The 19th-century French astronomer Alexis Bouvard deduced the existence of an as yet undiscovered eighth planet of the solar system by measuring the discrepancies between the predicted path of the planet Uranus and its telescopically observed positions at different points along its orbit. Later astronomers discovered “Planet X” — which was eventually named Neptune — in the precise orbital position laid out by Bouvard’s calculations.
We are in much the same predicament regarding the controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal. Based on perturbations in the scholarly orbits of numerous illustrious writers and editors, we may deduce the existence of a massive undiscovered black body. It’s out there somewhere, exerting its gravitational influence on its planetary neighbors in the ranks of conservative American literati. We can’t see Planet X, but we can observe its effects. We know it’s there.
No firm conclusions can be drawn about this mysterious astronomical object. Without access to sources on the editorial boards of FrontPage Magazine, Pajamas Media, National Review, etc., there is no way to determine the motivation behind the repeated, virulent, personal attacks against Diana West.
However, after pulling together information from a variety of sources, it’s possible to make some educated guesses. Although its exact position is not yet determined, Planet X is beginning to take shape out there in the night sky, blotting out segments of the starry host as it wanders past.
This essay is the conclusion of a post begun six weeks ago, just before I went to Warsaw (Part 1 is here). In the weeks since then, the attacks on Diana West have continued sporadically, penned in large part by the same detractors who had written previously, and published in the same venues. With the exception of Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov — whose validation of American Betrayal was the most significant work to date in support of Ms. West — no major writer has weighed on her behalf since I wrote Part 1 back in September.
As Stacy McCain said this morning:
Diana West has many influential friends, and her adversaries also have many friends, but most people — especially those she calls “the capital-p pundits” — seem determined to stay as far away as possible from this ugly fight. And who can blame them? Nobody wants to get themselves muddied up in a mess like this.
Yet a large number of ordinary people, small-fry-bloggers, and medium-size (“small-p”?) pundits — including Mr. McCain himself — have issued ringing declarations of support for Diana West and decried the ad-hominem attacks against her. Something out there is pulling the Capital-Ps away from any orbit that might intersect with public commentary on American Betrayal.
On October 31 Diana West was the guest of honor at the annual gathering of the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, a group that honors the memory of Whittaker Chambers and his struggle against American Communism, and in particular his victory over Alger Hiss. Ms. West addressed the assembly about her book (see the link above for the full video of her speech).
M. Stanton Evans, one of the most respected experts on Soviet infiltration in the United States, has repeatedly and enthusiastically endorsed American Betrayal. So Diana West has earned the respect of many of the core writers who specialize in anti-communism. The notable exception is Ronald Radosh, who fired the first salvo in the war against American Betrayal with his attack at FPM in early August. Various acolytes followed suit over the next few weeks, the most prominent among them David Horowitz and Conrad Black.
Before Mr. Radosh brought his siege engines to bear against the book, it had been reviewed positively by a number of prominent conservatives, including Amity Shlaes, Monica Crowley, Brad Thor, and Laura Ingraham. After war was declared, however, silence descended among the best-known conservative writers and talking heads in America. It was left to the small-p pundits, Europeans, and the doughty irregulars of the blogosphere to defend Ms. West from all that personal vitriol. Notable stalwarts were Stacy McCain, John L. Work, David Solway, Edward Cline, Ruth King, Debra Burlingame, Andy Bostom, Hans Jansen, and Lars Hedegaard, among others.
The silence of the conservative lambs seems to have been prompted by the persistent lobbying of Ronald Radosh. During the early days of the controversy he sent out an email to a large list exhorting the recipients to condemn Diana West. With the exception of Conrad Black, no one seems to have taken him up on his call to arms and joined the fray. However, with the signal exceptions of Frank Gaffney and Vladimir Bukovsky, no conservative figure of national stature stood up to defend their colleague against the scurrilous personal bile being flung at her. They evidently assessed the odds, and determined that they didn’t have a dog in this fight — not if it meant going up against the likes of David Horowitz, Conrad Black, and Ronald Radosh.
This type of intimidation is nothing new. Back in the 1990s a young reporter at National Review wrote a piece about communists in Congress. After it appeared in print, Ronald Radosh called him up out of the blue and warned him that his career would go nowhere if he continued to write such articles.
So how does Mr. Radosh manage to wield such power over some of the most respected conservative writers and journalists? A former communist himself, he is fairly well-known for his works on communism, but hardly a major player on the literary scene. How is it that he exerts such a strong gravitational effect on the behavior of prominent writers?
One deduces the existence of a much larger body than Planet Radosh, based on the perturbations in numerous literary orbits.
However, it’s worth remembering that all but one of the targeted luminaries failed to join the Two-Minute Hate against Diana West. This tells us that the case against her was unable to withstand close scrutiny. A careful examination of the screeds against her reveals nothing except straw men, misrepresentations of what she said, and contemptuous name-calling, mostly written by people who had never read the book. No substantive criticism ever emerged. One may conclude that conservative writers of integrity and judgment examined the case and found it lacking on the merits.
The exception was Conrad Black, a friend of the late William F. Buckley Jr. and longtime associate of National Review. Since the war was declared in early August, he has contributed no fewer than four severely critical articles about Diana West and American Betrayal at Pajamas Media, NRO, and other online venues.
His latest broadside appeared yesterday at NRO. In his overview of the controversy, he notes:
Much of [the dispute] has been ad hominem slathering of considerable heat and at times effectiveness, and much has taken the form of group disparagements replete with arcane references to academic trends and past skirmishes.
Without losing his sarcastic edge or giving an inch of ironic ground, Mr. Black does his best to elevate the tone and substance of the discussion with this summation:
The principal conclusions of Ms. West’s book are rubbish from A to Z, and I have difficulty imagining that I will inflict further comment on it on anyone.
One might attribute Conrad Black’s vehemence to his admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, towards whose secular canonization he has contributed more than his share, and who does not fare well under Diana West’s careful scrutiny.
But what about the movements of other major planets? To what might their vagrant courses be attributed?
Back at the beginning of the controversy, David Mills, the editor of First Things, published a rehash of Mr. Radosh’s material entitled “American Betrayal, Truculently Reckless”. Since that time he has neglected to link to Ms. West’s rebuttal, or to the review by Vladimir Bukovsky, or any of the other material that might provide a different take on the book. Other venues have refused to publish her responses, or delayed them inordinately, or buried them in the most obscure corners of their websites.
Roger Kimball, the publisher of Encounter Books, is a capital-p cultural pundit par excellence, and might be expected to weigh in on behalf of his colleague. However, a quick glance at the new books list at Encounter reveals tomes by both Conrad Black and David Horowitz. So it’s no mystery why Mr. Kimball has abstained from participation in all the unseemly brawling.
In sum, there were almost no well-known writers who defended Diana West. Not that we would expect most of them to champion the book on its merits — it’s a long, complex historical study, and not easily digestible on short notice. However, one might have hoped that they would decry the nasty ad-hominem style of attack directed at their colleague. What baleful force did Planet X wield to ensure their silence?
Among the most prominent voices that one might have expected to weigh in on Ms. West’s behalf were those of Lt. Col. Allen West (retired), the former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, the writer Mark Steyn, and the well-known columnist Ann Coulter.
Mr. Steyn’s absence from the fray is understandable, since Conrad Black is his good friend. Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Coulter went so far as to tweet in support of American Betrayal. But as far as I know, Col. West and Amb. Bolton have had nothing to say about the controversy, at least not in public.
The same could be said of Andrew McCarthy until very recently. In a piece published on Friday at Pajamas Media, Mr. McCarthy responded to Ronald Radosh, who had written a blog post on PJM last Monday criticizing Mr. McCarthy on matters unrelated to Diana West or her book. As an aside, the author included this note about American Betrayal:
I have not commented on this but, since he brings up the subject of civility, I am still taken aback by the tone of his review of Diana West’s American Betrayal … and I cringed upon learning that, in the midst of the nasty cross-fire that it ignited, he sent Diana a giddy email taunt when another commentator, Conrad Black, published a similarly intemperate review. To be clear, I am not talking about substantive merit here — I happen to disagree with Ron and Conrad about Diana’s book, but that is neither here nor there (I’ll have more to say about it soon). I am talking about peer-to-peer civility. Even in the context of Ron’s post about my column, the “serious and respectful” twaddle is just a set-up for branding my argument as “a child’s temper tantrum.” “Serious and respectful” starts to seem a lot like “agrees with Ron.”
He also referred to the controversy yesterday in another aside, this time in an article at NRO:
Ronald Radosh, the former Marxist and accomplished neoconservative historian, has lately been the spear’s point in defending the FDR legacy on both the foreign-affairs and domestic-policy sides. His blistering review of Diana West’s American Betrayal vigorously champions Roosevelt’s conduct of World War II. I believe Ron gives Diana’s book a bad rap, and I will explain why in another column, coming soon.
Mr. McCarthy is to be commended for his willingness to venture where other literary angels feared to tread. However, from the point of view of the “little people” who have been struggling to defend Diana West since the beginning of August, it is too little, too late.
Why wait more than three months to speak up, however faintly, on behalf of his good friend and fellow Team B member?
Why not write a longer article dedicated solely to the topic of the “politics of personal destruction” directed at Diana West?
Why this persistent reticence?
The people who wanted to bury American Betrayal and its author did their no-holds-barred work vigorously throughout August, September, and October. Had it not been for the timely intervention by Vladimir Bukovsky, they might well have succeeded, and anything said now on her behalf by capital-p pundits would have done little to change the verdict. She would have been decisively consigned to the Outer Darkness, keeping company with the McCarthyites, the conspiracy theorists, and the kooks.
An unjust outcome, to be sure, but the august eminences among the punditerati could at least comfort themselves that the hems of their crinolines had never been spattered with the sludge of unseemly controversy.
The gold standard for integrity throughout this whole sordid affair remains the behavior of Andy Bostom, who staunchly defended Diana West from Day One, and took flak from all quarters for doing so. He spoke up vigorously and repeatedly on her behalf, just as one would expect of a loyal friend.
Why was it that back in August no illustrious personage behaved the way Andy Bostom did? No capital p-pundit, not even those who publicly called Diana West their friend, was willing to take the risk. What on earth was wrong?
That’s some planet, that Planet X.
As outlined above, the origin and trajectory of the current controversy are easy to describe. Determining the characteristics of the mysterious Planet X is a much more difficult task.
The existence of that baleful body is decisively proven by the firing of Clare Lopez as a senior fellow of the Gatestone Institute. To summarily dismiss a writer and scholar of such impeccable credentials, merely because she wrote favorably about American Betrayal, was an ill-considered act. It could hardly have redounded to the benefit of Nina Rosenwald and Gatestone. Therefore there must have been some overwhelming influence that insisted on the departure of Ms. Lopez.
The same reasoning applies to the taciturnity of all the well-known scholars and essayists. There must have been a reason for their reluctance. Why did they maintain silence? It’s easy to cry “cowardice!” But what were they afraid of?
All of them had much more to lose than Andy Bostom by weighing in. No one can expect these well-known writers to surrender their livelihood voluntarily, and Ronald Radosh seems to have had the power to say, in effect, “You’ll never work in this town again.” Simple self-preservation required that they stay out of the action.
To find the source of the power to silence, the obvious approach is to follow the money. Yet that’s a tough job, given all the interconnected foundations, publications, media companies, consortia, and so on. All we can say for certain is that someone must be shelling out the big bucks to muzzle Diana West — nothing else could explain the hasty and occasionally reckless broadsides against her. The huge mass of Planet X can only be explained by the presence of large quantities of money.
And what is all that money trying to accomplish?
Two major motivations stand out: the desire to maintain the FDR shrine, and the need to keep Joe McCarthy in his dungeon.
To ordinary citizens like you and me, these issues don’t matter all that much. So what if Roosevelt is not the saint we’ve been presented with for the past eighty years? Why does that matter? We get to learn the truth, and gain a better understanding of history. FDR knowingly allowed his administration to be filled with communist agents. He spoke favorably of communist ideology. He weakened the moral character of the United States. He is no longer Saint Franklin, but we can live with that.
Ah, but it’s not so easy for those who build their careers as hagiographers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. One would expect Conrad Black to be loath to see the halo removed from the head of his idol.
And what if research reveals that Harry Truman knew about some of the horrible things done during his administration? To take two examples: the repatriation unwilling of Soviet prisoners in Europe by the United States, and the consignment of thousands of American POWs to the gulag. The policies that resulted in these and other atrocities were formulated by communist “agents of influence” within the American government — in other words, by the erstwhile comrades of Messrs. Radosh and Horowitz. If these inconvenient facts were ever to be prominently discussed, American communists would end up looking like more than well-intentioned dupes.
No, David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh have good reason to want to keep the shine on the haloes of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Otherwise the people they manned the ramparts with and took orders from would be revealed as direct accomplices in oppression, slavery, torture, and slaughter.
That’s not a pretty picture. No wonder they want to keep it behind the curtains.
By the same token, Joseph McCarthy needs to be confined in his den of infamy, out of the light of day and away from public scrutiny. For the good of the conservative cause, he must remain an unethical dipsomaniac who defamed innocent people.
Regardless of his personal attributes, however: what if McCarthy was right? What if the government really was riddled with communists, far more than even he was able to find? What if the extent of Soviet penetration was known to the highest levels of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations?
If McCarthy’s reputation is ever pulled from its customary cloaca and hosed off, a pillar of the modern liberal myth will come crashing down. Harry Truman was the great Cold Warrior abroad, but he becomes the enabler of communist subversion at home. The United States government really was eaten away by Soviet termites. And, once again, the tunneling was done by the former comrades of David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, whose ideological children and grandchildren are even now gnawing away at the remaining heartwood of the Constitutional Republic.
We may add to the above motives the possibility of professional jealousy on the part of Ronald Radosh. He, after all, is a well-known and credentialed historian of communism in America — and what greater credentials can there be in that field than to be an ex-communist oneself? From that point of view, Diana West is an upstart, an ignorant usurper who presumes to write about matters best left to professionals. That she should reach different conclusions than the wise and the learned only adds insult to injury. She must be suppressed!
These are the stakes. Yet why should an allegedly conservative bastion like National Review support the continued durance of Joe McCarthy in the vile liberal dungeon? Bill Buckley began his career by seconding McCarthy in his fight against communism. What stake does his magazine have in burying McCarthy to sustain the liberal myth?
Possible answers to this question are too complicated to be examined here. Peter Brimelow’s account of the gradual, piecemeal destruction of the conservative movement in the United States by William F. Buckley Jr. provides some insights into what happened. Once again, it may well come down to the planetary influence of money — in this case, funding provided by Conrad Black.
For conservatives in the 1950s, the issue of Joe McCarthy was intertwined with that of the John Birch Society. When he founded National Review, Bill Buckley attempted to save American conservatism by constructing a fence around “good” conservatives while thrusting the “bad” conservatives outside the pale, into the Outer Darkness. McCarthy was originally inside the fence, but has been stealthily expelled from the corral during the ensuing four or five decades.
The John Birch Society, however, was placed beyond the pale from the very beginning. The Birchers were nativists, which converts to “racists” using modern terminology, and if there’s one thing that a 21st-century conservative dreads, it is to be identified as a “racist”. The continuing proscription of the John Birch Society is thus an absolute necessity.
When I was a kid, the Birchers were widely considered kooks. They protested against the fluoridation of the water supply. They put up billboards demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren. And one of their major slogans was “Get US out of the UN!”
Well…
In the fifty years since then, events have made it obvious that the United Nations is a corrupt, dangerous organization that we would be well-advised to abandon. Recent scientific studies have shown that the fluoridation of drinking water is indeed harmful. And, given the dubious decisions handed down by the Supreme Court since 1960, impeaching a dozen or so justices doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.
What if a lot of what the John Birch Society said was true? Where does that leave us?
It means that a major myth beloved by both liberals and conservatives would have to be deconstructed. It would require rethinking a lot of issues that have been considered settled since World War Two. And it would mean tarnishing the haloes not just of FDR and Truman, but of William F. Buckley Jr. himself.
And we can’t have that, can we?
This is why the “Bircher” epithet has been so hurled so angrily in Diana West’s direction. Reconsidering the reputation of the John Birch Society is something that is absolutely forbidden, a heresy of the first order to conservative and liberal alike. The irrational fury unleashed by American Betrayal reveals the quasi-religious nature of these sentiments. Diana West is an apostate, and must be consigned to the faggots and the stake that provide the only fitting punishment for heresy of that magnitude.
A further complication is provided by the “nativist” aspects of the John Birch Society. Such sentiments make American Jews nervous — and rightly so, since a lot of the resentment against immigrants in the first half of the 20th century was directed at Jews, back before the country was flooded with Mexicans, Hmong, Afghans, Somalis, and Iraqis.
Which brings us to the final element in the hypothetical composition of Planet X: Jewish philanthropy. The topic is a sensitive one, to be touched with trepidation, since discussing it can set off a firestorm of vituperation from Jews and Jew-haters alike.
One of the notable features of the controversy over Diana West is the high proportion of Jews who entered the fray on both sides of the issue. Like so many intellectual endeavors in the United States, Jews were over-represented in the fight about American Betrayal.
It’s no secret that some of the major funding for American conservative non-profits and think tanks comes from prominent Jewish donors. Is it possible that the potential rehabilitation of the John Birch Society was enough to cause such an intense aversive response? Or have other factors been at work?
When researching communist infiltration in the United States, one may notice the large numbers of Jews among prominent communist leaders, including those appointed to high office in the federal government during the New Deal. It is not considered polite to mention this aspect of American communism, but the facts are out there for anyone who cares to examine them. And Jews themselves are aware of the issue.
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr are historians and well-known experts on American communism and Soviet espionage in the USA, who together and separately have written numerous books and articles on the topic. In May 2012 Dr. Klehr gave a lecture at a conference entitled “Jews and the Left”. In his lecture he gave the numbers without hesitation: at least 40% of Communist Party members and associated traitors were Jewish. In the Los Angeles party the proportion may have been as high as 90%.
Lest readers think this event was a congress of anti-Semites, it must be pointed out that Dr. Klehr himself is Jewish. He was addressing a largely Jewish audience at a conference sponsored by a Jewish organization, so this was hardly a venue for wild-eyed David Duke supporters.
Some Jews would prefer not to discuss such matters, while others are always ready to examine the truth, whatever it might be, and let the chips fall where they may. Unfortunately, the fact that Jews were also over-represented among anti-communists is not considered a mitigating circumstance by those who are preoccupied with Jewish conspiracies.
To my mind, International Socialism is no more a “Jewish institution” than, say, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Communism was (and is) fashionable primarily among the intelligentsia, so it’s no surprise that Jews are over-represented among communists, just as they are in any intellectual enterprise.
However, the public discussion of this phenomenon over the years has hardly been a rational one, so it’s no wonder that Jews would prefer not to talk about it.
Could that be one of the motives for suppressing Diana West? Can there be a fear that a full and open discussion of the number of Jews among communist infiltrators would awaken latent anti-Jewish sentiments?
And is this fear strong enough to mobilize major Jewish donors against American Betrayal?
I don’t have the answer to these or any of the other questions. All I can do is point to the obvious existence of a planet-sized mass out there somewhere, exerting its telltale influence on the orbits of other celestial bodies.
The only plausible source for such a strong gravitational field is a high concentration of money. Major funding sources have obviously decided that Diana West and her book are dangerous, and have made the appropriate phone calls to editors and capital-p pundits.
It could be that all of the factors described above are at work. Consider these four possible motivations:
| 1. | Anger at the defamation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. | |
| 2. | Anger at a perceived attempt to rehabilitate both Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society. | |
| 3. | Professional jealousy. | |
| 4. | The fear of reopening a public discussion about the overrepresentation of Jews among communist infiltrators. |
Occam’s Razor suggests that all four factors must play a role in the irrational fury directed at Diana West. Based on the amount of discussion generated by #1 and #2, the Roosevelt/Truman/McCarthy/Bircher nexus would seem to play the largest role. But the other two factors should not be overlooked.
Or maybe there is yet another undiscovered element in the composition of Planet X. A heavy element, with a high specific gravity, so that even the presence of small quantities is enough to distort the orbits of neighboring bodies.
I’m an amateur astronomer in these matters. Highly-trained professionals are even now training their massive telescopes in the general direction of Planet X. It’s only a matter of time before a clear picture of its surface emerges.
For links to previous articles about the controversy over American Betrayal, see the Diana West Archives.
Baron, great article. Having read the book I too have been quite confused by some of the negative response it generated. As to the composition of planet X a good clue is the leftist like smear tactics used in place of a fact based reasoned rebuttal. I can’t wait to see what your “highly trained professional astronomers” come up with. Want to bet it will only add validity to the thrust of her book?
It’s not unexamined territory.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/art-politics-clement-greenberg/
Greenberg is a bit of a mystery. But he was right at the heart of the intrigue.
What’s good enough for David Horowitz… Is good enough for youz guys.
There is a reasonable case to be made that Communism was a wrench used by disaffected Jews to wreck/takeover/displace traditional conservative societies.
If you look at Clement Greenberg you have a good example of a committed Communist who drifted to Trotskyite loyalties once he heard about Stalin cracking down on some Jewish apparachiks in the late 1930s. Once Greenberg got what he wanted in terms of prestige/attention/acclaim from the art establishment in the 1940s and the 1950s he switched loyalty to “American” art produced in New York by Klein, Rothko(witz) Pollock et al…I like AbEx by the way. Rothko is a good painter. However Greenberg was merciless with gentile figurative painters. Once the establishment in New York was dominated by greenberg’s closest chums, he was cool with the promotion of official capitalist modes of production. I do not think that he became a liberal democrat, it’s just that his mates were the top dogs and what was good for his mates was good for him and his original aims. Art is a major cultural battle ground and I’d say that the WASP was decisively destroyed in that arena during the 1940s.
Warhol and the Pop artists corrected some of this drift toward an ethnic takeover, but they were generally camp or queer.
Art seems trivial but it is the leading indicator of cultural prestige.
Great article, Baron. Napier, you are a [person whose ability to ratiocinate is open to question].
Clem Greenberg was one of those communist infiltrators who turned into a CIA asset.
Precisely the story that Horowitz and his ilk are interested in suppressing with West.
It’s not a deeply mysterious puzzle to figure out, especially in a field like art. Art is trivial in comparison to politics but it is deeply significant when one looks at how culture ripples out from where the stone plops into the waters.
Even when Horowitz and Radosh were Commies I’ll bet they swung the sickle half heartedly and banged the hammer lightly, because it was never about communism for either of ’em.
This isnt the last word in the strange world of Psychological warfare…
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1862073279/ref=pd_aw_sims_1?pi=SL500_SY115
But it is the penultimate word.
Greenberg was Cold Warrior with a rather amazing Trotskyite history followed very quickly by a cosy relationship with the American establishment. To some extent he embodies the takeover.
I am one of those ‘gentile figurative painters ‘ and I can tell you that Greenberg was positive and helpful in my studio, as he was in the studios of many artists I know. What he cared about was quality – a dirty word in today’s art world, because it entails discrimination. And we can’t have that, can we ?
Greenberg puffed up provincial American versions of Abstraction into something they were not.
He’s also a minor Kantian revivalist as Thomas McEvilley pointed out in his obit for Greenberg. He wrote no novels, no operas… He just edited the Nation. A real man of letters like Baudillaire or Zola or Vasari for that matter had their own creative output. Greenberg was a pain in the ass.
Artists should look toward other artists
Great article and well written as usual. As an ex-army intelligence officer who studied the communists from the 70s onwards, I think your planetary metaphor is very appropriate. I remember reading the autobiography of Frank Chapple who led the electricians’ union that became the first moderate union to break with the hard left of the TUC. The reason for this was that Chapple had been a young dock-yard worker in the war and saw how the unionists slowed work on fighting vessels when Stalin had the secret Nazi-Soviet alliance. As soon as Hitler attacked Russia, the unionists stirred up the workers to go hell-for-leather on ship construction to support the poor betrayed commies. Forget loyalty to hard-earned freedoms, hail Utopia!
How many ships are made in the UK these days? Who shut it all down?
Love the planetary metaphor. It has to be the money and I believe that it’s money of Jewish “conservative” donors. Examining the list of financial supporters of Gatestone Institute and of David Horowitz’s enterprises provides one clue, but the extrapolation exercise would posit additional names, for now blanks.
Peter Brimelow truth-on-immigration website has been very good at digging out the face behind the curtain relative to another “sensitive” issue, Amnesty, claiming outright that Sheldon Adelson — the biggest political donor in U.S. history ($120 -$150 million to the GOP in 2012 elections) — literally bought Mitt Romney’s wimp-out on Immigration. In addition to Romney, major Jewish Republican money founts such as Fred Zeidman, Mel Sembler, Robert Gittelson (lesser financially but co-founder of Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform) and others are buying the GOP’s wipeout on Amnesty too.
Since anyone who belongs to what Mr. Brimelow has aptly named “The Treason Lobby” makes a mockery of the word “conservative” by donning its mantle, that may go for the “conservative” opposition to raising the commie ghouls from their too-hastily dug graves from the 1970s.
P.S. For those who’d draw hasty conclusions it must be stated that:
1. Diana West herself, to the best of my knowledge, is Jewish;
2. Big money non-Jewish “conservatives” like Conrad Black, Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers are just as much a part of the Treason Lobby as their Jewish counterparts are;
3. “The Path to National Suicide ” — the best anti-immigration work ever: a pamphlet that belongs up there with Thomas Paine’s polemics — was written by a Jew, Lawrence Auster.
Murdoch is not Jewish.
I’m not opposed to the idea or the practice of having high ranking Jewish officials and citizens. I just think that people ought to be aware that they are a group that will do things to promote one another.
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/cold_warrior/
For instance Greenberg was a good enough critic, but he was a minor Kantian thinker. His reputation in the art world is intimately connected to his ethnic identity. Jews talking about Jews talking about Jews…that’s the current journalistic-political-cultural world we all swim in.
Sorry, but I’m fairly certain Rupert Murdock is Jewish.
Don’t be, he is not. It can be checked. And if I am here I want to put in my two cents re the book and the controversy around it. I read the book long before the heated discussion started, I was so impressed that I have not enough an English vocabulary to describe the thoughts it provoked in my head. A spent half of my life time in one of the most “prestigious” Eastern-European Communist dictatorships and I was very familiar with the official version of the history of WWII, so this book gave me a new lease in life, it put the record straight. No wonder that the critiques are coming from the reformed leftists like Horowitz, Radosh & Co. They were what I call armchair leftists and they traveled a short journey to armchair conservatism. They are forever stuck in their past even if they will never admit it. Unlike Solzhenytsin, or Bukovsky or even my modest self they will never grasp the express need for the full exposure and condemnation of the doings and dealings of the various communist regimes and of the ideology that motivated those.
Back to the article and the four reasons listed by the author as the motivation for the some people’s anger I would add number 5: the fact that Diana West is a woman. Trust me that that crossed their minds too: who the heck is this woman, not even a historian, to dare to rewrite history? I am sure that many generations from now this book will become a history textbook.
Good article… I have been a regular Front Page magazine reader since the early days, and I have always admired David Horowitz’s willingness to renounce his communist past. But I have been extremely disappointed in his reaction to this controversy, and find myself pulling away from his website.
That all being said, however, I still think that, although it is perhaps the most banal of the reasons listed, that professional jealousy might be the biggest reason for Radosh and Horowitz’s reactions. As you noted, they have been the neocon 800 lb. gorillas for so long, that anything which diminishes or tarnishes their roles is to be strenuously opposed. Can you say “not invented here”?
You simply cannot overestimate human venality.
Like Pilate, ask yourself, what is Communism? It was only a means to an end, fast abandoned by its most gifted adherents.
That all being said, however, I still think that, although it is perhaps the most banal of the reasons listed, that professional jealousy might be the biggest reason for Radosh and Horowitz’s reactions. As you noted, they have been the neocon 800 lb. gorillas for so long, that anything which diminishes or tarnishes their roles is to be strenuously opposed.
Well, they are mentioned positively in her book, iirc. But perhaps not ENOUGH …
…Your one sentence summation is spot-on. However, one can raise the alarm when that venality seeks to destroy another’s character.
I disagree.
The 30s and 40s were a key moment in wrenching the WASP out of power in the US. This period was also the height of Communist membership and activism in the US. If you look carefully at how New York’s cultural establishment transformed in this period the answer is unavoidable. Just look at the confession/religion of the supreme court today and compare it to the 1930s. The answer is staring you in the face.
Hmmm. Look like the name of the dark planet is Jupiter.
To my understanding when Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society (1956?), it’s position was that Communism was a bankster conspiracy to destroy free enterprise. With capitalism as their anvil and communism as their hammer, the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and their ilk would smash human freedom worldwide.
Then just a few years later (1959?), Robert Welch was gone, and so was the JBS’s conspiritorial anti-bankster approach. It had been taken over, and neutered from within.
Never overlook the concept that these neo-cons, Horowitz et al, are not really what they seem. While doing little real damage to the left, they rest in place as IEDs –well placed to detonate when the accepted history of WW II (AND later–I’d like to examine communist influence up to and including the present ME fiasco) is challenged by anybody.
Maybe there is something to the whole new world order – illuminati – theory. The notion that top politicians were not what they seemed, but were mere puppets and playthings, advancing the far left agenda around the world while pretending to the public that they were staunch defenders of personal liberty – well maybe Diana West just opened that door a crack and took a look inside. But to the elite – that’s set alarm bells ringing, because NO ONE is allowed to look through that door & see what is really going on in the world.
Maybe Planet X is a brown dwarf. They are dim and cool and require infrared telescopes for discovery….
On a practical level, isn’t the principal casualty over this very healthy exchange over “American Betrayal” Mr. Horowitz himself?
For one thing, he is losing control over the agenda in that he can no longer set boundaries, like in a seminar room, on the extent and direction of the discussion on FDR, Truman, etc.. The debate has moved to the Internet and is practically without boundaries wide-open on sites like GoV. For the paragons of knowledge on FDR, Truman, the Cold War, etc., it is far easier to shout someone down in even an electronic seminar room than it is on the open Internet.
For another, how can Mr. Horowitz credibly present himself in front of students and a mostly hostile professoriate when he goes on College campi and preaches “Academic freedom” including unimpeded rights of free speech for those who have a dissenting point of view, after Mr. Horowitz has exercised serious intellectual fascism vis-à-vis Diane West as a person and her book? If Mr. Horowitz thinks that he can get away with his now destroyed credibility among his friends and sympathizers, his enemies won’t let him forget it. CAIR on College campi comes to mind.
JCL
Quote:
BINGO!
Could it be that much of the Jewish investment of emotional, intellectual and financial resources to ostracize Ms. West and shred her book is driven by a need to maintain Hitler in a privileged position as the twentieth century’s pre-eminent monster? An obvious result of the reevaluation of history of which Ms. West is a part is that Stalin emerges as an even greater monster, and that Hitler may, inadvertently and temporarily, have spared Europe from an even worse fate in attacking the Soviet Union before Stalin got around to attacking him. That is obviously of little comfort to the Jews who were singled out as the principal victims of Hitler’s monstrous rage. Stalin may have murdered a much larger number, but at least he did not single out the Jews for punishment. If I were a Jew, I would also have a soft spot for anyone who contributed to Hitler’s fall and was not driven by irrational anti-semitism.
It was the West – the top politicians – who cozied up to Stalin.
So take your theory, apply Occam’s razor & what do you get?
It was FDR who cozied up to Stalin, never Churchill. It was U.S. cooptation at the highest levels that gave material aid to genocide while it made England beg for every dime and made them repay every cent while Stalin got the best and he got it first, no strings attached.
Can’t apply Occam’s Razor to a disputed premise.
“….never Churchill?”
At Yalta, Churchill voluntarily ceded to Stalin 90% of Romania, 75% of Bulgaria, 50% of Yugoslavia, 50% of Hungary and 10% of Greece. Stalin put a check mark on Churchill’s paper proposal.
Nothing was said about Poland, Czechoslovakia or Germany’s division. Why was Churchill silent on Poland over which England had declared war on Germany? Churchill’s principal war objective was to destroy England’s two century-old main rival on the Continent, Prussia. Poland served a useful purpose in that demolition. By pushing Poland’s borders west, it was mission accomplished as Poland absorbed the Prussian lands. It apparently did not bother Churchill too much hat Stalin also pushed his Soviet borders west, and if Poland had to be sentenced to an existence under Stalin’s hammer, well, that was unfortunate, but Prussia was destroyed.
Because of the unconditional surrender dogma, arrangements with the Germans were not possible in order to mount a push-back or draw a line in the sand in Eastern Europe, given that Germany’s armies were still in Eastern Europe, although retreating.
So it was brazen when Churchill presented himself as the “visionary” with his Iron Curtain speech. This speech was a word-for-word translation of one of Goebbels’ speeches.
JCL
JCL
It’s an elegant theory but still leaves me wanting. The Jews are supposed to be the smartest of us all. They have the longest history and a written one at that, which is what the Bible is. The Bible is not only historiography but also the greatest literary work ever written by man — and it’s multiple men that they had of such talent whose voice is in the Bible. Moreover, the Bible is a fount of profound wisdom (e.g. Ecclesiastes), and the Jews, though no longer religious, usually know that good book and that history.
The kind of manipulation like you describe always comes out and turns out to be harmful to those who launched it with the hope of benefiting from it. How many times are cases described in the Bible of the (majority of) Jews turning onto those who would speak the unpleasnat truth to them, in order to then suffer horrific consequences of that turning (try Jeremiah in OT, Jesus in NT). So how can the smartest (think what it takes to make that kind of money) of contemporary Jews be so stupid as to suspend reason, suspend their history, their old wisdom to do the kind of thing you describe?
But then they do exactly that in the Migra-Amnesty controversy, literally pulling the rug from under their future descendants and the very cause they profess to support, Israel. So maybe you are right.
Because the real religion of many U.S. secular Jews is no longer Judaism but liberalism.
It has been noted by many that liberals hold to their political creed (as incoherent as it is) with religious fervor.
I haven’t read Michael Savage’s book, “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” but I’m tempted to think there is something valid in this idea.
Also, think about the decades of left-wing brainwashing of our best and brightest on university and college campuses.
Addendum:
Let us not forget that many–if not most–of these liberals feel morally self-righteous. They think they are on the side of the right and the good.
I ask myself how this ridiculous state of affairs came about.
I am not only thinking about it but have published nearly half a million words on this very subject since 2007. So much for my efforts.
As to Liberalism-as-religion, that has been an accepted view belabored by many over decades, and it’s true. However, that does not answer my point about the Bible. I specifically did not make the point that the Bible is “the inerrant word of God” or something like that, but described it as a work of historiography, literature and folk wisdom. Meaning that it’s valuable and edifying even to an atheist communist, and one who has a good brain can read it for that purpose. And most secular/liberal Jews have read and thought about at least some parts of the Bible. Still, they fail to draw the warranted secular conclusions.
I think I missed some of your essays. Which one one(s) would be most relevant?
@Independent
If you are willing to spend the time, there are at least 30 directly relevant 5000-word essays. To sample the spectrum, here is a sort of “scientific” take on the liberal psychosis http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2599, and here is one that relies on the imagery of dystopian science fiction to explain it: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3612. The current work I am publishing piecemeal in GoV, “The Bee and the Lamb” deals with further causes of the libs’ self-righteoussness and religious-like zeal: a deracinated Christianity.
In condensed form, my point was intended to be a fairly simple one: If there are two known serial killers roaming the neighborhood one of whom picks his victims at random while the other one selects his victims primarily from among members of your family, you’d tend to focus your attention on the latter. Even after both have been captured or killed the difference in your attitude towards the two is likely to persist, especially if the more selective murderer came close to exterminating your family before he was caught.
Stalin and Communism is a greater monster already. Clearly, the Soviets funding global violent Revolution for 50 years, killed far more people than the Nazis ever did.
On the claim that Joos are out to suppress Diana West:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1l5nq2ujLL0
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This here, and part 1. Is why I have such an issue with the so-called Jewish “right”.
Linking in via my blog.
We might not agree on some matters. But, when comes to stuff like this here; we are totally in agreement.
I am also adding this blog to my blogroll. Even as a Paleoconservative; who is a bit of a realist — I happen to know that Radical Islam AND Communism are still a threat to the American way of life.
Best,
-Patrick
In all fairness we have to consider Diana West, Andrew Bostom and maybe even Laurence Auster as part of the “Jewish right” if you term it such.
Lawrence Auster converted out of Judaism; he was a Christian. While you might call him ancestrally Jewish, religiously, he was not.
And that counts for something. At least to me it does.
Actually, Lawrence Auster comes first in this lineup for the depth, clarity and originality of his ideas, but he had little impact outside of the readers of his blog. Still, RIP, Lawrence.
But then there are so many other names you could add, starting from Disraeli through virtually the entire foundation of Austrian Economics (Hayek partially too; 1/4 Jewish), including in America where Murray Rothbard was the towering figure. Mark Levin by himself is a significant counterweight to the faux conservative Jews. Significantly, quite a few smart Jewish voices speak the truth about the most PC-shrouded issues bedeviling America: race and immigration. Names like Michael Savage, Michael Levin, Robert Weissberg, Michael Hart, Nicholas Stix, Ilana Mercer, Marcus Epstein. It remains true, however, that the Jews on the “conservative side” who are so clueless they actually work part time for the other side without knowing they do are more numerous, powerful, and moneyed.
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Communist aggression toward WASP-controlled America was partly the result of WASP Antisemitism. Jewish use of Communism to overcome American KKK mentality should not be under-rated. However, sometimes the murderous quality of the weapon one wields makes it a hated object. Communism for Radosh and Horowitz were just too blood-soaked to tolerate. Their return to the fold of cultural Judaism, if not religious faith, is witness to the proven gore of Russian Communism. No thinking person can tolerate so many suffering innocents. The condemnation of Roosevelt and his ilk by West makes Radosh and Horowitz party to the death of innocent Jews in Europe at the hands of Hitler. I believe these ex-Communists would have great internal grief – greater than they already have – should they have to see themselves as unwitting partners of Hitler’s final solution.
Better to keep the guilt on the European Chirstian goy, because it is so useful.
“McCarthy was originally inside the fence, but has been stealthily expelled from the corral during the ensuing four or five decades.”
Baron Bodissey doesn’t seem to explain exactly why McCarthy was expelled from the Buckley conservative corral.
There is only that much one can cover in a readable article. The “why” was not germane in this one. It was germane in mine and so, if you go to my “Too Much Schnapps” in the GoV archives you’ll find there a link to a Commentary article in which Buckley himself answered your question.
I just reviewed your Schnapps article; I couldn’t find an explanation for why Buckley slowly put McCarthy outside the conservative pale, though I did see you alluded briefly to it, then (like Bodissey does in this essay here) moved on to the related, but not the same, issue of the John Birchers. The Buckley essay you link to in there, meanwhile, doesn’t mention McCarthy at all from what I could tell.
As to the relevance of my question, if we are speculating about “planetary” influence on these curious behaviors of various conservatives, then Buckley’s motive for his treatment of McCarthy would shed light on whether we should cast for darker conspiracies or not. It could well be that if Buckley did do that, it was more for aesthetic/tactical reasons — similar to the fastidious disdain for how Sarah Palin supposedly “embarrasses” herself (and by extension the Republicans). Of course, when conservatives do this, one could argue that they are allowing the opposition to control the Conversation. I noticed a similar attitude when watching Buckley interview G. Gordon Liddy many years ago: Buckley seemed to be approaching his subject with protective white gloves. Similarly, I recall Hugh Fitzgerald making lofty veiled asides implying that McCarthy was an unfortunate lout while Murrow was an admirable intellect we can be comfortable with in our rarified penthouse cocktail attended by the likes of Adlai Stevenson and Tennessee Williams.
“our rarified penthouse cocktail ” — that should be “cocktail parties” of course
I am not aware that Buckley put McCarthy outside the conservative pale. To the contrary, he wrote numerous articles and, if I recall, a whole book defending McCarthy, “McCarthy and his Enemies.” In his post-Reagan, neocon years, it seems that WFB distanced himself from McCarthy because his new friends must have convinced him if TG Joe’s shrilness, anti-Semitism or whatever. But he did not turn against him; note that the above book came out in 1995.
On the other hand, Buckley did put John Birch Society outside the pale and exulted in it too, which is what I treated in my piece. Buckley must have done it for the same reasons that would cause him to distance himself from JMC, and the ones you mention too.
“m not aware that Buckley put McCarthy outside the conservative pale. To the contrary, he wrote numerous articles and, if I recall, a whole book defending McCarthy, “McCarthy and his Enemies.””
Well, I originally commented above that Bodissey implied he had, and I noted that he didn’t offer an explanation for why he had; then you answered that your essay did offer an explanation for why he had. Now you’re saying Buckley never did, but only distanced himself from McCarthy.
So do you agree, or disagree, with Bodissey when he wrote above that:
“When he founded National Review, Bill Buckley attempted to save American conservatism by constructing a fence around “good” conservatives while thrusting the “bad” conservatives outside the pale, into the Outer Darkness. McCarthy was originally inside the fence, but has been stealthily expelled from the corral during the ensuing four or five decades.” ?
This was because McCarthy was attempting thought control. Which was a tragic error on his and the Committee’s part.
They were on point for their routing out of Communist elements of the Government; they just used poor tactics.
McCarthy probably got the the same 6-7 personnell that West is talking about.
Baron Bodissey’s essay is salutary and useful in tone and general framework. Only one important element of the whole affair seems to be missing as an explicit point (though one could say it’s there implicitly): There are two distinct concerns which tend to be amalgamated together into a lump that obscures the distinction — namely:
1) Diana West’s book itself and the ensuing bad reviews and bad treatment of her
and
2) Diana West’s meticulously detailed and massive Rebuttal of the ensuing bad reviews and subsequent sniping against her (note: this Rebuttal, while comprehensively presented by her in a publication, also preceded that publication spread out in part in numerous essays she wrote).
Baron Bodissey isn’t alone in doing this. Everybody has been doing this except me, as far as I know. While it’s understandable why 1 and 2 tend to be amalgamated together, nevertheless their distinction is important, because only a concerted and careful focus on 2 will reveal just how extensive is the sloppiness of her detractors — a sloppiness so extensive, as revealed through her Rebuttal — that it cannot be explained reasonably by mere incompetence, nor by mere emotional egotistic professional pique or tribalism, nor by money. Once one carefully digests the protracted spectacle revealed by 2, one comes to the most plausible conclusion: that Radosh and Black (and others by co-dependent enablement at best) are deliberately spreading distortion and disinformation, knowing that their defense is a lie, but trying to keep that hidden.
As to the larger “planetary” pull that might explain the co-dependent enablement (including the passive enablement of pretending like silence isn’t effective collusion) among the spheres of influence, I would hesitate to extend my reasonable hypothesis (not mentioned here but elsewhere) — about Radosh and Horowitz being currently active sleeper stealth Communists — to, for example, NR and Gatestone; a notion too preposterous to entertain without more than a smoking gun.
I have no idea about Radosh. But Horowitz, I wouldn’t put it past him. I was smeared on his site, by two former employees of his on a blog that once was there. All because I dared to tell the truth about the trotskyites.
Lots of folks have Horrorwits’ footprints on their face. It’s kind of a badge of honor once the wounds heal. Darned tough in the durance, though…
Do.not.speak.of.Trotsky. Unless you want to meet his end, at least metaphorically.
Anyway, when you look at DH remember Lord Acton’s warning about power.
Well put…. It does make it hard to a get a job; when your name is googled and it comes up as an Anti Semite.
Wish I had the money for a lawyer. I would sue the SOB.
If you are smeared ever again, send the smearers to me. Except for my parents, I lost the Jewish half of my family in WWII because they were Jews, and I lost the gentile half of my family (except for cousins who were murdered by the Bolshies) because it was sheltering Jews from genocide. So let these toxic imbeciles argue anti-Semitism with me.
I haven’t read Ms West’s book. I hope to do so before I die. But that so many of the usual suspects are so antagonistic towards her and her book tends to suggest that there is more than a grain of truth in what she has written. I have watched several of her interviews and regularly read her blog. If I had to choose, on the basis of what I know about her and what I know about her detractors, I will choose her. So, the lefties have just shot themselves in the foot as far as I can determine. A mea culpa once in a while would do their souls no end of good. But when someone refuses to believe in the afterlife and the offer that Jesus made to us, it’s best to leave them to their eternal damnation. They’ve been told, so they can’t say they didn’t know. All I can say is God help them.
“If I had to choose, on the basis of what I know about her and what I know about her detractors, I will choose her.”
You don’t have to choose in the abstract; just carefully read her Rebuttal (it’s not that long) and see how her detractors have been brazenly distorting and lying about the evidence she adduces in her book. Indeed, you don’t even need to read her book — except to verify each of her citations by which she proves her multiple points in her Rebuttal.
Baron, your analogy “Planet X” is good – I buy it immediately.
The first time I realized that there was a planet out there was when Clare Lopez got fired from GI. The purpose was clear – creating fear amongst potential defenders of American Betrayal. Obviously, GI judged it economically worth the loss of credibility.
In my life, I have never met anything that is what it labels itself as. I would be able to give you an ocean of examples. At the age of 23, I totally lost respect for Universities and their results. And it hasn’t returned since then.
When I was 20 and 21 years old, I had summer jobs as Sports Officer at the Swedish Artillery. I told the recruits: “If the map and the terrain don’t coincide – the map is what counts.” Noone reacted.
Ms. West has disclosed facts that disturb the map. In all areas, there are an industri that is economically dependent of preserving the maps.
This means that a person who presents facts in ANY area makes himself/herself a threat to ALL areas in the society. And he/she can expect to be targeted from everywhere.
This is no academic talk. I’ve felt it on my own skin for many years and paid the price.
Luis Borges?
Now, I have read half of American Betrayal. Ms. West is not “disturbing” the official map – she’s pulverizing it!
I think I’ve got a little closer to Planet X.
In all of this one very salient item has been overlooked, the Federal Reserve. A study of the Federal Reserve’s policies from its inception until World War II will show how the Fed laid the foundation for the conflicts to come. The failed “Due Bills” policies that hoarded capital and gold in the New York Fed Bank and impoverished the world was the first step towards global domination. Blaming the communists for the problem was the second step, and then blaming the fascists for their refusal to kowtow to the Fed was the third. By 1940 the entire world was involved in a war of the Fed’s making. The prelude to this can be found in the book “Lord of Finance” and then followed with a history of the Fed and the arguments between the Millers and the Coors (the bankers, not the beers). Roosevelt did not put the Fed it its place, but showed it to a nice guest bedroom upstairs while he raped the country’s wealth with their acquiescence as he left their assets untouched. Truman, the good Missourian that he was, refused to integrate the armed services and thereby paved the way for the Federal seizure of schools by Eisenhower and housing by Johnson. If you believe that history and time are on your side, you can afford to be patient and work your agenda one step at a time. The ultimate irony is that as Truman was catering to the Jews in charge of the White House in recognizing Israel, he was actually fulfilling prophecy to the day and the letter. I wonder if God got a good giggle over how it all worked out. I will have to ask Him when I get to heaven. Happy Holydays and may we all live in interesting times.
The Fed is bad enough, but that was also in the same dark year the amendment authorizing a federal income tax began. Much more damaging was the end of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971, when Nixon sent us swirling down the drain with a fiat currency unlinked to gold. Bye, bye Miss American Pie, hello endless inflation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
Truman did desegregate the military in 1948, something I don’t think FDR would’ve done, anymore than he would have recognized the state of Israel. Truman was giving official recognition to our cowardice re the ovens when he did that. You can see his profound relief as he read out that proclamation. Being FDR’s v.p. must’ve been galling at times.
Now why would Harry have done that – desegregated the military?? Korean War, maybe? Experienced WWII black soldiers would’ve mutinied had Truman NOT issued that Executive Order. FDR should’ve done it years before anyway.
I don’t believe in “fulfilling prophecies”, but I do think there was a cabal of sorts. Jews were not the only members, as Henry Hopkins and Whittaker Chambers could tell you. It’s not ever and always about the JOOOs; that tune has become so tedious. Please, for the sake of the heaven you profess to believe in, sing a new hymn. Hey, how about one based on love instead of suspicion?? That would be novel.
Eisenhower’s sending in the federal troops to desegregate the schools was the least of several evils. Segregation was ugly and it was entrenched when Faubus threatened to disobey the law. “There is a time in the affairs of men”, etc. It was time and it just happened on Ike’s watch.
As for Eisenhower and Johnson having much in common? I don’t think so.
If another person says “may we all live in interesting times” on this blog I am going to delete their worthy gluteus maximus no matter how splendid the rest of their words are. Find a new Chinese fortune cookie, please. And that goes for never wasting crises. Or people “living rent-free in your head”. Or “lines in the sand”. Aaargh!
I have been living in interesting times and interesting places since the day I was born, just like the song, “must have been the right place, but it was the wrong time.” I only wished that others would share in the adventurous life that I have lived. As for interesting times, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. as for religion, that is what man cooks up. I am a student of history and I have seen God’s handiwork all over it, even now. If I am moderated out of existence for my remarks and responses, so be it. I go to bed every night knowing I have told the truth. Eisenhower had Nixon, and warned us about him in his speech on the military/industrial complex, which is where I live. (SoCal) Johnson also had his orders and he followed them, that is why the Space Center in Houston is named after him. AS for the Military, Ike finished the job that Harry didn’t do a very good job of starting. But Ike had his hands full with the Dixiecrats and Nixon. No wonder he had a heart attack and then quickly disappeared from politics. The world has been hanging by a thread for a very long time and the thread is fraying, I’m a frayed.
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The thing with the excommunication of The John Birch Society is all happening again. This time the Establishment is attempting to excommunicate The Tea Party.
yes, the Tea Party’s beliefs and agenda are so terribly inconvenient to the powers-that-be who wish to have a manageable and amenable populace to govern and exploit as the consumer base for what they produce and sell, everything from microwaves to mortgages. Ray Bradbury was correct and Fahrenheit 451 was the most prescient of all of the Post World War II books that sought to foretell the future. It is not 1984 for us but a tyranny of dictated consumerism until our enemies destroy us. Stay tuned, film at 11:00.
This is the civil, soft, genuinely puzzled end of the “excommunication” movement: Cass Sunstein’s “How the Alger Hiss Case Explains the Tea Party” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/how-the-alger-hiss-case-explains-the-tea-party.html. It is something so genuinely deaf, blind and dumb that the realization Sunstein is without a doubt one of the few thousand most brillant — by the normal criteria — men in America will hit you like a punch. I am writing more about this; the chapter’s title is “Lobotomy.”
This debate is the reason I find myself so frustrated with conservatism. Frankly, I’m tired of (a) the apparent need to derive complicated psychological theories to explain my ideological opponents conclusions and (b) the drive to create “narratives” that assign evil qualities to the other side . I’d prefer to leave that type of pseudo-intellectualism to the liberal wing of American politics. In my opinion it’s enough to recognize that scholarly disagreements can be quite nasty in themselves (anyone familiar with the story of Thomas Aquinas knows exactly what I mean). Sure the rhetoric may be heated but that doesn’t mean that anything more than pig – headedness and rudeness exist.
Lastly, I’m very unimpressed with any article that links to articles dismissive of WFB.
“In my opinion it’s enough to recognize that scholarly disagreements can be quite nasty in themselves (anyone familiar with the story of Thomas Aquinas knows exactly what I mean). Sure the rhetoric may be heated but that doesn’t mean that anything more than pig – headedness and rudeness exist.”
It’s evident you have not carefully read Diana West’s Rebuttal.
P.S.: And brosephus’s demurrer above is precisely why it’s important to explicitly distinguish the two factors I noted in my longer comment above; for people like brosephus, generally speaking on our side, will unwittingly exploit the seemingly amorphous ambiguity of failing to distinguish the Book (and its attendant Brouhaha) from the Rebuttal. Thus, brosphesus considers the Book (and its attendant Brouhaha), then goes straight to Bodissey’s analysis, without even considering the giant factor he glibly stepped over (the Rebuttal) — and nothing in Bodissey’s analysis would indicate to him that he had missed anything terribly relevant.
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British Betrayal, Thatcherism and the Saatchi & Saatchi Marxism. The 20th century homes fit for heroes that were revolutionised into 1 million 21st century evictions.
In the case of Betrayal in the UK, just realize the rulers have never seen the plebs as anything more than donkeys and mules.
I’m also tempted to think that Cameron and others are quite at ease with recreating Bombay and Hyderabad in Hackney and Birmingham.
A white manservant isn’t much different than a brown coolie.
There is no doubt that the McCarthy’s name, vilified and despised is the greatest gift to the sixties revolutionaries. It is the linchpin of the leftist narrative, and those who oppose Frankfurt Marxism should take this moment to realize its one of our primary objectives to restore McCarthy’s honour.
The power of the left stems from our inability to contextualize and provide historic precedents for the threats we perceive from a society fractured by multiculturalism, and the foreign threats we experience through our open borders and enforced globalist policies.
A threat is only meaningful if its contextualized as a threat. “Racism” is only considered a threat because the holocaust is basically the “creation myth” of the Modern West. Too be clear, family members of mine died in a concentration camp for aiding jewish citizens, I’m simply stating that the history of our modern world starts after world war two. This is the dividing line the globalists and the left constantly push. Everything prior to the Holocaust was backward and evil, everything post-holocaust is seen as educated, universal, and “anti-racist”. White racism is used to explain all the worlds misery, ranging from poverty, failed African states and minority crime levels. Hence, “white racism” is contextualized and made extremely relevant, through deception and inaccurate methods of analysis, but extremely relevant none the less. If we were not indoctrinated and inculcated in the evils of caucasian intolerance, the term “racist” would carry no weight.
Now back to my point of why the silence about McCarthy’s findings is the linchpin of the leftist narrative.
The left and its allies push the notion of “Fortress America”, those who claim minority nationalists and a handful of Muslim extremists can come close to touching Superstate USA are ridiculed. The term “Fear Mongering” is one we are all familiar with.
If McCarthy was right, America can not only be touched, but America is actually quite vulnerable and we must therefore guard against foreign threats. We may find out America, and therefore the Western hemisphere, is quite open, quite easy to subvert, and we must rely on the vigilance of the citizenry to safeguard its existence.
And if we analyse further and see both (self) alienated ethnic groups and even more so, immigrants, were vastly overrepresented amongst those exposed by McCarthy and other anti-communists, we will understand different ethnicities and different cultures bring along different political interests. We will understand that cultural fragmentation and ethnic pluralism isn’t such a great idea after all.
The opponents of the Frankfurt Marxists, and cultural conservatives, must seriously consider making the McCarthy issue into of our main objectives, one in which we should invest time, effort and funds. Ensuring McCarthy returns from exile,will provide us with the historical precedent we desperately need to take down leftism.
I hope some of you will see my point.
In a way, that’s what Diana West has done: restored McCarthy’s honor. And that’s why she is such an urgent target for the variously contaminated.
Just like Evans.
This is true, but I think its up to us to push it even further. If this battle is won, if people recognize America was nearly eaten away by those loyal to a foreign enemy, if they recognize a major part of this danger was cultural and ethnic disunity, they will start taking Islam and the danger of multiculturalism seriously. Now its just an exciting experiment, and the consensus on Western History tells us there is nothing to worry about.
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I am still working my way through this lengthy comment thread but I wanted to say thank you to Baron B for his fascinating take, and also to the many commenters who have added more points here.
I highlighted “Planet X” at my own website, summing up this way:
The interesting thing about these four factors Ned explores is that each may have a Planet X of its own. For example, if there is something that may be isolated as notably Jewish about the opposition to American Betrayal, it may in fact be related not so much to Judaism but to liberalism — in this case, FDRism, to which most Jews, as liberal then as they are now, subscribed. This includes Jews who would decades later emerge among the neoconservatives.
So long as FDR’s sainthood remains in American eyes pure and untarnished by the massive boring from within he enabled/tolerated/was duped by (all three, I think), the erstwhile liberalism, Marxism, Communism, even Stalinism of these ex-Leftist seniors remains protected, beyond challenge, cloaked in the “great” president’s heroic context. So long as history keeps FDR on a pedestal, these former Marxists still retain a rationale for having supported the Evil Empire, because so did FDR — and, after all, he won WWII, the “Good War,” America’s shining moment, all thanks to Stalin (is the myth). Once FDR is deposed as a flawed and failed commander-in-chief who defeated one tyranny while assisting the rise of another, both abroad and, at least ideologically, at home, that ample mantle is gone.
What is left is the history of subversion, the story of the republic’s downfall, and the long-hidden, misunderstood or distorted story of those who sought to expose and stop it, from, among many others, Dies to McCarthy, from Kravchenko to Solzhenitsyn, from Lyons to Epstein, from Jordan to Stripling to Romerstein.
What is left is the history of American betrayal.
Urbain Le Verrier, NOT Alexis Bouvard, did the calculations that resulted in the discovery of Neptune by Galle and d’Arrest. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune. There has been a recent controversy about whether John Couch Adams deserved to share the credit with Le Verrier (until recently, Adams has be considered a theoretical co-discoverer with Le Verrier), but no one has argued that Alexis Bouvard deserves any of the credit. Bouvard’s tables for Uranus’ position were in error precisely because Bouvard did NOT understand that Neptune was a possibility.
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Been an interesting afternoon tracking down comments on America Betrayed. Have enjoyed reading West, enjoyed reading FPM. Not sure why there’s this intense attack at Ms West’s reasoned thesis. Your posit about Planet X is worthy. Despite Occam Razor isn’t the possible rehabilitation of the John Birch group a straw-man? Only in the concluding paragraphs of your piece above does it even show up amid all the words I’ve plowed through today. And that to leverage Jewish antipathy to America Betrayed? Dunno, sounds kind of weak. Is Planet X powered by money, probably. Dynamic duo of Black and NR? Soros and CAP already blame the Jews for funding the anit-jihad fight. Maybe simply self-interested guilt and embarrassment – Horowitz/Radosh/Black? Will be interesting to follow and see.
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