Tag: Joseph McCarthy

Posted on

Genuine Witchcraft: Anne Coulter

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?  The smears of decent writes, actors, and politicians?

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.  He was utterly, irredeemably self-serving.

Like Anne Coulter.

Why shouldn’t they apologize for McCarthy? They are reviving McCarthyism. Senator Peter King (Republican) of Nassau County is going to hold hearings into the radicalization of American Muslims. He claims that 80% of American mosques are run by “extremists”, and makes a number of other inflammatory accusations without offering any proof.

Posted on

Tail-Gunner Bill Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley, the famous American conservative with a fake, snotty British accent, has recently published a novel. With an audaciousness rarely seen in the literary community, he has decided to undertake the rehabilitation of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Sure, the rest of the world has come to see McCarthyism as a synonym for bigotry, intolerance, and fanaticism, but Mr. Buckley has decided that he alone can correct that erroneous impression. McCarthy was a hero. He was right. He may well have saved America!

I always feel reassured when conservatives show their true colors. You see, many conservatives seem to have turned their backs on McCarthyism and appear to agree with most people that McCarthyism was a bad thing. In a roundabout way, I think this causes many people to get the warm fuzzies when they see George Bush Jr. on television, talking about compassion, even if they know that the U.S. Treasury can’t print dollars fast enough to keep up with the orgasmic flush being directed to Bush, and the Republican Party, by big corporations.

In case anyone needs a refresher, Senator McCarthy chaired a committee which investigated the penetration of U.S. government agencies, including the army, by communist agents. You really need to see one of the good dramatizations of McCarthy’s tactics (“Fear on Trial” is a good start) to appreciate the man. Not a man to waste his time with obtuse diversions like evidence or due process, he merely smeared people with innuendo or suspicion and bullied corporations, the government, the army, and Hollywood, into destroying the lives of anyone who would not appear before his committee, bow before him, and rat on his or her buddies. He was finally disgraced when even Eisenhower couldn’t stomach him anymore. He died a lonely, broken man, an alcoholic, and left, as his greatest legacy, his name as an adjective.

But Mr. Buckley wants to rehabilitate his image. Did we all miss something? Was Senator McCarthy misunderstood? Did he really save America? Can you believe Billy Buckley Jr.’s version of events?

Buckley describes, in his novel, an old black man who asks if it is true that the International Communist Conspiracy is seeking to undermine the U.S. government. Yes, of course. Then why, he asks, don’t we just run them out of town, like we used to? Buckley thinks this is the right attitude. Why don’t we just run them out of town? And that is Buckley’s real vision of “democracy”. If we don’t like someone, we just run him out of town. And why apply that solution only to communists?

If you like that philosophy, then save a soft spot in your heart for “Tail-gunner” Joe McCarthy. And keep your bags packed. There is always a witch hunt somewhere