Via Jerry
While the
Cold War was going on, many intellectuals saw the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics as the embodiment of a utopian future and the
champion of worldwide liberation. But today Russia represents “the
wrong side of history.”
Before calling the reader’s attention to a year-old
Claremont Review of Books article
which compares Donald Trump to Joseph McCarthy, I should first make
clear that I do not regard this comparison to be such an unambiguous
condemnation of the president as those steeped in liberal mythology
might think. Admittedly, Senator McCarthy had some negative traits now
frequently associated with President Trump: an opportunistic streak, a
predisposition to make reckless allegations, a willingness to further
his political career by exploiting prevailing anxieties. Yet while
Hollywood may
teach
the public that the most important Cold War story is that of
celebrities persecuted under McCarthyism, the historical record suggests
otherwise. So too do documents pointing to the active collaboration of
liberal intellectuals in a Communist project based upon forced labor
camps, torture, and mass-murder. McCarthy’s claim was that the American
elite of his day was riddled with Marxists and Marxist sympathizers bent
upon overturning America’s moral, cultural, and constitutional order.
However flawed the senator may have been personally, who would now say
that his grasp of the situation was entirely wrong?
In his
Claremont Review article, William Voegeli notes of McCarthy that
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