 20 civilians on the review board and, when he threatened to subpoena them, the Eisenhower Administration, at a meeting in Attorney General Herbert Brownell’s office on January 21, 1954, began plotting to stop McCarthy’s investigations once and for all.

Virtually all of those suspended were eventually restored to duty at Fort Monmouth and anti-McCarthyites have cited this as proof that McCarthy had failed once again to substantiate his allegations. But vindication of McCarthy came later, when the Army’s top-secret operations at Fort Monmouth were quietly moved to Arizona. In his 1979 book With No Apologies, Senator Barry Goldwater explained the reason for the move:

Carl Hayden, who in January 1955 became chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee of the United States Senate, told me privately Monmouth had been moved because he and other members of the majority Democratic Party were convinced security at Monmouth had been penetrated. They didn’t want to admit that McCarthy was right in his accusations. Their only alternative was to move the installation from New Jersey to a new location in Arizona.“”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no18/vo12no18_mccarthy.htm

It is foolish indeed to pretend that the Army is immune to having spies in its ranks, even today.
Muslim Army Chaplain Yee, has just been charged with espionage in connection with his counseling of Gitmo Al Quaeda suspects:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030919-105619-9614r.htm

5.  Given the prevalence of hundreds of Commnist spies in Government, and the record of administration officials failing to maintain security, why the destructive attitude towards a man like Senator McCarthy who wanted to stop it?  Joe McCarthy was hated and denounced not because he smeared innocent people, but because he identified guilty people, and because he exposed lapses in the security procedures in the US Government, embarrassing Government officials.  McCarthy’s own faults and excesses gave McCarthy’s enemies in the executive branch the ammunition to bring him down.
“Professor Arthur Herman. His new book, “Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator,“ ...  shows the vindication of most of McCarthy’s charges. Herman, who is also coordinator of the Smithsonian’s Western Heritage Program, said that the accuracy of McCarthy’s charges “was no longer a matter of debate,“ that they are “now accepted as fact.“ However, the term “McCarthyism” still remains in the language.“
Asked whether McCarthy had understood all the forces arrayed against him, Herman said no, that McCarthy hadn’t realized he’d be fighting against much of the Washington establishment. President Truman was fearful that exposures would reflect on key Democrat officials, he said, and big media and the academic world were very leftist, a heritage of the Depression and World War II. High government officials also feared investigations of their past appointments and associations with people who turned out to be communists or sympathizers.“
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jmc.htm

See also Arthur Herman’s book and the various reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684836254/104-8630515-5712732?v=glance

6. The real relevance of McCarthy to today: McCarthyism was a serious attempt to remove from positions of influence the advocates of communism, the willing supporters of communism and communists, and persons who would prevent the removal of those who give aid and comfort to the enemies of America.  It’s a serious question, because just as we faced it with Communism in the Cold War 1950s, we face it with Jihadism today.
An analogous situation would be if an al-Qaeda or Hezbollah sympathizers were working in the State Department or another sensitive agency of government today and keeping such affiliation secret. Joe McCarthy demonstrated the fact that Communists had no more of a right work in our government than Nazis or a Klansmen or affiliates to terrorist organizations.  Do Jihadists?  If today, someone ‘plead the fifth’ on whether they were a member of Al Quaeda, or Hamas, or an islamic Jihadist organization, would we let them remain in sensitive positions in the Government?  No, we’d remove them and rightly so.

7.  The real more balanced story on McCarthy is now out there, raised by Conservatives who are challenging Liberals to own up to “McCarthyism is evil” as a fable:

Ann Coulter’s new book “Treaton” is based partly on the theme of rehabiliting McCarthy after 50 years of demonization:
“McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. Soviet spies in the government were not a figment of right-wing imaginations. He was tilting at an authentic Communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party.“  -Ann Coulter, Treason. 

Medford Evans said: “The restoration of McCarthy � is a necessary part of the restoration of America, for if we have not the national character to repent of the injustice we did him, nor in high places the intelligence to see that he was right, then it seems unlikely that we can or ought to survive.“

In summary:
The strawman view of McCarthy and McCarthyism as 100% wrong and a dangerous force in American politics is 100% wrong. Describing McCarthyism as a “witchhunt” is also false - there really was a serious problem of Communist infiltration into the US Government, in particular the State Department, at that time.  It posed real security risks and real spies (many of whom were never caught) operated for years in sensitive posts.  The demonization of McCarthyism for 50 years has served mainly as a useful rhetorical cudgel by Liberals against Conservative attempts to point out connections between Liberals and far Leftists and to descredit anti-Communism itself.  But that demonization is a fraud, as anyone who honestly looks at the real historical record can discover.

That’s the problem Patrick. The people that spout McCarthyism the loudest REFUSE to learn the truth beacuse the lie serves their interests better.

I couldn’t stand to read Ann’s book.  Right or wrong.  Too much mud-slinging.  But on most accounts she is right.

But let’s get the liberal (democratic) leadership in this country admit that.  Fat chance. 

And as for the non-violent comments:  Liberals are just as violent as the conservatives.  If you steal money from someone you have violated them.  Whether you do it with a gun or taxes.  It seems all the democrats want to do is tax, tax, tax.  I’m sick and tired of paying 45% of my hard earned money in state, federal, local, property and social security taxes. 

I think everyone in this country who earns over $60k per year should stop working for 3 months.  And let the poor hard working people of this country pay all the taxes.  I mean, isn’t everyone who makes over $60k rich?  And if you’re rich, you don’t need to work right?  So we can take 3 months off and let someone else pay the taxes for a change.