Liberal William Manchester Turns on ACLU and PC ism

William Manchester, described by the Palm Beach Post as "a historian with [a) giant reputation for impeccable research and clear thinking" sounds a lot like Rush Limbaugh these days instead of the author notorious for his ultra liberal views.

Interviewed by the Post about the current ACLU and allied leftist campaigns to banish George Washington's portrait from school rooms, Manchester thunders "Oh, God, hang the portrait." during a phone interview.

Responding to the news that the American Civil Liberties Union says hanging the portrait amounts to forced patriotism the old liberal revealed that "I ceased my affiliation with them a few years ago. "It's all about guilt now. Guilt. Victims and guilt."

Asked to explain, Manchester said he didn't know why that's so. "But we're supposed to feel guilt about things that happened or are said to have happened in the faraway past. Do you know what George Washington's real sin is for these people? He was a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Period. He doesn't fit in with today's prescribed correctness. Hang the portrait. Maybe some child will see it and ask a teacher, `Who's that?' And then that child might just get a history lesson."

When asked how important history is he said "A fundamental premise for a functioning democracy is that the citizens will be literate enough, educated enough to see through the bull, know what's good for the democracy and what's dangerous. Washington embodied that premise, championed it.

"If you let education slide in schools and in the home, if your citizens are not aware of their own history, you open the door for self-appointed arbiters of truth," he warned. "And their so-called truths may not be true at all. It's a bad thing. The real question here is: Are our children learning enough history in school? I think not.

"But," he added "it must be good history, real history. Bad enough we don't teach more about World War II in our schools, for 55 years the Japanese have gotten away with teaching a false history of the war in their schools." Manchester, an ex-Marine wounded in action by the Japanese on Guadalcanal in WW II added "To catch the lie you have to be educated."

Noting that "Manchester is an old FDR liberal, adviser to the Kennedys, loather of Richard Nixon," the Post said that he has never ducked controversy, and "actually wrote a book of essays titled Controversy. His other works included almost 20 other books about JFK, Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, the Krupp family, the Pacific theater in World War II, H.L. Mencken.

"But, wrote the obviously shocked and notriously liberal Post, "he's sounding as if maybe Rush Limbaugh sneaked into his house and purloined the phone."

"Truth trumps politics, or should," he says. "Some who call themselves liberals are not liberal thinkers. History has been appropriated, stolen. Hanging a portrait of George Washington shouldn't involve politics, guilt, revisionism. You look at the man and judge him worthy or not. Who's more worthy than Washington? Who else was there? Hang the portrait."

And while you're at it, he seems to be saying, hang PC liberalism along with it.

Is the whole basis of "William Manchester was a liberal" the fact that Manchester was an ardent supporter of JFK? Geez, my grandfather was a big JFK man and grandad was a rabid right wing democrat. And JFK wasn't especially liberal himself, was he?

I'm sorry, I'm not buying this assessment of Manchester. He probably was a Democrat like everyone else was back in the 40s, 50s and 60s. That doesn't make him a leftist. Reagan was a democrat in there too.

He has never been a less of a courageous man in my eyes, don't misconstrue my choice of words.

But what is evident is that he has come to the realization that the enemies we fight within are just as determined as the patriots of this country to do their best to win what they see as a battle worth fighting.

I get criticized for not being tolerant toward liebrals, but in the end, their blind allegiance to hollow policies and feel good ethics is killing this nation.

Thank you William for framing the debate . Why do New Jersey schools not want George hanging around in their schools anymore anyway. Enforced patriotism, bull pukkie!!!

This isn't the United States of Marxism for cripe sake, but it is way too far down that road, and we don't have a lot of time to turn from the totality of the course , not with the rate the enemies within are waging their sordid deeds.

Maybe he's trying to make amends for a lifetime of mindless liberalism before he dies and meets his Maker.

Oh, I don't know -- the first two volumes of his biography of Churchill mark him as a pretty good historian, regardless of his personal views.

I can't give you the specific cites, but I've read enough stuff about Manchester over the years to where he comes across as pretty much your standard New Deal liberal politically. And I don't think that's flaming or insulting him at all. Another thing about old-line liberals, at least in my experience with them, is that you could wage political combat with them, then leave it at the office and have a civil and cordial relationship with them away from the battlefield. Unlike today's venomous, hate-filled left. And if Manchester's political views don't come across in his work ... hey, we ought to be applauding him for that. Haven't we had enough, quote, "historians," unquote, put their own unique slants on things? Manchester has always played it straight, and that's the way it ought to be.

The liberalism of many WWII vets is understandable (unlike current liberals). Some were dirt poor. They had never seen a dentist and only rarely a doctor. Didn't have many clothes and food was scarce. When they joined the military it was a miracle to them. Food, doctors, new clothes, jeeps to drive, many saw their first dentist. There was wealth they had never imagined. On top of that, we won the war. Government worked for that generation.

No surprise that when the became civilians they thought the Feds could solve almost any problem.

You nailed it this time ... the old-line liberals weren't leftists. Today's liberals are leftists. We fall into the trap of using those terms interchangeably, and I don't think they're interchangeable.

The term liberal is not a perjorative to me. It describes an old and honorable political philosophy which I do not happen to share. The term leftist, to me, is the perjorative, because that describes a mindset that is inherently destructive to this country and its values.

Believe me , there is a great distinction between liberals pre-nixon and post-nixon.

HHH and McCarthy(Gene) are some of the old breed, at least they didn't wear their demmie commie socialist armbands in public like the new breed of liebrals do.

Manchester is not so much a liberal in the modern sense, but an old fashioned WASP. Accordingly, he's not into the anti-Americanism of the modern left, but feels strongly that all political power should be in the hands of rich, educated WASPs living in the northeast.

His old WASP habits are particularly evident in his superb biography of Churchill (rabid Anglophilia) and his so-so book on Krupp (rabid Germanophobia).

His "Goodbye Darkness" is one of the best US war memoirs ever written.

Manchester is a national treasure, an honest and diligent historian who doesn't plagiarize. Read "The Arms of Krupp", "Goodbye Darkness" and his Churchill work for history that is impossible to put down. I have never been able to discern any particular political point of view in his writing. To anyone who hasn't read his books, do yourself a favor and read at least one. It is history as it should be written: Dense, researched beyond reproach and full of life. And...

...Semper fi!

Some were dirt poor.

I can understand the above, wht about those of us that were poor through circumstance.

In the Intermountian West the depression hit about four years before the general depression, noone ever felt poor. The attude was, things happen we are still together.

I have never been able to understand obsession of people with the deprression, my Grandmothers Family lost all in the panic of 1892 and we survived, there were 20 children, noone said it is all over I'm going to die..

Yeah, I agree on the Churchill biography. I have the "wilderness years" edition, and it's excellent....You know, when I read "New Dealer, and advisor to Kennedy," I thought Arthur Schlessinger. My mistake. Different liberal.

Read it. Read it . Read it. and SEMPER FI BTW

Boy .. did I call HHH and Gene McCarthy demmie commie socialists? And no one even called me on it? ( and Im a minnesoda native , to boot!)

I gotta lay off the coffee ...Or at least stay away from 100 dollar bill dragging leftists in gay socialist apparel! :-) ..There shur are a lot of 'em on this here conservative website. I rekkun it's where the action IS..after all

See [posted at FR,] Losing Our History, from the National Review Online, by Rod Dreher, January 17, 2002:

Losing Our History
Ideology trumps truth.
January 17, 2002 8:25 a.m.
Has Brooklyn gone nuts? First there was the decision of the city's fire-department leadership to place a politically correct FDNY memorial statue outside department headquarters in downtown Brooklyn. Now the newly elected Brooklyn borough president, one Marty Markowitz, tells the New York Post that he's going to take down the portrait of George Washington that hangs in his Borough Hall office.
Markowitz, a Democrat, told the Post that he would probably replace the image of the "old white man" --- Markowitz's phrase for the Father of Our Country --- with a portrait of a black or a woman.

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