As is the case with most curmudgeons, I have my pet peeves when it comes to language. Why a peeve could ever have become a ‘pet’ seems obscure, but I’ll bet our readers know (and will share) its source beyond the mere alliteration of those two words, pet and peeve. Most of my little menagerie consists of grammatical errors but some few are in the far corner under the sign which reads “Euthanize These Creepy Words”.
Thus, in passing on to you this sad news, we will not tell you that M. Stanton Evans “passed” because that is not what happened. On March 3rd 2015 in Leesburg Virginia, Mr. Evans died of pancreatic cancer; he was old and wise and full of years, but that cannot have been an easy time. I know this because a beloved aunt died of the same disease.
[Just as we’re supposed to say that death is not death, put “passing”, we’re also supposed to omit the cause of death. To heck with that, I say. Death is simply a next step and it’s easy for some, hard as Hades for others. My view of death is that it is not something we undergo but an event in which we participate, just as birth is. Each coming and going leaves its mark on the universe.]
It’s a trite understatement to say Mr. Evans will be missed. More accurately and even sadder to comprehend is the mournful fact that he won’t be replaced, can’t be replaced. Don’t take my word for it: look around to see if you can spot anyone you’d nominate to take his position. Is there a man or woman of his accomplishments you’d trust to rebuild from the ruins of our current Republican Party? Preferably it would be a man who is making his own way, free of the shackles of the poisoned flow of mainstream politics and media, a person wise enough to articulate a compelling view of the future in the face of our present dystopia.
Back in 1960 Stan Evans, along with Russell Kirk’s wife, Ann, co-authored the Sharon Statement (see below the fold). This event occurred at a meeting of the minds in Sharon, Connecticut (thus the name) where William Buckley lived. While the hippies straggled into the New Age, dropping out and tuning in to their own fascinating navels, this New Guard was crafting a kind of Constitution for Conservatives.
Look around again: do you see an Evans, a Buckley, a Kirk? I don’t either. There isn’t anyone remaining who could collaborate on a similar document for the 21st Century. For a while, I’d hoped it would be Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader in Congress. He had it all: persuasive, attractive, intelligent and with an inside line to the power brokers. It is sad almost beyond the telling, but this golden boy with feet of brass was booted out of his seat by his own constituents. They replaced him with an obscure economics professor.
Why? Because Cantor quit listening; he promoted massive immigration, as though the views of those voters who kept him in place through seven terms weren’t worth his time; they didn’t want what he did and he thought he was powerful enough to ignore what his people wanted. So when he lost one of the most secure Republican seats in Congress due to his own immense hubris, he stomped off the playing field. Refusing to finish his term, he signed on to a $3.4 million-a-year job as a Wall Street bankster.
The Tea Party in his district defeated Cantor. The Republicans inside the Beltway, especially the RNC, would destroy the Tea Party if they could. Their refusal to employ the talents and resources of these grassroots activists led to Romney’s defeat, too. [Democrats don’t have that problem. They pay close attention to ACORN and feed them lots of money].
Many of you may remember the “barroom brawl” (Andrew McCarthy’s inapt and condescending description) following the publication of Diana West’s book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character
When Frank Gaffney’s group, the Center for Security Policy, awarded Diana West its 2013 “Mightier Pen Award” it was Stan Evans, Diana’s mentor, who introduced her:
Now he is gone and this is a darker world than it already was.
The projects Stan Evans founded and in which he participated are either finished or diminished without his innate wisdom. Let us begin the sad task of sifting through those remains. Let us mourn and then begin again the unglamorous task of cleaning out the Augean stables known as our Political Right Wing.
The Sharon Statement of 1960 follows.
The Sharon Statement is the founding statement of principles of the Young Americans for Freedom. The views expressed in this statement, while not considered “traditional conservative principles” at the time, played a significant role in influencing Republican leaders in the 1980s.
IN THIS TIME of moral and political crisis, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths.
WE, as young conservatives, believe:
THAT foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
THAT liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
THAT the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
THAT when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;
THAT the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
THAT the genius of the Constitution – the division of powers – is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;
THAT the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
THAT when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation, that when it takes from one to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;
THAT we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies…
THAT the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;
THAT the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with this menace; and
THAT American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?”
Note that the incubation period for these ideas to percolate down through the conservatives running for office — e.g., Ronald Reagan — was about twenty years. I don’t think we have the luxury of that much time now.
Rest in peace, Mr. Evans. You earned the full measure of our gratitude.
Diana West’s book was as significant as Chamber’s Witness …another massive black cloak taken off our history. I was so proud of Stanton Evans for his immediate support for Diana. No delay or hesitation waiting for peer approval. I think what happened to guys like Horowitz was that accepting her facts meant a total re-writing of their life’s work. And they were too old to do this. They did not have the energy to re-think their settled opinions re Roosevelt, Hopkins, Yalta, etc. But I guess there could have been some more nefarious motivations. What a remarkable astonishing event, The Diana West Betrayal. I think she is safe here at GofV. Geez, I would love to know what really happened here. Everyone should keep writing about this. Maybe someone will crack.
Agreed re the significance of “Witness” & “Betrayal”.
Wouldn’t we all love to know what REALLY happened here. The Baron wrote two essays, with time between for a trip to Warsaw and time to think.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2013/09/American-betrayed-part-1/
and this one, which was a wrenching experience to write, as I watched BB go through the process:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2013/11/american-betrayed-part-2-planet-x/
Until some new information is revealed -not bloody likely in the case of the perpetrators – there doesn’t seem to be much more to say.
Unfortunately the ugly pushback changed for many obsverers their felllow-feeling for those American Jews on the Right who appeared to move as one organism to repulse and smother Diana’s ideas. It was one of the ugliest things I’ve seen in decades. BB called the phenomenon “Planet X” – a dark, sucking hole out there somewhere which has no compunction about the talent and resources scattered and destroyed in order to maintain…maintain WHAT, exactly?
I sense the dark absolute of primal fear, so primal it’s palpable.
i think it might be a bit much to say that “american jews on the right moved as one organism.” we’re talking about how many jews? horowitz, radosh and a few others. their reaction was utterly bizarre to this american jew and remains so, and it’s great that g.o.v. has kept on the story, and i hope will get to the bottom of it some day. fortunately horowitz does exemplary work otherwise and no doubt votes for the same candidates as most g.o.v. readers and writers. one of the outright weird things about his/their treatment of diana west is how out of character it seemed to be.
I don’t often resort to language like the phrase you quoted, but when I wrote that I was again back in Planet X land. Not “a few others” but many of them and in the most bizarre ways:
Clare Lopez wrote something for Gatestone Institute, kind of her usual contribution. In passing, she mentioned the Betrayal book. Being a busy person, she probably had no idea of the building storm until one of those waves knocked her down. Her essay went out on the daily Gatestone email offering and when I saw her comment I was most heartened. I copied it from the email to send to Ms. West. But when I clicked on the URL, it brought me to the main page. That essay was gone – disappeared in a few short hours. Shortly afterward, so was Clare Lopez -gone from Gatestone, I mean. No notice that she wasn’t to write about Betrayal, just the consequences for doing so.
But back up a few days (I’ve lost track of the timeline after this long hiatus from the nightmare) to my first encounter with these strange doings…the first I read in a long series of strange essays on the subject was a slam by Clarice Feldman on the American Thinker website. One of those I haven’t-read-the-book-but-it-stinks “reviews”; these were eventually to bloom like flowers after the rain.
That same Sunday afternoon I happened upon David Horowitz being given what-for on Twitter by a reader. And DH was right in there, responding. It brought back the strange behavior of Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs – suddenly appearing in the comments and saying strange stuff about the Counterjihad as he began his return to the Left. He was after all, a 9/11 “conservative” and once enough time passd, he was ready to go home…the behavior of Horowitz & Co. was bizarrely similar. For example, Horowitz got into the comment section here on Gates of Vienna to trash the book. He’d never been here before and hasn’t been back since. It was more than passing strange.
New English Review’s publisher came out openly against Diana’s book and on the side of Horowitz. No reasoning, simply a case of “that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Leave me alone about it.” That’s a rough approximation.
There were many others but I stopped paying attention. Oh, wait – there’s another: many venues – like Pajamas Media – published Radosh but refused to give Diana equal time. Or like Breitbart, which promptly published Radosh and Co. but were sloooow to permit Diana to respond.
It remains strange that a small website like ours became the rallying point for “Betrayal”. Many fearless people – e.g., Edward Cline, Stacy McCain (“the other McCain”) – came forward but others tip-toed by. Being veterans of trivializing blog wars (Chas Johnson being the prime one but not the only one) we weren’t surprised by the vitriol but we were indeed surprised about the quarters from which it came.
As you well know, there are a lot of wealthy Jewish conservatives. In this instance with Diana’s book, almost without exception they ran for cover or they sided with Horowitz & Radosh. Some innocent people were hurt – Clare Lopez was the most obvious and egregious example. She’s now a fellow at the Center for Security Policy.
I’m only guessing but I’ll bet CSP took a monetary hit for Frank Gaffney’s principled stand with Diana West. Mr. Gaffney really *is* courageous. This is just one example. Another is his repeated call-out of Grover Norquist long before anyone else dared to bell that cat. Such principled public positions put him in a higher category than the scared others. He had just as much to lose as the others, but instead of hedging his bets and remaining silent he did the principled thing. No doubt those decisions cost his organization some funding.
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Beyond being an Israelophile, I don’t divide the world into Jews vs. goyim; such thinking is foreign to me. But in the case of Diana West’s book and our defense of her writing, I was forced to think about such things. Ugly things. I came to the conclusion that the scars inflicted on the Jews of this world by Europe over the millenia, and by World War II in particular are permanent damage down on a DNA and cellular level. Those scars are felt individually, familially, and as a group. The result is a transfer of fear from generation to generation, world without end. Thus the wrongs individual Jews do is lost in the larger wrong experienced by Jews at the DNA level.
Just because I don’t “belong” doesn’t mean I can’t admire Jewish accomplishment. But I now know full well – in a way I didn’t know when we first hung out our “We Stand with Israel” sign on the front page – that there is an existential estrangement that no amount of naive good will on my part can surmount. Does that make me feel angry or foolish? No. But it has opened my eyes and my mouth. I see now, and I speak to what I perceive and what I experience.
BTW, in more ways than one the fate of the West hinges on Israel’s survival. That arrangement is an absolutely hilarious karmic fact. Hilarious, that is, if you like your humor dark, which I do.
Thank you for mentioning that, Mr. Meldman.
Dymphna, I’m trying to understand your post above. First, are you implying that there is some Jewish embarrassment as to their role in the story of American Betrayal? Was it a heavy role? [I don’t know who was Jewish and I don’t care.]
I guess that might explain the pushback, but no one that I know, or Diana herself, put any emphasis on the religion or ethnicity of the so-called betrayers, i..e. the pro-Russian occult US government policy makers who were swaying our actions. Maybe Jewish folks do feel bad about this? Hmmm, perhaps we should just let it go and forget about it?
Now you have gone and made the puzzle even more difficult and interesting. Damn. How many people do we devastate in order to make history accurate?
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Admin note: your comment deserves a thoughtful answer; unfortunately, this reply section has hit its bottom so I’ll have to snip this out and reply to you further down. BUT…before I do that, even more than your comment BB deserves supper before midnight. Thus I’m going to triage here: supper first and answer later. “Later” might not be till tomorrow (depending on fatigue levels) but I do want to reply to you and will do so as soon as I can. There is also another post that has been waiting for two days…
I will return. ~!D
Could it be that both the West’s and Israel’s fates are intertwined because of the similarities between the whites and Jews? I refer to the self-hate among many whites who have been so indoctrinated and who have become demoralized by the lie that whites are evil, the same kind of self-hate feeling that seems to preoccupy modern secular Jews. In addition, as with Jews, liberalism has taken hold of the mind of probably most whites.
it doesn’t get any better than clare lopez, frank gaffney, diana west, dymphna and the baron. ms. lopez’s rude and unprofessional and unethical treatment at the hands of gatestone was gatestone’s loss and ms. lopez’s and mr. gaffney’s center for security policy’s gain.
you wrote, “as you know very well, there are a lot of wealthy jewish conservatives.” i did not know that, very well or otherwise, but i’m happy to learn that there are a lot of wealthy conservatives of any stripe.
ms. west’s “betrayal” book is very important on many levels. if some people disagree with that they should (a) read the book, and (b) say, “west is wrong about x,y,z.” and leave it at that. that the book was employed as a prop in some sort of personal melodramatic narrative was not kosher and cried out for therapy. but the greater sin of Horowitz, Radosh and the rest (i say there are “a few” of them, you say “a lot”) is that they have made enemies of their friends at a time when we must all hang together.
btw, it is not the conservative jews who worry me, whether or not they pass down a paranoia from one generation to the next; sometimes only the paranoid survive. what leaves my blood cold are the see-no-evil, be-nice liberal jews whistling happily and striving vainly, delusionally to make friends with their enemies.
Thank you for speaking what you see and perceive, dymphna.
Greetings, all — just joining the conversation and wanted to make a quick correction on one of Dymphna’s points above. It’s so hard to keep it all straight — and no other website has even attempted to the tremendous (and infinitely appreciated) extent that Gates of Vienna has in its continuing chronicles of what is, I do believe, not just a story that happened to me, but something with a larger point due to the cracks the story reveals and what we may see in them. Still mulling that larger point, of course, but in the meantime …
Dymphna writes:
“There were many others but I stopped paying attention. Oh, wait – there’s another: many venues – like Pajamas Media – published Radosh but refused to give Diana equal time. Or like Breitbart, which promptly published Radosh and Co. but were sloooow to permit Diana to respond.”
In fact, PJ did run two sides of the debate (also a positive review by our friend Andy Bostom) — namely, a fine defense of me and call for civility by the estimable David Solway — and I am quite certain that had I wished to respond at PJ, PJ would have made room for me. To be sure, what Dymphna describes happened at American Thinker on two dreadful occasions. National Review was rather slow in responding to me, but did in the end run two replies, I think it was, to “Comrade” Black. First Things, Powerline, etc., were completely in Radosh’s thrall — no other opinions permitted — and I quite amazed that New Criterion did not invite me to reply to my very own *symposium.* (More on that here: http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2750/No-Regrets.aspx )
Breitbart is another story — in a positive way. Before the flamethrowing even started, Breitbart ran a five part series that I wrote based on findings from American Betrayal. Later, Breitbart provided me with a giant internet platform from which to respond to the mud and fire in The Rebuttal (22,000 words), which ran in 3 parts. (I later published it as a book and ebook.) Breitbart’s executive Steve Bannon had me on his radio show to talk about the attacks. I think I wrote one or two other controversy-related op-eds for Breitbart as well. They ran the other side, too. Indeed, it was for Breitbart that Horowitz wrote his immortal: “She should not have written this book” — which is emblazoned on the cover of The Rebuttal.
Breitbart’s openness to running my responses, I do believe, was a game-changer — and most unexpected by the other side. Independent as I am in every way (including no institutional support or institutional home), I might have been expected only to respond at my tiny website vs. Frontpage. Breitbart is much bigger than Frontpage. That was my good fortune.
Breitbart also ran Vladimir Bukovsky’s extraordinary review-defenses of American Betrayal — “Why Academics Hate Diana West” and “West’s `American Betrayal’ Will Make History.” By the way, Bukovsky submitted the former essay to Frontpage first, and they turned the great man down!
On the general point of Jewishness being the driving factor, I do not see this as the trigger. It may be used by my detractors to manipulate others but from the backstory I am privy to by some who were personally lobbied by *them*, this did not come up. I have heard from these sources it was all about not wanting to revisit (rehabilitate) McCarthy and tear conservatives apart (huh?), or, to another person, it was not wanting to “open up” the US relationship with Stalin that were their *real* reasons — different, of course, from everything that written (slimed) about me and the book.
Maybe it’s time to write about this, too. Meanwhile, it seems appropriate to close by raising the *deMcCarthyization* of Stan Evans’ life in many “conservative” eulogies, described here:
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3032/Remembering-Stan-3-The-Anti-McCarthy-Tripwire.aspx
All kindest wishes.
Diana
Thank you for those links.
When first came across the outcry over Diana West’s book I was baffled as can be and avoided it like the briar patch tar baby. Up was down and white was black so to speak. At first I attributed it to writers stepping on each others emotional corns.
But now it appears Diana pulled back the cover on parts of our history that many so-called Conservatives would prefer to be kept buried and smoked out a few moles as well.
As for Horowitz, it appears he’s not what he seems to be given his attacks on West. Something Diana wrote must have really freaked him out to no end. Makes me wonder if he’s a mole of sorts.
Very interesting material.
“Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither; ripeness is all.” [King Lear, 5. 2]
I enjoy your writting. I always learn somthing .This time about a true humanbeing .
Thank you
Margit
That statement brings a tear to the eye, and no mistake.
West’s book is an attack (in effect) on the whole WW II meme that we (the allies–Russia was off there-somewhere else) were the ‘good guys’ who beat the ‘bad guys’ (they were only the NAZIs–the Japs get a pass ’cause of we used the BOMB on ’em) with great loss of life and treasure, then we all came home to the GI bill and wasn’t it all wunnerful in the end?
This leaves the black hole of history–what about the Iron Curtain, the horrors of enforced Communism that imprisoned the peoples of Eastern Europe for a couple of generations and murdered its best people? The UN-repatriated POWs of WW II and Korea (a forgotten war), ETC.
It simply CANNOT BE that the whole war/sacrifice/mess went on–for too long simply to ensure Russia and Eurocommiedom came out on top.
Best we just forget the whole thing, and NOT WRITE SUCH A BOOK!
That’s about IT.
Don’t forget that only a member of The Kook Army would believe such a book. So far there are several hundred kooks on the Amazon site for the book and only the same old 20 or so negatives dating back mostly to the perfervid “barroom brawl” – with interesting comments appended to their reviews.
Whenever I write on this subject I like to go to the Amazon site and see how the war is going. The most interesting parts are (1) the new reviews (2) the one-star reviews with the dozens of rebuttals of their one-star bashing underneath them.
*The one-stars are seldom from people who are verified purchasers of the book. Mostly they’re ad hominem attacks. The majority of the one-stars date from August 2013 but there is ONE from 2014. They’re worth reading for the appended rebuttals.
*New readers continue to come in; they’re found in the five-star reviews and are usually verified purchases. They’re gob-smacked by the information. When I looked at the top – i.e., the newest, they’re only a few days old. The news of Stan Evans’ death will no doubt set off another buying round.
Amazon’s review sections take a while to figure out but this one is a special case since the background is polarized politics which is its own weird -and wired – category. Nonetheless interesting though. Well before this book was published I’d become somewhat of an aficionado of Amazon reviews. Amazon sells everything under the sun – at least everything under my little sun – so that for people like me (those who can’t take the rigors of shopping in stores for health reasons) it is important.
I consider Amazon the (semi) invalid’s WalMart, though I don’t think either company would care for the comparison. Even for the few things I buy at WalMart, I check the Amazon reviews first – they’re a great example of distributed wisdom, once you get past the shills on both sides (some people are paid, mostly in the merchandise, to offer a written opinion. They are honest enough to state this in the review, good or bad).
Occasionally when I feel well enough, BB drives Miz Dymphna to WalMart (warning:never go in there on a Saturday, when it’s HellMart ) and I’ll walk around with my list until the pain starts; that’s when I retreat to those motorized chairs. I never go top speed as I end up knocking the merchandise off the endcaps. Backing up one of them is dicey. It’s depressing, though: so much junk piled everywhere. I’ve never been a “window shopper”; the idea of going to any store (bookstores being an exception) to browse through STUFF is my idea of hell. Dante should’ve had a circle composed of window shopping for eternity. Ugh. But perhaps consumerism is a sin of modernity.
I still recommend following up Diana West’s book with the one by Fred Siegel. He outlines what is happening today and why it has its roots before WWI. BTW, the Stan Evans’ video introduction I put up on this post has a wonderful snip where he quotes a young woman reading off a teleprompter who comes to a phrase she calls “World War Eleven”…in other words, she appears to be unfamiliar Roman numerals. (Leftist academia, take a bow).
Fred Siegel. Are you referring to his not yet published book The Revolt Against the Masses?
Not published??? I’ve been linking to and commenting on that book since it came out in January 2014.
And is finally out on Kindle, hooray!
The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class
I cannot find the wonderful, almost hour-long after dinner speech at Manhattan Institute, where he had a question and answer period that was witty, urbane, and so very New York City.
Here’s a brief piece from Fox News last year when he had to schlep around on a small book tour. The interviewer doesn’t add much…
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/multimedia/tv/022514FS/
And here’s the real deal: a long lecture at Hillsdale College by Professor Siegel. He devotes some time to Mencken’s influence on the present day Left:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy1wCUaMPlE
If we want to understand how we got to this point, we have to understand Mencken’s continuing influence on the literati; no, it isn’t a good one. But you have to step back further, to Bismarck (heh- the image the Baron uses for his avatar), to see who influenced Mencken, for the latter loved all things German – neat, orderly, clean, obedient.
HLM is still taught today though he quit writing in 1949 after a stroke. Books about Saint Mencken abound even now. He wasn’t a Communist but he did like the Fabian socialists. What he hated was middle class Main Street America. And for that reason, the Left took him to its bosom. Obama, except that he is black, would have been a favorite of Mencken’s since he too loathes Main Street, Small Town.
From the wiki on Mencken:
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As an admirer of German philosopher Nietzsche, he was a detractor of religion in general, populism, and representative democracy, which he believed was a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors.[2] Mencken was a supporter of scientific progress, skeptical of economic theories and critical of osteopathic and chiropractic medicine.
During and after World War I, he was sympathetic to the Germans, and was very distrustful of British propaganda.[3] Though he deemed Adolf Hitler and his followers “ignorant thugs”, he had strong reservations regarding United States participation in World War II. Mencken, through his wide criticism of actions taken by government, had a strong impact on the American left and the American libertarian movement.[4]
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The Left took to its heart Mencken’s notion of The Booboisie – that’s you and me, average folk.
And this isn’t just information of interest to Americans. Europe was all that was good to American academics and writers in the early part of the 20th century. We imported the silly Fabian ideas and their ilk. Anything American was inferior to our intellectual/academic classes. We needed Europe, and especially England and Germany, to tell us what was worthy of our attention.
Dr. Siegel’s book is a gem. It was there that I (finally!) found the origin of the term “totalitarian democracy”. I first heard if from Caroline Glick in her essay about Norway. But wiki is your friend: just google t.d. and you’ll find an author sadly out of print who was superior to anything Mencken wrote (though Mencken was mordantly witty. Great if you don’t like people much).
That reminds me of a clip from British TV where a teacher asks one of their pupils what was Hitler’s first name … and she replies , “Heil.”
Flintlock, Sam Harris made an interesting point recently, about moral equivalence.
Notwithstanding any reservations over Dresden, Hiroshima etc, or even the behaviour of the Soviets, after WW2 the Western Allies, especially the US, were generous in reconstructing not only the economies, but the political systems of the defeated Axis powers. Partly self-interested? Perhaps; but consider how Germany and Japan behaved in the countries they occupied, and would have done in ours if they’d won. There may be no guys in white hats, but there are shades of grey (possibly fifty? Sorry, couldn’t resist).
Mr Harris extended the analogy to Israel and the “Palestinians”, and how they’d behave after a decisive victory.
I read “Witness” when I was in the US Army in the 1960’s and “American Betrayal” last year. Same story really and the opponents are the same anti-Western statists. Read NR back in the 1960’s and 1970’s and articles by Evans. NR has lost its way and is mostly RINO anymore: Managers of our decline rather than leaders and fighters against the left.
Evans’ books are on my Wish List to buy and read. Hope I live long enough to read them.
Somewhere there is a new Evans, maybe in his late teens, early twenties and about to begin his/her writing career. Hope that is the case.
Many people do not realize that even animals “choose,” i.e., exercise free will. Exercising one’s free will, however, does not equate to simply doing as one pleases. Thinking creatures (more specifically, human beings) have the responsibility of maintaining a respect for the rest of creation.
The Constitution of the United States is the best_ known_ arrangement yet devised for a rightful social order, but is a work in progress. As inventions and movements come into being, rules and laws for responsible order are needed.
The whole world will be free(er) only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States remains secure. …Sort of period.
As for international Communism fifty years ago and both before and after:
As it was a political system based on absolute power, it did not “fall” on either political or military victory over it. It was undermined. I can think of at least one (still very active) religiously motived organization that quietly used the same (generalized) methods to help to do so, and I’m sure there are and were others.
Yesterday (I think) a facebook friend posted an obituary notice for Mr. Evans, but I have never before heard of Mr. Evans and do not feel the least at a loss, which is not to suggest his activities had no worth. Communism was undermined, not openly defeated.
Mr Stanton Evans – I didn’t know him, I’ve read some of him and something about him. I’ve just ordered Ms West’s book and look forward with anticipation to reading it. Both Mr Evans and Ms West are a credit to The United States of America. May God Bless them both.
There is a reason for David Horowitz’s opposition to Diana West’s American Betrayal. It does not involve any perceived inaccuracies in the book. In my research on the Morgenthau Plan I ran into an awful lot of anti-Semitism. People commenting on this period of history see the prominent part played by Jewish individuals as reason to condemn the entire group. This is the “collective guilt” theory. It ignores Jews who opposed the policies promoted by Jews in the administration. If you accept Diana’s West’s interpretation and you believe in collective guilt it is difficult to avoid anti-Semitism. More than likely Horowitz believes in collective guilt. It is the Weltanschauung of the modern West.
Mark H: “after WW2 the Western Allies, especially the US, were generous in reconstructing not only the economies, but the political systems of the defeated Axis powers.” Mark, you might read up on the Morgenthau Plan to get a different perspective.
I knew about the Plan, Mr Dietrich; surely the point is that it wasn’t pursued?
Mark, I have to agree with you. The Morgenthau Plan was not pursued. Neither was the Marshall Plan if you maintain that a complicated plan is not pursued if it is not implemented 100%. The slave labor provisions and the planned famine provisions were implemented, however. I am not trying to boost sales on my book, get it from the library, but read The Morgenthau Plan. It is definitely not a court historians account. By 1947 it had almost achieved its goal of pushing France and Italy into the Soviet orbit.
William Palmer asks of Dymphna above, onMarch 7:
“First, are you implying that there is some Jewish embarrassment as to their role in the story of American Betrayal? Was it a heavy role?”
Answering the second question first: Yes. Overwhelmingly so. The Haynes-Klehr book on the Venona decrypts reveals that an astonishingly proportion of WW2 Soviet agents in the USA were Jewish. In fact identifying the non-Jews is simple because there were so few of them: Lauchlin Currie and Laurence Duggan. There was the Silvermaster ring, the Perlo ring, etc, etc. The names of the Soviet agents in the Treasury Department and several other US government agencies reads like the invitation lists to a Bar Mitzvah party. The Soviet agent who tipped off the Russians about the Venona Program was William Weisband. Two of the most damaging of the top agents, Theodore Hall and Harry Dexter White, changed their surnames from their Jewish birth-names. One wonders how they would have felt and acted if they knew that the Soviet code-name for Jews was “Rats”? (As Herb Romerstein discovered when he researched the Venona Program)
Is there embarrassment amongst the American Jewish community about this? No doubt. But certainly not enough of it. It is not a matter of ascribing collective guilt, but of candid acknowledgement of the facts. The American Jewish community needs to confront this ugly history of treason squarely and deal with it maturely; not least so that Jew-haters don’t perceive a Secret Protocols-type “conspiracy” to hide the facts.
Happily, militating strongly against any Jewish conspiracy, three of the four major authors who have brought the history of Soviet penetration of the WW2 US government (by investigating the history of the Venona program) to the attention of the public have been Jewish: Klehr, Romerstein and Breindel. As is Diana West, who has suffered extraordinary character assassination and vituperation for her bold assessment of that Soviet penetration and its consequences.
I suspect that there was an element of “This is not good for the Jews” in the appalling treatment of Ms West by Messrs Radosh and Horowitz. (Perhaps this also was a factor in Nina Rosenwald sacking Clare Lopez form the Gatestone Institute for her favourable review of Ms West’s book.) Along with the other elements identified by the Baron in the two linked essays of Ms West not being an historian and being a woman.
Curiously Mr Radosh contended dismissively that much of what Ms West wrote in American Betrayal was “not new”, ie already so well known by anybody that knew anything that writing about it in 2013 was just tedious and thus pointless. Akin to say, a book that sought to make a purportedly explosive revelation that Mao, Castro and Pol Pot were all the privileged sons of the landowning class.
Mr Dietrich,
Surely JCS Directive 1067, which established the parameters of how the US Occupation Government administered post-war Germany (until late 1947), deserves a mention in a post regarding any question of whether the Morgenthau Plan was implemented to any extent?
Thanks for that. I’ve just scanned the Wiki version, and hadn’t realised how much was implemented, as you say. They didn’t cover the (intended?) effect on France and Italy; I’ll save that for later!