The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (13 page)

Another
historical bit of trivia. Roosevelt’s Vice-President 1941-1945 was Henry A.
Wallace, often described as “liberal.” That’s putting it mildly. Of course, he
was replaced by Truman for the 1944 election. What if Wallace had remained
Roosevelt’s Vice-President in 1945? Sometime after WWII, Wallace admitted that
he had planned to make Alger Hiss his Secretary of State and Harry Dexter White
his Secretary of the Treasury. This is not to say that Wallace knew of Hiss’s
and White’s Communist connections. Rather is it just another illustration of
the West thesis. Like the Social Revolutionaries in Russia/Soviet Union at the
end of WWI, Wallace could not conceive of a “threat from the left.” Yes,
indeed, “useful idiots” come in all shapes and sizes.

Finally,
here is an example of just plain moral corruption that infects the bureaucracy
(actually all human institutions) when you allow the disease of expediency,
lying, twisting the truth, etc. to fester. I attended an after-work party of
some sort. I really do not remember the reason for the party. The only thing I
remember about the party was a flag-rank officer (general/admiral) surrounded
by a bunch of officer of lesser rank within his service. The lesser officers
were trying to get some “face-time” while the flag-rank officer was passing on
his wisdom. As a civilian I had no real interest in that particular
bureaucratic game, but I wanted to watch the interaction. (No, I will not
identify the officer even by service.) One of the pearls of wisdom he passed on
was the following. “If I had a chance to the position of [flag-rank officer X
who had one more star and a “more important” position than the speaker] or my
present position, I would choose my present position. [Flag-rank officer X]
gets to see the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs maybe once a week. I see the
Chairman every day. Therefore, I am in a better position to protect the
interests of [the service of the flag-rank officer passing on his wisdom].” I
was livid. Not a mention about protecting the Constitution or the USA. His
first interest was in his service. Perhaps even that is giving him too much
credit. I think his first interest was getting another star. To get that star,
he needed to protect the interests of his service. He got the star.

Even
though I am now a retired, cynical elderly man, I still get furious at what I
see. I could go on for pages and pages of anecdotes, but my point is that I
sincerely doubt that I will find anything to fault Diana West’s thesis
regarding the corrupting influence of Soviet activities in the USA. In fact,
without having finished the book I believe she probably understates the
problem. I feel like I am watching the death of a beloved relative. I know the
inevitable result of the disease that is killing her. I have known of the
disease for many years and have had time to prepare for her death. I even know
pretty much when the death will occur. Nonetheless, as she takes her final
breaths, the sense of loss is overwhelming. This is how I feel every day. There
is not a day that passes that I do not have tears in my eyes as I see my country
take its last breaths. Nearly every night I lie awake wondering what more I
could have done that might have made a difference.

The
reality is that nothing I could have done would have made any difference. Any
more than I could have saved the beloved relative, could I have saved or even
slowed the progression of the disease that has infected America and Europe. The
disease had already metastasized by the end of WWII. Just one symptom of the
metastasized disease—after fighting national SOCIALISM for 5 years, the
Brits elect their own socialist government before the war was even over. I am
sure the owner’s of the nationalized industries must of been wondering what
kind of freedom they had been defending. 1984 is not a dark satire of the
Soviet Union. It is a projection of British socialism, as most regular readers
of this site already know. Another symptom of the disease — the U.S. had
fewer servicemen on active duty in 1950 when the Korean War began, than when
Pearl Harbor was bombed. So much for the hard-nosed realist Harry Truman’s
understanding of the realities of the world. I could go on and on; but you get
my point, I hope. My only serious complaint about Diana West’s book so far is
that she is far too optimistic.

I
have spent many hours reading many an interesting post and many an interesting
comment on this website. I admire the persistence and energy of everyone who
contributes to this site. The fight must be fought. The enemy must be resisted.
Nonetheless, I think the game is already lost. I refer to G. K. Chesterton’s
book, “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Thursday is the pseudonym of an artist who
has joined the leadership committee of a radical anarchist organization. There
are seven members of the committee, each having a pseudonym for a day of the week.
Thursday has infiltrated the committee as a police spy. At one point he is
pursued by another committee member, let’s say it was the member who was
Friday. After Friday has caught up with Thursday, they soon realize that they
are both police spies. Thursday says to Friday (again not an exact quote), “I
will fight this anarchist evil unto the death even though I believe we will
lose.” Friday replies, “I will fight this anarchist evil unto the death even
though I KNOW we will lose.” A masterful summary of the position in which all
the decent people of this world find themselves, even if they do not yet
realize it. This is what gives me nightmares. This is why I fight back tears
nearly everyday for my children and grandchildren and for all the children and
grandchildren of even the most useless of “useful idiots.” If I cannot live in
the United States as she should be, then there is no place on this Earth that I
wish to live. (Not a suicide note. Just a statement of what is at stake, at
least for me.)

# # #

My Say:
Unprecedented Attacks on Diana West

By
Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August
16th, 2013

Today,
Horowitz vents that Diana’s book should never have been published and that he
is falsely accused of being in a “circular firing squad”….Wrong again….in a
circular firing squad the participants do take a chance on becoming dead.
Horowitz and cohorts are taking no chances in their frontal assault against
Diana West and her book “American Betrayal.”

He
offers faint praise for West’s writing on Islam, but neglects to mention her
very long list of columns detailing the harm that political correctness did
when it infiltrated our military’s COIN doctrine with rules of engagement that
spared the sensibilities of our enemies at the expense of the safety of our own
fighting forces. Frontpage did have one column on this national disgrace: “US
Army Colonel Reveals Failure of COIN and Barbarism of Afghans” in October 2012.

In
2006 a critique of his book “The Professors-the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in
America’- a book that I personally liked very much- stated “Quotes and facts
from Horowitz about individual professors are incorrect and many quotes are
“wildly out of context.” Furthermore the
report
stated : “In 52 of the descriptions of professors Horowitz
critiques, he does not cite a single classroom event or statement —
despite his statement that his concern about professors is over what they do
and say in the classroom.” Also: “Horowitz does not cite a single example of a
student having his or her grade changed because of political views —
despite his repeated statements that the
“Academic
Bill of Rights”
is needed to prevent such grade punishment. ”

To
all these critics Horowitz
responded
:

“He
noted that he writes in the introduction to the book that he believes all
professors — liberal and conservative — have points of view and are
entitled to interpret their fields according to their philosophies. Such
expression, he writes, “is the essence of academic freedom.” In the interview,
Horowitz said that a McCarthyite would never make such a statement, and he said
that the only McCarthyism in evidence with regard to his book are those who
criticize it with
“a rash of misrepresentations” and without having read it.

He
was right then….why is he so wrongheaded now?

# # #

Conrad Black Now
Joins the Hyena Pack

By
Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August
16th, 2013

Today,
Conrad Black, author of a hagiography of President Roosevelt, had a
tantrum
about Diana West. To say it was a tad
intemperate is to sell a snarling pit bull short.

Without
proving a single one of the claims of Ron Radosh, he huffed the following
insults: “Diana West, a right-wing loopy who has occasionally aroused cautious
hopefulness that she has been house-trained, has published a novel presented as
a non-fiction work, entitled “America Betrayed,” which holds that the United
States under Roosevelt and Truman was “an occupied country” governed by robotic
agents and stooges of Josef Stalin.”

He
adds that she is (in the company of Oliver Stone) an idiot….”These
conspiratorialists are idiots: pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots.”

Poor
Conrad, he had a bad day today. Not as bad as going back to the clinker, but he
faces an Ontario securities hearing that could ban him from buying or trading.
And just last month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reached an
agreement with Black preventing him from acting as the director of a public
company. And just yesterday while he was penning his screed, the U.S.
securities regulator said he must pay $4.1 million in restitution in a
settlement that ends a long-standing lawsuit over Black’s dealings as the head
of the Hollinger media empire. He was released from U.S. prison more than a
year ago after serving a sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.

Relax
and have a biscuit, Conrad…the Canadians have postponed their hearings until
October.

The
funny things is, I think the S.E.C. was on a witchhunt…just like he has joined
a witchhunt.

# # #

Banishing the
Cathars

By
Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 16,
2013

In
the late 12th and early 13th centuries a splinter sect of Christianity became
popular in the Languedoc region of Aragon, in what is now France. The movement
is known to historians as the
Albigensian
Heresy
, and its adherents are often referred to as Cathars,
although it is doubtful whether they used that term to describe themselves.
They were persecuted and eventually crushed by the Church of Rome under the
leadership of Pope Innocent III. The dénouement was ugly and bloody, as was the
case with most religious conflicts in medieval Europe.

From
the perspective of the established Christian Church, Albigensian doctrine was
definitely a heresy. It was an attempt to resolve what is nowadays known as
“the problem of evil”, and the Cathars accomplished this through theological
dualism, by positing the existence of two deities, a good one (God) who created
the spiritual realm and heaven, and an evil one (Satan), who created the Earth
and dross matter. The two deities were in constant battle with one another, and
would remain so until the End of Days.

However,
it wasn’t their doctrine that made the Albigensians dangerous, it was their
political impact. Some local political leaders supported the Cathars, and
dissident bishops found it expedient to back them as a foil against Rome. The
popularity of the sect sealed its fate, and the Roman hierarchy eventually
regained full ecclesiastical control of southern France.

Although
it is only figuratively bloody, the current uproar over
Diana West’s book
American Betrayal
reminds me of the reaction to a medieval
heresy. There is no room for gentlemanly disagreement: anything that is viewed
as an incorrect interpretation of historical events must be ruthlessly
exterminated.

Today’s
installments in the ongoing drama showed no signs of any return to civility
regarding the book. The most prominent of the less-than-courteous reviewers is
Conrad Black, who in
NRO
and
The
New York Sun
referred to Diana West as a “right-wing loopy”
exhibiting “jejune dementedness”, among other epithets. Mr. Black provides a
long discourse on the history of the Second World War, but it remains unclear
whether he has actually read American Betrayal, or whether he simply gleaned
snippets about it from reading earlier denunciations of the book by some of its
prominent critics.

Ms.
West has responded to this latest salvo,
also
at NRO
.
Numerous other attacks on the book appeared today, some
of them nastier than Mr. Black’s, by various writers from the “mainstream”
Right as well as from the Left.

For
sympathetic support, see John L. Work,
“Carpet-Bombing
American Betrayal At Amazon”
.

Thanks
to Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz, Ms. West’s book has become so
controversial that more and more people are airing their opinions about it,
both positive and negative. This cannot help but increase the book’s sales, so
we owe a debt of gratitude to Front Page Magazine.

So
what’s going on here? Why has a disagreement that should have centered on the
reliability of sources and the interpretation of historical material turned
into such a deplorable orgy of mud-slinging?

One
must assume that the vicious invective coming from the book’s detractors is a
sign that this is indeed a political issue, just as the heresy of the Cathars
was a political issue. Powerful people feel they have something to lose, and
their vituperation is a sign of their desperate determination to hang onto it.
What “it” might be — money, social position, academic standing, the
respect of one’s peers — is hard to determine. But there’s little doubt
that what we’re witnessing is a struggle to defend crucial turf.

Another
sign of the heavy political baggage involved is the fact that since the first
barrage was launched by Ronald Radosh last week, no prominent conservatives
— what I would term “celebrities”, if conservatism had such creatures
— have stood up to decry the ad hominem attacks against Diana West by
people who have never read her book.

In
contrast, ordinary people are standing up and saying that Messrs. Horowitz and
Radosh are wrong, and saying it “to their faces” in the comments section on
Front Page and other venues. These “little people” must have nothing to lose,
because they are fearless about speaking out.

But
prominent people… Well, that’s another matter. They stand to lose [fill in the
blank here — funding, a seat on the board at Heritage, being invited to
make an appearance as a talking head at Fox News, being allowed to publish at
prominent sites, having their own books recommended by orthodox reviewers, etc.],
so they don’t stand up. They don’t let themselves be counted as opposing the
personal attacks on and vilification of a colleague.

The
only conceivable explanation for their behavior is fear.

I’m
appalled that none of these well-known conservatives is willing to stand up,
suck in his gut, throw back his shoulders, and say, “Diana West is a diligent
researcher who simply followed investigative leads to reach unpopular
conclusions. Treating her this way is WRONG.”

Surely
some of them are close enough to retirement to actually say this?

But
no: they must preserve their cherished positions in the pecking order of
prominent right-wingers. Better that Diana West should go to the stake.

It’s
pathetic that Gates of Vienna, of all places, has to be the front line of
defense for Ms. West. We are less than a microbe in the conservative ecology.
Where are the lumbering dinotheres, for crying our loud?

There
is a sad lesson to be learned here, and it has nothing to do with whether Diana
West is right or wrong about any particular conclusions she draws. A larger
battle is being fought, but much of it is occluded from public view, and not
available for scrutiny by the little people.

Two
final notes:

Dr.
John Earl Haynes is a noted historian and expert on American communism and
Soviet espionage in the USA who has written numerous books and articles on the
topic, often in collaboration with Harvey Klehr. He sent us an email earlier
today with a link to his latest piece, “Was Harry Hopkins A Soviet Spy?”:

In
view of Julius O’Malley’s kind remarks about our work in the course of his
posting about Radosh, West, and Harry Hopkins, I bring to his attention Klehr’s
and my post on the issue at
FrontPage
Mag
.

Professor
Hans Jansen, the Dutch expert on Islam and sharia who is well-known to Gates of
Vienna readers, gave the American Betrayal a
five-star
review
:

We
all are too busy and have too many things to do. Nevertheless, this book is
obligatory reading, not only for Americans, for European as well.

I’m
sure we will have more on all this brouhaha later. Unfortunately.

Update:
Diana West sends this comment from Professor Hans Jansen, which he gave
permission to publish:

The
polemics against your Betrayal have a familiar smell: the masters of the guild
get angry when someone less worthy than they are ventures into the orchard in
which only they are privileged to harvest. The harvest the outsider brought in,
they ritually burn.

# # #

Conrad Black’s
Vitriol Masks His Own Historical Blindspot

By
Andrew G. Bostom

Family Security Matters

August
17, 2013

The
late military intelligence historian Eduard Mark, whose 1998
analysis
identified FDR "co-President"
Harry Hopkins as "Source 19" in a cable putatively authored by Soviet
spymaster
Iskhak Akhmerov
, lamented,

the
indifference of American diplomatic historians to intelligence and of their
predominantly liberal political orientation which has led them to ignore the
whole question of the relationship between internal security and foreign policy
as smacking of ‘McCarthyism'

Irrespective
of Conrad Black's current political orientation, his vitriolic
attack
on
Diana West
,
and her book
American Betraya
l
, epitomizes the mindset identified with
rare candor by Mark-who was not a political conservative.

Black's
2003
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of
Freedom
includes this
bowdlerized characterization of Alger Hiss, allegedly redressing "lurid
allegations" by McCarthyite bogeymen, while trivializing Hiss's influence
at the seminal 1945 Yalta Conference (pp. 1079-80):

Because
of the lurid allegations by McCarthyite Republicans in the early fifties, a
word must be said about Alger Hiss, who attended the Yalta Conference as a
junior State Department official specializing in international organizations.
Hiss was eventually revealed as a
former
member of a Communist espionage
ring in the United States, and was convicted of perjury on the dogged
examination of Congressman Richard Nixon. Roosevelt had never met Hiss before
Yalta, and never spent one minute alone with him at Yalta, according to [FDR
interpreter Charles] Bohlen, who was with Roosevelt throughout as interpreter
and counselor in Soviet matters, Hiss's chief contribution at the conference
was a sensibly reasoned argument against giving the Soviet Union three votes in
the international organization. In this, as in all other matters, while he was
competent and unexceptionable in his functions, Hiss had no influence whatever
on Roosevelt or American policy at Yalta.

Black
does not provide a single footnote for any of these assertions, including his
final statement about Hiss's alleged lack of influence. Fortunately, there is a
well-documented corrective to Black's sanitized court history account of the
role Alger Hiss played at Yalta, written, collaboratively, by Cold War scholars
par excellence, Herbert Romerstein, and M. Stanton Evans. In
Stalin's Secret Agents
, which was just published this past
November, 2012, they dedicate a chapter to the actual role Alger Hiss played at
Yalta, dubbed eponymously, "See Alger Hiss About This," based upon a
telltale quote by former FDR Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.

Romerstein and Evans
open their discussion by explaining how
it came about that Hiss, whom the authors acknowledge, circa January, 1945, was
"of fairly junior status-a mid-level employee who wasn't even head of a
division"-was in fact singled out by President Roosevelt himself as
someone to accompany the President to Yalta. Citing the diaries of Edward
Stettinius Jr., US Secretary of State at the time of Yalta, one month before
the conference convened, they record how FDR told Stettinius, "he did not
want to have anyone accompany him in an advisory capacity, but he felt Messrs.
Bowman
and Alger Hiss ought to go.
" (A
note added by Romerstein and Evans clarifies that Dr. Isaiah Bowman was a
Stettinius adviser who had been involved with the post- World War I Versailles
Conference, but did not go to Yalta.)