Anne Coulter's take:
Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals
denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they
fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as
evil as the Nazis.
Just when decent, intelligent conservatives like David Brooks start to make sense,
it is so reassuring to have demagogues like Anne Coulter around to reassure
us liberals that we are indeed on the right track. We must be, for
heaven's sake, because the opposition sounds like they think there was
nothing wrong with McCarthyism.
So which parts of the liberal "hegemony" on McCarthy were "lies"? The parts about the bullying, the lying
about his war record, the drinking, the wild, undocumented, unproven
allegations?
Unfortunately, there are those who pretend to be astonished and enlightened
when they discover that the Soviet Union, like the U.S., really did have
spies in America in the 1950's, and, therefore, McCarthy was right.
Few things in life are more depressing than the fact that it needs to be
pointed out to some people that what was wrong with McCarthy was not that he
thought there were communists and his opponents thought that there weren't,
which wasn't true in any case. The problem was that his approach to
dealing with communism was to behave exactly how he accused them of
behaving.
As many of his contemporaries observed, McCarthy was probably the best
friend the communists had-- he made opponents of communism look like idiots.
Finally, if Anne Coulter had even the smallest, slightest, sliver of
integrity, she would at least acknowledge that even early on in his career,
McCarthy smeared as communists anyone who disagreed with him over anything.
The cause of anti-communism, which united millions
of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and
independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy … McCarthy addressed a
real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach
to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to
love … Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of
anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet
subversion of American institutions. William Bennett
So says William
Bennett. It's wonderful how conservatives struggle mightily to salvage
some kind of useful propaganda from even the most scurrilous, scabrous,
contemptible expression of their ideals: "legitimate" efforts to
combat communist subversion? "Legitimate". Such as what?
The House Un-American Activities Committee? The blacklist? The
Viet Nam War? The Coups in Guatemala, Iran, Chile? Attempts to
assassinate Fidel Castro? Spying on Daniel Ellsberg? Censoring
American history books? What? Which "legitimate" efforts?
Bennett includes Democrats in his list. How
nice. McCarthy's was famous for accusing anyone who didn't suck up to
him personally of being a communist, terrifying political opponents into
pretending to support him. Bennett survey's the wreckage of McCarthy's
cheap pandering and pronounces himself so pleased that the Democrats so
cheerfully acquiesced. I'm surprised he didn't claim that President
Eisenhower, a conservative Republican who despised McCarthy, and who was
also afraid of being accused of being soft on communism, wasn't really one
of McCarthy's fondest admirers. Really. Seriously.
I can just imagine a Roman Catholic prelate in the
1600's-- it's such a shame that a few Jesuits get carried away and
brought discredit on our legitimate efforts to root out witchcraft...
Amen.
And now the present.
