Free Republic

It is hard to imagine a sadder group of people than the children of Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. I am thinking of the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the son of Alger Hiss, and now Harry Dexter White’s two daughters, who in a recent letter to the New York Times Book Review rebuke a reviewer for referring to their father, a high-ranking Treasury official under Roosevelt and Truman, as a Soviet agent. What a tragedy the end of the Cold War has been for the kids and grandkids of the spies. How do they talk...

"Our country has been shaken by strife, but only a few people were held accountable for that in our lifetime," said Georgi Poltavchenko, the Russian president's aide. "I do not think it is fair that those who initiated the strife remain in the center of our state near the Kremlin." Khrushchev in 1962 ordered Stalin's remains removed from Lenin's Tomb, implying Lenin's remains were still sacred. But if Leninism had lost its importance in Russian political thought at the highest levels, if Russian public opinion abominated Lenin's memory, the founder of the Soviet Union would have been reburied in some...

Yalta Condemned Millions to Tyranny FDR’s Failure Not Forgotten by Arnold Beichman Posted May 13, 2005 Earlier this week Vladimir Putin celebrated in Moscow the end of World War II and glorified—yes, glorified—the memory of Josef Stalin, one of the great mass murderers of all time. So much for Putin and what he calls his “managed democracy.” President Bush, on the other hand, celebrated the historic date differently. He had the courage to speak truth to power in a once-captive nation, Latvia, which along with Estonia and Lithuania, had suffered for half a century under a Soviet dictatorship. Bush told...

There is another war going on today in Iraq about which little is heard. It is a war against Christianity. Christians in Iraq are a comparatively small, windling minority: fewer than 800,000, merely 3 percent out of a population of 26 million. Though Iraqi Christians are a minuscule minority, they suffering unrelenting Muslim persecution. The Iraqi Christian population, once was more than 15 percent, decreases daily due to emigration to safety in Western countries. Muslim persecution in Iraq of Christians was highlighted in January when Archbishop Basil Georges Casmoussa in Mosul was kidnapped. Cooler Muslim heads must have prevailed because...

One of the more revolting contemporary English politicians is London's Mayor Ken Livingstone. He has just accused Israel — Israel, if you please — of "ethnic cleansing" and has described Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "a war criminal who should be in prison." His remarks came after vicious anti-Semitic attacks in England increased 42 percent last year over the previous year, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. During a recent press conference, Mr, Livingstone compared a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard.

MCDONALD'S IS CELEBRATING ITS 15TH anniversary in Russia. Its sales have risen steadily, reaching $310 million in 2004. The company reports that it is serving more than 200,000 customers daily in more than a hundred Russian locations. Well, three cheers for McDonald's, but what's the big deal?Why is McDonald's such a success when all they're selling is a Russian staple, a kotlety as they call it? It was once a puzzle to me, but there's a story behind this McDonald's success story.Some years ago I was staying at one of Moscow's most luxurious hotels, just built by private German investors,...

Please, members of Congress, do something about an arrant case of discrimination against a loyal American friend. Citizens of Britain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark — all the "old" members of the European Union — do not need visas to come to the United States and stay here for up to 90 days. Citizens of Poland, however, must go through the long-winding bureaucratic visa application. Poland is the only former Soviet satellite that provided significant military support in Iraq, thereby incurring German and French anger. By example, Poland helped persuade other European countries to tone down anti-American rhetoric on the Iraq war....

Shouldn't President Bush be asking if it isn't time to dump the United Nations and to start anew? What kind of an organization is the United Nations whose General Assembly, with its automatic anti-Israel majority, devotes its time and finances (the United States pays almost a quarter of the U.N. budget) to badgering Israel, the only genuine democracy in the Middle East? What kind of organization is the U.N. Security Council in which a has-been like France is a permanent member but Germany, India and Japan are not? Does it make any sense to give French President Jacques Chirac, America-hater...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Enduring shiftBy Arnold BeichmanPublished November 15, 2004 In his essay on "The Future of Liberalism," (1882) Matthew Arnold wrote: "If experience has established any one thing in this world it has established this: that it is well for any great class and description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and provide for them."     Our November presidential election demonstrated the validity of Arnold's pronouncement. For...

There seems to be general agreement that the Democratic Party leadership and rank-and-file are particularly embittered. They are embittered with their dismal electoral fate over several decades and full of bile and spleen about the continued successes of Republican Party candidates. And they have good reason to be bitter. Most people do not realize the depth of the Republican hold on electoral and appointive posts and for how long the Republican Party has been in power in Washington and in the 50 states. That may explain the embitterment.

<p>The re-election of President George Bush is essential to ensure American and even global security against Islamist terrorism. Any possibility his re-election could be in danger should be carefully examined so the possibility can be quarantined like a computer virus.</p>

<p>Canadian historian Jack Granatstein has said, "Anti-Americanism has been and, to a substantial degree, remains Canada's state religion, the very bedrock of Canadian nationalism."</p> <p>That finding is true of two of the three Canadian political parties vying in the national election. The most anti-American party is, of course, the statist Liberal Party, now in power. Second in hostility is the socialist New Democratic Party. The least hostile is the Conservative Party, which is given a good chance of ousting the corrupted Liberal Party on June 28. The Liberal government has been under investigation for allowing the theft of hundreds of millions of dollars by advertising agencies. The present Liberal Party prime minister, Paul Martin, 66, was finance minister during all the stealing but says he knew nothing about it.</p>

<p>Among the most ungenerous and uninformed obituary comments about President Reagan, I give the cup to Thomas Cronin, the McHugh Professor of American Institutions at Colorado College. With sneering rhetoric, he is quoted in the New York Times obituary that Americans evaluate the greatness of a president on "criteria that are over and above popularity and re-election," criteria that in Mr. Cronin's opinion President Reagan obviously did not fulfill.</p>

<p>This is the 60th anniversary of the publication of "Road to Serfdom," by Friedrich Hayek. It is one of the most important books of the 20th century, as important as the publication of "Das Kapital" was, in its malign way, in the 19th.</p>

<p>This is a story about George Soros, philanthropist billionaire and political crusader. But first some background.</p> <p>The formation of the American Liberty League was announced on Aug. 22, 1934. Its backers were rich and powerful conservative business and political leaders of both major parties who hated Roosevelt and his New Deal. And "hated" is not too strong. A New Yorker cartoon at the time showed three evening-gowned dowagers in diamond tiaras with a caption "Let's all go down to the Translux [a New York newsreel theatre of the time] and hiss Roosevelt."</p>

There are some highly intelligent Islamist terrorist strategists who understand European politics to an extraordinary degree and, more importantly, they know how to exploit divisive issues in European politics like the war in Iraq, with or without suicide bombers. This statement flies in the face of Fareed Zakaria's March 15 Newsweek column, "The radicals are desperate." If Madrid March 11 is an example of their desperation, one shudders to think what the terrorists will do when they become cautious and optimistic. My view of their political intelligence is based on a March 14 expose in the Italian daily, Il Giornale...

If you're wondering how the Islamist terrorists got enough explosives to kill 190 Spaniards and wound 1200 more, many maimed for life, here's a dispatch from the daily news report of Radio Free Europe which may be an answer. According to the Czech Republic news agency, CTK, Czech police seized "hundreds of tons of imported, military-grade plastic explosives and detained two men on weapon-trafficking charges on March 10." The police, no doubt sensitive to protocol, failed to identify the country from which the shipments originated but a Czech newspaper spilled the beans: The country is Sweden and the shipment was...

<p>In the dear old days of the Soviet Union, there grew up two subdisciplines in Western political science. One was called Kremlinology, the other Sovietology.</p> <p>These disciplines were developed because the Soviet Union was pledged to the overthrow of democratic countries, it had become a great military power and, as a closed society, it was immune to normal research procedures.</p>

<p>Three communist countries are responsible for the world's most devastating famines.</p> <p>Forcible collectivization of agriculture by Mao Tse-tung caused a famine in the early 1960s, which cost the lives of between 27 million and 40 million Chinese people. V.I. Lenin and Josef Stalin between them created two famines in the Soviet Union that cost the lives of at least 12 million people.</p>

Questions never asked at the O.K. Corral Bush-Russert press event Sunday: Is the world, especially the Middle East, better off with the overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein? Is there a chance that a democratic Iraq will bring peace and stability to the Middle East? I hope President Bush will ask these questions of his opponent during the presidential debates. If one were to ask: Is the world better off without a Soviet Union or a Nazi Germany, the answer would be a resounding "Yes." If one were to ask the people of Kuwait are they better off with Saddam...

<p>I wonder why the thesis is rarely examined publicly that the Palestinians will never never never never never never never be allowed to make peace with Israel even if the Palestinians wanted to. Yasser Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah and free-lance terrorists won't allow it to happen because they believe victory is at hand. The reason this thesis is not on anybody's public agenda is that were it considered a reality it would mean recognizing the futility of Oslo-Camp David-shuttle diplomacy.</p>

Imam Abdel-Samie Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa, in his Friday, June 6, sermon at the Grand Mosque of Rome, asked for "Allah's help in the destruction of the homes and destruction of the enemies of Islam, for their annihilation, and the victory everywhere of the Nation of Islam." --------------------------------------------- So how will the next suicide bomber disguise him or herself to execute an Israeli-killing mission? Now that every orthodox Jew with black hat and side curls or every Israeli soldier getting on a bus could be a suicide bomber in disguise, what new stratagem will Islam's death cultists adopt? I advise the...

<p>German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has sent his congratulations to President Bush, and no doubt French President Jacques Chirac will send his felicitations, too, whenever they figure out what they can say without too much embarrassment.</p> <p>And what an ordeal for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as he tries to speak warm words after discouraging doing anything about Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. resolutions except let's pass more resolutions.</p>

<p>"We must reach a consensus in this country that our responses should go beyond passive defense to consider means of active prevention, pre-emption and retaliation. Our goal must be to prevent and deter future terrorist acts, and experience has taught us over the years that one of the best deterrents to terrorism is the certainty that swift and sure measures will be taken against those who engage in it. We should take steps toward carrying out such measures."</p>

<p>One of my Hoover colleagues, John Bunzel, who was a close friend of Edward Teller's, once asked the eminent physicist: "Do you know the difference between God and yourself? You don't? Well, God doesn't want to be Edward Teller."</p> <p>The story was told at a commemoration last week dedicated to the Hungarian-born world-renowned nuclear physicist who died Sept. 9 at age 94. It was that kind of a memorial celebration, irreverent and admiring of the father of the hydrogen bomb, held at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California, where Teller, its founder, held sway for many years. Less than two months before his death, President Bush awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.</p>

<p>By now we've come to accept that, as Germany was once the hotbed of anti-Semitism, it is the Middle East — from Egypt to Damascus to Saudi Arabia to the PLO — which today is a seething cauldron of racism. What, however, is even more alarming is that anti-Semitism is spreading to what would hitherto be considered the most unlikely places.</p>

<p>Am I being wholly rational when I say that I miss the Cold War?</p> <p>There was a time, say a decade ago, when I wouldn't have hesitated for a minute to answer that I most certainly do not miss the Cold War. But as I pull my shoes back on at Sea-Tac airport, rebuckle by belt, repack my laptop, mourn the confiscation of my metal money clip (with a tiny, hidden knife blade) and watch female airport security agents pass their wands over the bras of female passengers, I have a curious thought: In the worst days of the Cold War, even during the Cuban missile crisis, you simply showed your ticket and marched onto the plane. And if your plane was hijacked to Cuba, it might only mean a short delay for refueling and back home without a scratch.</p>

<p>For parents who are spending tens of thousands of dollars in annual tuition fees, for those concerned with intellectual honesty in the academic profession, for college students enrolled in American history courses, and for members of Congress who appropriate taxpayer money to support the American university, the report in this book is a startling, even explosive expose of where the money and their trust are going.</p>

<p>Why has this road map and all other past "road maps" evolved as great fiascoes?</p> <p>And promises, promises, pledges, guarantees, billions and billions of U.S. dollars. Hamas and Hezbollah and their subsystems go right on with their suicide bombers, surviving Israeli counterattacks and so-called assassinations. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas arrives on the scene and 100 days later he is an ex-prime minister.</p>

<p>There is a rather new specialty in emergency hospital care, highly developed by Israeli institutions. It is called "disaster medicine" (or "mass casualty medicine") and American medical and nursing specialists are coming to Israel to learn how Israel copes with the terrorist attacks against its people. And, of course, these specialists couldn't come to a better place; no other of the world's 191 countries has suffered so many successful and thwarted terrorist attacks. Iraq may in time, however, become a runner-up.</p>

<p>The greatest understatement of modern political reality was uttered by David Maxwell Fyfe, the British politician, when he said: "Gratitude is not a normal feature of political life."</p> <p>How true his words were back in the 1960s and how much truer they are today as we read in the European media anti-American propaganda that has spread faster than the HIV-AIDS pandemic. I have diagnosed this disease as "Severe Acute Hate America Syndrome" with the acronymic initials SAHAS.</p>

<p>The biggest job facing Bill Keller, newly appointed New York Times executive editor, is how to restore a missing, indefinable, intangible attribute that once shone like a halo above the paper's masthead.</p> <p>That attribute was the Times' mystique, something beyond newsprint, stories, editorials, headlines and circulation figures. It was not that one believed everything the Times reported or that one even agreed with its editorials.</p>

In her latest column, Ann Coulter took issue with a recent piece by Arnold Beichman in which he was critical of her new book Treason, particularly her defense of former Sen. Joe McCarthy. In response to the Coulter article, Arnold Beichman wrote the following letter to HUMAN EVENTS and asked that it be considered for publication. In the interest of fairness, as both columnists are respected conservative voices, the letter from Mr. Beichman follows. To HUMAN EVENTS: I want to make a short comment on Ann Coulter's attack on me. First, she ignores my disclosure that Joe McCarthy accepted Communist...

When Good Historians Go BadBy Ann CoulterFrontPageMagazine.com | August 8, 2003 Arnold Beichman recently wrote a column attacking my latest book, "Treason" – which he at least admits he didn't read – claiming he has the "names of 'innocent lives' Mr. McCarthy ruined." I was excited to see it. I've been asking for just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy for six weeks, but until now all I had gotten was wild speculation about my personal life. But strangely, while Beichman claims to have the names of McCarthy's innocent victims, he declines to mention them. (It's been almost 50...

<p>"Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason."</p> <p>"The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Sen. Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name."</p>

Arnold Beichman recently wrote a column attacking my latest book, "Treason" – which he at least admits he didn't read – claiming he has the "names of 'innocent lives' Mr. McCarthy ruined." I was excited to see it. I've been asking for just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy for six weeks, but until now all I had gotten was wild speculation about my personal life. But strangely, while Beichman claims to have the names of McCarthy's innocent victims, he declines to mention them. (It's been almost 50 years and these people still won't name names.) Instead he offers...

When good historians go bad -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 6, 2003 6:25 p.m. Eastern © 2003 Universal Press Syndicate Arnold Beichman recently wrote a column attacking my latest book, "Treason" – which he at least admits he didn't read – claiming he has the "names of 'innocent lives' Mr. McCarthy ruined." I was excited to see it. I've been asking for just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy for six weeks, but until now all I had gotten was wild speculation about my personal life. But strangely, while Beichman claims to have the names of McCarthy's innocent victims, he declines...

Arnold Beichman recently wrote a column attacking my latest book, "Treason" – which he at least admits he didn't read – claiming he has the "names of 'innocent lives' Mr. McCarthy ruined." I was excited to see it. I've been asking for just one innocent person ruined by Joe McCarthy for six weeks, but until now all I had gotten was wild speculation about my personal life. But strangely, while Beichman claims to have the names of McCarthy's innocent victims, he declines to mention them. (It's been almost 50 years and these people still won't name names.) Instead he offers...

<p>Rudyard Kipling called the late 19th-century struggle between Britain and Russia for dominance in the Caucasus and Central Asia with spies, secret plots and lots of assassinations "The Great Game." Updating Kipling, I am adding a new sobriquet for the 15-year-old seduction by Iran of the United States, "The Great Con-Game." It might also be considered a synonym for the "Good Cop-Bad Cop" routine, to describe how the Tehran mullahs bamboozled the State Department experts for 10 years. It's possible that the State Department's eyes, like those of a newborn babe, have at last opened wide. A meeting yesterday of high administration officials reportedly adopted a more realistic policy and a new strategy toward the Tehran terrorist theocrats who have turned the country into a concentration camp. "The Great Con-Game" came into full bloom in May 1997 with the election of Mohammed Khatami as president of Iran. Actually the game had begun earlier during the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1989 to 1997, when some American newspaper editors were asked if they would be interested in visiting Iran and meeting its leaders. But the offer was never fully implemented. Mr. Khatami's election really made hope blossom, hope that Iran would stop being a terrorist state and a formidable enemy of the U.S. That hope reached a climax when Iran's new president charmed a New York Times postelection interviewer by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville and thus hatched the myth of Iranian "moderates." An Iranian who quoted the great French intellectual couldn't be all bad, could he? Unfortunately, American policy-makers forgot the lapidary words of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: "An Iranian moderate is somebody who has run out of ammunition." Mr. Khatami's election was enough to send State Department hopes flying higher than they had since 1979 when the successful Khomenei revolutionaries overthrew the shah and then imprisoned the U.S. Embassy staff for 444 days. "The Great Con-Game" has been responsible for one of the most mysterious chapters in the making of American foreign policy over the past two decades. I am referring to the what-the-hell-is-going-on secret diplomacy between the State Department and Iran, a country that President Bush included as part of the "axis of evil." In a message to Congress Jan. 9, 2002, he said Iran "aggressively pursues these weapons [of mass destruction] and exports terror while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." For several years we were told (but not openly by anybody in authority) that Iran's ayatollahs were showing signs of friendliness to the United States (a k a "the Great Satan") and even softening their anti-American theocratic rhetoric. Even so wily an observer as the venerable William Buckley in a recent column wondered aloud "whether Iran will continue to move toward liberalism," which, of course, raises the question: When did this putative "move toward liberalism" begin? President Bush was a little more realistic. Speaking at the University of South Carolina May 9, Mr. Bush said that in Iran "the desire for freedom is stirring. In the face of harsh repression, Iranians are courageously speaking out for democracy and the rule of law and human rights. And the United States strongly supports their aspirations for freedom." Now you would think that in the face of such a presidential statement the State Department would be happy to find and enlist exiled Iranian groups in the battle against, to use the president's words, "an unelected few [who] repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom." Not so. For the State Department the enemy until now has been the People's Mujaheedin Organization, with a military wing stationed for several years along the Iran-Iraq border. The aim of the PMO was to oust the ayatollah fundamentalist dictatorship and establish a secular democracy. During those years, it exposed Iran's nuclear and biological warfare sites, identified acts of Iranian terrorism and assassinations the world over. PMO actions enlisted the enthusiastic support of a majority of members of Congress and many members of European parliaments. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the State Department put the PMO on a list of terrorist organizations. This designation was a Chamberlainesque act of appeasement, the successful triumph by the ayatollah regime as part of "The Great Con-Game." In outlawing the PMO, the State Department went so far as to authorize the Defense Department, while at war with Saddam Hussein, to bomb the PMO's campsites where some 5,000 Iranian militants, enemies of Tehran, were on station. At some point after the bombing, the U.S. military in Iraq were ordered (the whole story is yet to be told) to sign a cease-fire with the PMO. It was a ridiculous cease-fire agreement since the PMO units hadn't fired at anyone, least of all coalition forces fighting Saddam. On May 9 and 10, the PMO was ordered by the United States Central Command to surrender their arms, which they did. At long last, the State Department, its Iran appeasement policy a heap of ash and rubble, has come, I think, to its senses and decided it would no longer be part of "The Great Con-Game." U.S. Gen. Ray Odierno announced May 10 that the Mujaheedin "shared similar goals to the United States in forming democracy and fighting oppression and that they had been extremely cooperative," according to an AFP dispatch. "The Great Con-Game" appeasement policy began with the Clinton administration which put the PMO on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. An unnamed senior Clinton official told the Los Angeles Times (Oct. 9, 1997): "The inclusion of the People's Mujaheedin was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate President Mohammed Khatami." Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk told Newsweek on Sept. 26, 2002, that the terrorist designation of the Mujaheedin was part of the Clinton administration's strategy and was due to "the White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government." And, incredibly, the Bush administration was suckered into participating in "The Great Con-Game" including allowing the bombing of potential allies against the Iran theocracy. In the meantime, U.S. intelligence, according to The Washington Post, has found that al Qaeda militants operating in Iran were involved in the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh. So at long last "The Great Con-Game" has come to an end. The question remains: What about the 5,000 PMO fighters?</p>

ALL THE TALK about President Kennedy and his sexual exploits with a White House intern is full of leers and jeers and smutty comparisons to President Clinton. There has been little talk, though, about how reckless behavior may have affected his ability to function as chief executive. There is some evidence that those around Kennedy treated him with less respect than is due the American president. Could it be because they perceived him as the priapist he was and were contemptuous? Turn, for example, to the marvelous narrative history published in 1991 by Michael R. Beschloss--"The Crisis Years: Kennedy and...

<p>THE LANGUAGE POLICE: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. By Diane Ravitch. Knopf. 243 pages. $24.</p> <p>In her introduction titled "Forbidden Topics, Forbidden Words," Diane Ravitch, the nationally renowned educator and historian, describes how she "stumbled upon an elaborate, well-established protocol of beneficent censorship, quietly endorsed and broadly implemented by test publishers, textbook publishers, states and the federal government." What she next writes should send a shiver down the backs of parents with school children: "What I did not realize was that educational materials are now governed by an intricate set of rules to screen out language and topics that might be considered controversial or offensive. Some of this censorship is trivial, some is ludicrous, and some is breathtaking in its power to dumb down what children learn in school." The villains in this dumbing down process go by an innocent, virtuous title: "bias and sensitivity review" panel. These panels are tainted by a spreading and threatening disease, PCS, or Politically Correct Syndrome. Panel members — the language police — are routinely hired by publishers and state education agencies to screen every test and textbook for potential "bias." These panels, pressured by lobbies of left and right have, writes Ms. Ravitch, "evolved into an elaborate and widely accepted code of censorship . . . hidden from public sight." The author has collected examples of what some of these bias reviewers have recommended for elimination from school tests. A short biography of Gutzon Borglum, who designed the Mount Rushmore monument consisting of gigantic heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Why shouldn't school children read about this acclaimed national monument? Because the Lakota Indians, said the panel, consider the Black Hills a sacred place to pray and consider the sculpture "an abomination." Out. A passage about owls was eliminated from a proposed test because a panel member said that owls are taboo for the Navajos. Out. California has informed publishers not to include references in their textbooks to "unhealthy" foods such as: french fries, coffee, bacon, butter, ketchup and mayonnaise among others. California, along with Texas, have the largest school populations, so when their book-buying panels command, the four major textbook publishing houses stand at attention. Such prohibitions are promulgated by these powerful "bias and sensitivity review" panels not on the basis of any kind of research findings but "because the topics upset some adults, who assume that they will upset the children in the same way," writes Ms. Ravitch. "The guidelines ensure conformity of language and thought." Four different agencies promulgate the bias guidelines, which have become a preemptive form of censorship: educational publishers, test development companies, scholarly and professional associations and the states themselves. Some of these guidelines are simply mad. One commands textbook authors to acknowledge — this will come as news to American historians — that the United States was "patterned partially after the League of Five Nations, a union formed by five Iroquois nations." Literary classics by William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and others are bowdlerized to a degree I never dreamed possible. The ultimate goal of the academic curriculum, says one publisher's set of guidelines, is "to advance multiculturalism." The most stunning section of the book includes the 1993 guidelines prepared by McGraw Hill, one of the four conglomerate textbook publishers in the country. The basic thrust of the guidelines, says Ms. Ravitch, is not to depict the world "as it is and as it was, but only as the guideline writers would like it to be." She writes: "The bias guidelines are censorship guidelines. Nothing more, nothing less. This language censorship and thought control should be repugnant to those who care about freedom of expression." What the textbook and testing industry have accepted without demur or public discussion is that the object of education is to produce a generation of high school graduates who accept "diversity," which, of course, makes quotas inevitable and racial discrimination admirable. The real world is replaced by a politically correct fairy tale in which it is morally acceptable to "censor" "Romeo and Juliet" or "Macbeth" so as to ensure that the ninth-grade dears don't inhale wicked ideas. What does it matter if the classics are chopped and their authors betrayed? Indignation misplaced? Well then, go to the book's 32-page appendix, "A Glossary of Banned Words, Usages, Stereotypes and Topics." There you'll see the meaning of the cultural revolution incited by the "bias and sensitivity panels." Perhaps that appendix ought to be attached to George Orwell's "1984."</p>

<p>How could Saddam Hussein have been so fatally wrong? How could he have so misjudged President Bush? How could the late Iraqi dictator, with access to informed judgments by his allies like French President Jacques Chirac, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, not have realized that President Bush would go to war?</p>

Suppose secret American files showed that the United States had been helping the Chechens fight for national independence, that American military and intelligence services had been cooperating with the Chechens for years. Suppose it turned out that the U.S. had been supplying Chechnya with Stingers and guided antitank missiles. And suppose that other classified American documents which fell into the hands of the Kremlin showed that America and Kazakhstan had signed an agreement to share intelligence about Russian President Putin and that America would share nuclear technology with other onetime Soviet countries. Imagine the outcry in Moscow and the sulphurous...

For those of you who don't have the time or the inclination to read Mona Charen's excellent book, Useful Idiots, yes, the book I recommended to you in this space a couple of weeks ago, you can take the short course: read Arnold Beichman's succinct essay on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. Mr. Beichman covers those useful idiots who could not or would not see the enormity of the famine deliberately caused in the Soviet Union in 1932-1933, somewhere around 5,000,000 lives. Walter Duranty reported it falsely to his useful idiot bosses at the New...