The Truth About "Treason" (Book Review)

Claremont Institute ^ | July 25, 2003 | Ken Masugi

[TheDon]

The Claremont Institute
This is the print version of http://www.claremont.org/writings/030725masugi.html.

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The Truth About "Treason"

A review of Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, by Ann Coulter. Crown Forum, 355 pages, $26.95

By Ken Masugi
Posted July 25, 2003

I enjoy reading Ann Coulter's books and lap up her commentary. I have enjoyed her company at conferences. I found her High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton to be most useful when I was teaching about impeachment in constitutional law. So I was somewhat at a loss when I saw reliable conservatives attacking her new book, Treason. They focus almost exclusively on her defense of Senator Joe McCarthy. This also delights liberals such as Richard Cohen and Sam Tanenhaus. In the latter's Slate formulation, "She has exposed the often empty semantic difference between the 'responsible' right and its supposed 'fringe.'" Conservatives such as David Horowitz find her abuse of cold war liberals such as Hubert Humphrey, Dean Acheson, and Harry Truman to be irresponsible. Dorothy Rabinowitz complained that she didn't account for McCarthy's honoring of certain Nazis.

About half of Treason deals with McCarthy, while the rest concerns familiar examples of Democrat blundering on foreign policy from Korea through Iraq. As the son of Japanese-Americans who were relocated in World War II, I was especially appreciative of her assault on the incompetent Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, whose vivid memories of being relocated caused him to argue against profiling at the airports. Coulter on Mineta: "A guard took Mineta's baseball bat as a child, and as a result he was subjecting all of America to the Bataan Death March. Someone should have sent him a baseball bat."

If I have a complaint about Coulter's book, it's that she doesn't go deep enough, although clearly this was not her intent here. I've always thought we needed a good book on treason, something that delves into the regime change that the Progressives sought, in undermining the principles of the American Founding, and which the liberals brought to fruition in the theory and practice of politics from the New Deal through the Great Society. And these are principles at odds with all the good that America has ever stood for in its politics. To protect that good, Ms. Coulter divides the house and gets to the bedrock political principle by maintaining that there is something un-American about liberalism's foreign policy and those who were active in its conduct and defense. But may one with justification use the jarring term "treason"?

Talk about treason and un-American conduct has charged our most important elections—Jefferson's in 1800, Lincoln's in 1860, and FDR's in 1932. The victors in those elections, which defined the political landscape for generations to come, used the language of betrayal and loyalty because first principles were at stake. They were not mere exercises in political self-aggrandizement but attempts to save the country from those who would betray it. Recall FDR's comparing himself to Christ driving out the money changers. And hardly anyone remembers FDR admonishing the nation about the similarity between conservative Republicans and fascists in his 1944 State of the Union address.

This search for differences of principle can get one into trouble; as it should when done irresponsibly;for one must always defend oneself against the charge of extremism, not to speak of dishonesty. The estimable National Review Online fired her for writing a post-9/11 column on Islam in which she argued American forces should "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity." Almost two years later, we are accomplishing steps one and two. Will Iraq's democratization proceed apace without some change in Islam, making it more like tolerant Christianity? Isn't this what the Christian heart prays for the world?

Coulter concludes Treason by maintaining that "Conservatives believe man was created in God's image; liberals believe they are God." While she may overestimate conservative piety, she does not exaggerate liberal arrogance. That vanity has its source in the rejection of the "laws of nature and of nature's God." Neither natural law nor God plays a role in liberal principles; passions, the forces of history, and the triumph of the will do. Coulter taps into a venerable theme in the history of political philosophy.

Ann Coulter's flashiness easily shades her argument that conservatives are modest in the face of God, while liberals pay no attention or are actually emboldened. If she omits certain unpleasantries about Joe McCarthy, she is writing a brief, not a biography. (She is a graduate of the prestigious University of Michigan law school and Cornell University, where she studied with certain Straussians.) Contrary to her leftist and conservative critics, Treason is a sobering addition to a political, popular, and philosophic confrontation with the corruption in our politics.

Ken Masugi is director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Local Government, and is an associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books. He is the co-author of Democracy in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State.

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Copyright © 2003, The Claremont Institute.

Visit the Claremont Institute at claremont.org.

[TheDon]

McCarthyism should be redefined as an earlier version of being "Borked", as in being defamed by liberals.

[TheDon]

Ping

[moneyrunner]

Great point.

[MEG33]

Great find.The reviewer,unlike most,read the book.

[backhoe]

Locator ^

[dk/coro]

I suggest we tread a bit carefully here. My credentials as a conservative Republican are unassailable. However, I personally well remember the McCarthy Hearings in January, 1954 like it was yesterday.

McCarthy, without a shred of evidence, unleashed a vitriolic diatribe against the US Army (with the support of a thoroughly disreputable assistant, a sullied homosexual by the name of Cohn).

Robert Walsh, the superby competent counsel for the Army, shredded both McCarthy and Cohn (for both vicious slander and malicious lies) to the degree that the McCarthy Hearings were shortly thereafter brought to an abrupt end...and McCarthy was censured by the House for "abuse of his position and scurrulous conduct".

So much for Joe McCarthy. My contacts in Appleton, Wisc. have relayed to me that McCarthy should have been hospitalized for acute alcoholism even before the Hearings commenced; and was incapacitated a large part of the time...and subject to violent outbursts and fits of depression.

My point here is that Ann's case would have been much better served had she not treaded into these murky -- and most dangerous -- waters.

[jla]

Can the House of Rep's censure a Senator?

[MEG33]

I remember how unpleasant that was,too.Weren't those hearings actually investigating McCarthy?By that time Drew Pearson and others had thoroughly trashed him and the love sick Cohn had made a mess of things trying to get Shine special treatment.McCarthy's alcohol cosumption had increased and he was in the soup.Those are not the hearings that got him trashed.There are transcripts available of his hearings behind closed doors you will find enlightening.DPB101 has them.There were spies in the army.

[MEG33]

No.It was the Senate.

[jla]

No.It was the Senate.

DK's relating that it was the House.
Anyway, when either of you actually refute anyhing in our Ann's book, gimme a ping, will ya.

[DPB101]

McCarthy, without a shred of evidence, unleashed a vitriolic diatribe against the US Army. . .

Are you aware of the treason at the Ft. Monmouth Army Lab and the refusal of Ike to allow the Army to testify even in executive session?

[MEG33]

Actually I have found nothing in Ann's book to trash.That "appearance of McCarthy "during those hearings is not pretty.I just ggoogled the the famous "Have you no shame quote" and found a transcript.Guess who was attacked and browbeaten..it wasn't someone from the army.Welch practised that scene and took great delight in his dramatic outrage.No one has yet been able to name one person who McCarthy unfairly attacked and ruined.McCarthy was right.

[AUsome Joy]

Did you read Treason?

[MEG33]

I knew that McCarthy was right about Communists in government but had a bad impression of those hearings.Please read Ann's book and realize whatever his alcohol problems were,he has been unfairly attacked and smeared .

Ann is a flame thrower and makes some of us uncomfortable but the book is well researched and she makes you laugh,too.I thought I knew all about it but I learned more and of course the book is about more than McCarthy.

[dix]

Sounds interesting, but I gotta read this in the morning.

[potlatch]

PING!

[HISSKGB]

Robert Welsh was a lying grandstander. He demanded McCarthy publicly name names. When finally McCarthy named Fred Fisher, Welsh's law partner, this info had already become public two months before by the NYT with confirmatory quotes from Welsh. Robert Welsh told the NYT that Fischer belonged to a communist organization weeks before he said to McCarthy "Have you no decency!" for saying the same thing.

Communists were working for the Army. Communists were stealing classified information. A communist defector from East Germany brought with him prototypes of US secret military stuff stolen from Fort Monmouth where Julius Rosenberg ran a huge spy cell working in classified areas. McCarthy held investigations in order to stem the tide and put pressure on those who were allowing these criminals commit these crimes.

Those that snivel about McCarthyism are either completely uninformed or are deliberately defending traitors.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

The point is not whether the man had his faults, but rather the fact that he nailed alot of communists spot on.

His attackers knew he was nailing communists rightly and attacked him viciously, denying each and every assertion he made. They were protecting anti US leftists who were in high positions via conspiracy. They then changed history to cover up.

'McCarthy, without a shred of evidence, unleashed a vitriolic diatribe against the US Army'...Congress persecutes groups before hearings daily. So what?
The army needed to receive the message that they had better not tolerate subversives. He was censored by mostly democrats who wanted to shut him down for their own political reasons, not to defend the army.

As far as his acute alcoholism for years, this is simply impossible. An acute alcoholic could never function like he did. If he was wasted daily it would have been obvious and the story of the decade. It wasn't even the story of the week.

'My point here is that Ann's case would have been much better served had she not treaded into these murky -- and most dangerous -- waters.'...Communists and sympathisers were exerting influence all over society and government-then there was a coverup and rewriting of history regarding the evil McCarthy era. These are facts. The truth is finally exposed...and you are worried about him being aggressive? You are upset that Communists were exposed and the coverup is now evident?

Have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

[MEG33]

Thanks for the posts.

[Plutarch]

McCarthy, without a shred of evidence, unleashed a vitriolic diatribe against the US Army...

Robert Walsh, the superby competent counsel for the Army, shredded both McCarthy and Cohn...

So McCarthy's allegations of espionage within the Army were "vitriolic diatribe" [bad!], while Robert Walsh's "shredding" (free of 'vitriolic diatribe'?] was evidence of his being "superby competent"?

Sounds like Pravda: "Everyone knows that McCarthy was bad...."