Regular readers know JLH as our German translator, but he occasionally ventures into original commentary. The essay below connects the dots between Diana West’s American Betrayal and the current Islamization of the Western world.

”It depends on what the meaning of IS is.”
by JLH

This is about American Betrayal being not only a critical remembrance of things past, but a harbinger of things to come — what I would call a “gateway” event. Following is the event that, for some reason, brought this thought to my mind:

Johann Peter Zenger was a German immigrant to New York and the editor and publisher of the New-York Weekly Journal, in a city whose other newspaper was essentially a house organ for the governor of that time — William Cosby. Cosby lived up to his reputation as a tyrant and resented the Journal’s anonymous, critical editorials. At that time, someone who criticized the government — no matter how truthfully — could be charged with libel and sedition. This is what happened to Zenger, who was arrested in 1734 and tried in 1735 for seditious libel. Since Cosby had preemptively disbarred all the New York lawyers who might have defended him, Zenger was defended by Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia — the most illustrious lawyer of the Colonies. Hamilton by-passed the hostile judge and appealed directly to the jury. The jury in turn, found Zenger and his newspaper not guilty.

Of course, the trial was public knowledge, and the result certainly appeared in print, at least in Zenger’s paper. It was not as sensational and/or violent as other events along the way to the Revolution, but it was a paving stone on the road to the formation of a new country. The attempt to suppress unwelcome opinion, and Hamilton’s advocacy of the right to print it, had combined to establish the principle that the truth is a defense against the charge of libel — a principle not widely evident in the Western world then, and under assault today. It was also a precursor of the freedom of the press clause in the First Amendment.

In the fifty-six years following 1735, there were many events propelling the Colonies and England toward a fateful conflict, and resulting in a new country. For example, the hated Stamp Act was passed by Parliament in 1765, and the Sons of Liberty were formed in the same year. Five years later the Boston Massacre was resolved by trial, not to everyone’s satisfaction. The pace of events quickened. In 1773, the Boston Tea Party and Parliamentary reprisal. In 1774, the convening of the Continental Congress, and in 1775, Lexington and Concord and the beginning of hostilities. Finally, in 1791, the first Ten Amendments, including the First with its protection of free speech and press, and called The Bill of Rights, were added to the Constitution. This is what I mean by a “gateway” event.

It may seem a leap to connect this prophetic, pre-revolutionary event to the publication and reception of American Betrayal, but the subcutaneous similarities are suggestive. Diana West’s previous book — The Death of the Grown-Up — had offered some unpleasant truths about the shedding of responsibility in recent generations of American “adults.” But it was not attacked the way American Betrayal was.

In American Betrayal, Diana West — like Peter Zenger — went one step too far, criticizing the “settled science” which has fashioned interpretations of FDR’s regime. Others had been there before her, dissecting the campaign to destroy McCarthy, excavating Soviet sources for evidence. These same historical investigators were among the first to defend Diana West when she came under attack. They differed from her in two ways. First, their credentials were difficult to assail: M. Stanton Evans, with long-established academic credentials; Vladimir Bukovsky, a respected Soviet dissident and researcher. Second, they were not only proof against really scurrilous attack, but the effect of their results could be deflected somewhat by looking the other way and pretending there was nothing there that was still relevant. Those who contested their arguments were not existentially threatened by them.

The “conservatives” who attacked Betrayal were threatened, however, because their interpretations of that era masked an adulation for FDR, including his benign relationship with Stalin and the Soviet juggernaut. Diana West’s book is not just a dissent from this opinion; it is a hard-nosed assertion of treachery — even treason, on the part of crucial members of FDR’s team. And perhaps her worst transgression is the way she did it. In an age of “journalism” and acceptance of “received opinion,” she acted rather more as an investigative reporter — meticulously and, seemingly endlessly, annotating every claim. The notes alone take forever to read and reflect upon. There was almost no room for factual rebuttal.

While the 18th-century colonial governor resorted to the power of the state to silence the pesky editor, a few doyens of “conservative” anti-communist opinion resorted to a flurry of attacks aimed at discrediting and ultimately silencing a voice that threatened their chummy clique. And, in doing so, they also emulated the actions of that 18th-century governor who attracted the attention of an even wider audience by initiating a public trial and unwittingly evoking the legal genius of Andrew Hamilton. Our modern arbiters of opinion proclaimed their anger on the marquee of the internet, and enlisted their acolytes to overwhelm and silence this impertinent voice. Other names — some greater than their own — rose to challenge their attack. Making matters worse, the victim fought back with a rebuttal as logical and factual as it was deadly. People who had had no opinion at all were now interested in hidden aspects of our history, and, indirectly, in the character and motivations of some of those who believed they were the exclusive keepers of that history.

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