Posted on 11/05/2007 8:37:40 AM PST by AwesomePossum
Book Description Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully, and a liar. History has judged him such a loathsome figure that even today, a half century after his death, his name remains synonymous with witch hunts.
But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Blacklisted by History, based on six years of intensive research, dismantles the myths surrounding Joe McCarthy and his campaign to unmask Communists, Soviet agents, and flagrant loyalty risks working within the U.S. government. Evans’s revelations completely overturn our understanding of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Cold War.
Drawing on primary sources—including never-before-published government records and FBI files, as well as recent research gleaned from Soviet archives and intercepted transmissions between Moscow spymasters and their agents in the United States—Evans presents irrefutable evidence of a relentless Communist drive to penetrate our government, influence its policies, and steal its secrets. Most shocking of all, he shows that U.S. officials supposedly guarding against this danger not only let it happen but actively covered up the penetration. All of this was precisely as Joe McCarthy contended.
Blacklisted by History shows, for instance, that the FBI knew as early as 1942 that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the atomic bomb project, had been identified by Communist leaders as a party member; that high-level U.S. officials were warned that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy almost a decade before the Hiss case became a public scandal; that a cabal of White House, Justice Department, and State Department officials lied about and covered up the Amerasia spy case; and that the State Department had been heavily penetrated by Communists and Soviet agents before McCarthy came on the scene.
Evans also shows that practically everything we’ve been told about McCarthy is false, including conventional treatment of the famous 1950 speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, that launched the McCarthy era (“I have here in my hand . . .”), the Senate hearings that casually dismissed his charges, the matter of leading McCarthy suspect Owen Lattimore, the Annie Lee Moss case, the Army-McCarthy hearings, and much more.
In the end, Senator McCarthy was censured by his colleagues and condemned by the press and historians. But as Evans writes, “The real Joe McCarthy has vanished into the mists of fable and recycled error, so that it takes the equivalent of a dragnet search to find him.” Blacklisted by History provides the first accurate account of what McCarthy did and, more broadly, what happened to America during the Cold War. It is a revealing exposé of the forces that distorted our national policy in that conflict and our understanding of its history since.
If the left spent half as much time looking for the truth as they do attacking conservatives, they might actually find it (truth)...........
Didn’t Ann Coulter already do this book? And very well? It’s called “Treason”.
Ann Coulter’s book, Useful Idiots(?), touched on this. Looking forward to reading it.
The book sounds interesting and the premise is correct, that he has been unfairly criticized on many levels. However, I read an article once that has stuck in my mind about how off-target he often was. He wasn’t wrong to believe that Hollywood and the State Department were full of commies, they were. But at least in the case of the State Department the writer claimed that McCarthy was very bad at picking individual targets. Supposedly a blindfolded dart-thrower would have been better at picking commies from a list of State Department employees posted on the wall.
If that’s true, that might be part of the reason for his bad name.
‘But that conventional image is all wrong, as veteran journalist and author M. Stanton Evans reveals in this groundbreaking book. The long-awaited Blacklisted by History, based on six years of intensive research, dismantles the myths surrounding Joe McCarthy and his campaign to unmask Communists, Soviet agents, and flagrant loyalty risks working within the U.S. government. Evans’s revelations completely overturn our understanding of McCarthy, McCarthyism, and the Cold War. ‘
Ann Coulter already debunked the myths in her book ‘Treason’. Interesting to note it was published about six years ago as I seem to recall.
I’ve been hearing about this book for years, and have looked forward to reading it. It’s on my Christmas List!
The fault she found with McCarthy was that he underestimated the number of communists in our government.
I look forward to reading this book. For may years, its author, M. Stanton Evans, ran the National Journalism Center which trained young people, including Ann Coulter, for media careers.
I know.
History shows she was correct.
McCarthy never investigated Hollywood. That was the job of the House Committee on Un-American Activiteis.
Haaaaand Salute!
McCarthy was a pawn to Congress. One thing for sure though, McCarthy set communism back 60 years in this country.
The Soviets and their Communist Party in the US created an underground.
Even though the leaders were arrested and did some time, the rest of the operation was left hanging around.
Herbert Philbrick’s “I Led Three Lives” is the account of an FBI double agent who worked in the underground ranks.
He mentions all the “women and minorities” in the undergroud leadership and how the black ones used the term “white chauvinist” to describe whites who wouldn’t take orders and in his footnotes the female leaders called men who wouldn’t take their orders “male chauvinists.”
When the “feminist movement” came in during the 1960’s that “male chauvinist” term became a cliche’.
He was told to keep his Baptist church membership as a Communist.
Philbrick went to meetings to help Communists take them over calling himself a “Baptist.”
Joe McCarthy was on to something and J. Edgar Hoover tried to watch things throughout the 50’s and 60’s with the “civil rights” and “anti-war” movements.
The leaders at the top (White House, Justice) weren’t too into that so we don’t fully know how much Communist underground activity may have driven those movements.
And by the way you wonder why Hoover has been smeared as gay.
Its precisely because he was one of the biggest anti-communists in our government next to Joe McCarthy.
McCarthy was smeared as gay in a Las Vegas newspaper during the 1950’s, too.
The Left in Hollywood moans about the blacklist but heck all those actors and actresses of today seem to show us their true anti-American loyalties out in the open.
Their forefathers until the “Hanoi Jane” era had to keep it under wraps.
And they moan on about the “blacklist.”
Great book, but McCarthy was only two chapters. This book looks like it will go into more detail. Looking forward to reading it.
The Evans book, a product of years of serious research, goes into great detail (670 pages, small print)................and, yes, Ann did a truly great job with her book, "Treason"........The full title of the book is, "Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies" by M. Stanton Evans
Of particular note is the fact that some of the most important documentation of the era have gone missing and Evans relates how some of the removal of government documents has occurred somewhat recently...............
If you ever get your hands on the Red Books, books on The House of UnAmerican Activities, read them. They are not easy to find since the government recalled all of them.
In Treason Ann touches on Evans' research, and she is gracious to acknowledge his work and his help, while plugging his upcoming book on McCarthy.
I hope this work by Evans will be more scholarly with more research and more primary sources.
Tomorrow's the sixth.
So I can open it in front of my liberal SIL and exclaim, "Look! The truth about Joseph McCarthy. Liberal lies exposed again."
Plan ahead for a merry Christmas!
Yep, Both William Buckley and Ann Coulter covered the topic.
McCarthy was exactly right about many things, but he let his mouth and ambitions out-run his abilities...
I wouldn't even say adequately. I read Treason and was disappointed in its superficiality. There was enough material on Sen. McCarthy for a magazine article, not the several chapters she devotes to it in her book.
I found her book repetitive and unpersuasive, unless one was already persuaded. Believe me, I love Ann and look forward to all her articles, but her medium is a periodical not a book.
She does have a special talent for vitrol that I enjoy and she employs it well in Treason but there's not enough meat in her books to make me want to go back.
IMHO McCarthy did very well, considering all the stumbling blocks thrown at his feet by so many enemies and so many "allies"..........What is of grave concern to me is how the Democrats (leadership) today are siding with the Islamofascists against Republicans, just as they did back then when they sided with the Communists against Republicans.....the parallels are astounding..........
:}
The lesson still is the person who tells the truth is the one demonized by the media. When the message can't be refuted, attack the person.
Of course, another case in point is Richard Nixon. He defeated Helen Gehagan, and he was instrumental in the Hiss case. The Left never forgot. They hated Nixon for decades and they eventually brought him down. He policies were hardly extreme (price controls??) but the point was that he was an anti-communist. So he was hated.
Yep.
But of course you make the mistake of assuming they want to publicize the truth. They know the truth; they want to hide it because it would prove they're traitors.
It is amazing how many people either forget or flat out don't know that.
Yes, U.S. Government Printing Office publications by the U.S. House (COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES) and by the U.S. Senate (SUBCOMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNAL SECURITY ACT AND OTHER INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS) are excellent sources, if you can find them...............
What is of grave concern to me is how the Democrats (leadership) today are siding with the Islamofascists against Republicans, just as they did back then when they sided with the Communists against Republicans.....the parallels are astounding.....Yup. Liberals consistently hate America and love our enemies.
bttt
:}
McCarthy was right - & now we are seeing the fruits of the problem our country chose to ignore.
BUMP!
:}
The 1970 report, which the Republicans widely distributed during that year's election campaign, is probably the most readily available, but the ones from the 1940's, when the colorful Senator Jack Tenney chaired the committee, are the most interesting to read. After shifting to the left following the 1970 election, the California State Senate abolished the committee.
One often hears from liberals that McCarthy (a Senator) was the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which , during the “McCarthy era” was actually chaired by John S. Wood (D-Ga.) and Harold H. Velde (R-Ill.).
ping
Philbrick also was featured in the television show “I Led Three Lives” in the mid-1950’s. Internet surfers can probably locate recordings of these programs.
With all due respect to Larry Kudlow, McCarthy’s story is the greates story never told.
The Cold War was the ultimate battle between good and evil. McCarthy was the loud squeaky wheel that everybody wanted to mock. His name is now a perjorative. The only problems is - he was right.
My attitude back then was that any enemy of communism was a good person. It hasn't changed one bit.
(applause)!
I have a friend who has a bumper sticker that says: “McCarthy was Right”.
I cannot understand why ANYONE who remembers that era would EVER vote for a Democrat. I see little difference between Democrats and communists. They just haven’t been able to gain quite enough power to become dictators yet. Hillary is trying. I remember the era vividly.
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