The Treason of Useful Idiots
This is meant to be a book review of TREASON, by Ann Coulter, and USEFUL IDIOTS by Mona Charon. It may be absurd to begin with a digression, but indulge me. I was reading, of all things, a review of the 1980’s toy-selling cartoon THE INHUMANOIDS, when, in the middle of a description of the science-fiction battles against giant monsters, I come across this paragraph:
>>we cut to a Russian military base… And the higher-ups on the base demand that the ships in the fleet launch depth charges instead of trying to signal or identify the strange object that just appeared on their radar. An old 80’s cartoon standby, the Evil Empire. Does anyone else remember the October Guard on GI Joe?
I am aghast. Apparently this writer forgets that about the same time when this cartoon was written, a Korean passenger liner was shot down when it crossed over into Soviet airspace, with no attempt made by the Soviets to signal or identify the plane. An act of appalling barbarism, one the Soviets denied doing until proof surfaced. It happened in real life, not a cartoon.
Imagine, dear reader, coming across someone reviewing, let us say, a movie or a comic from the 1940’s, and reading these words:
>>We cut to a Nazi German military base. And the higher-ups on the base demand that the ships in the fleet launch depth charges instead of trying to signal or identify the strange object that just appeared on their radar. An old 40’s cartoon standby, the Evil Master Race. Does anyone else remember the Aryan Knights from Buck Rogers?
Of course, my analogy here is a little strained, merely because it is impossible to imagine that GI Joe, or Buck Rogers, or any other cartoon would invent heroes from the Nazi Reich, and portray them as sympathetic and admirable characters. Why, then, is it so easy to find instances where writers, even writers for stories for children, with communists as heroes and super-heroes? Why, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly entertaining and light-hearted trip down memory lane, reading about some cartoon I watched as a child, does the writer feel it is normal and natural to scoff at portraying the Socialists as bad people, when, in fact, in real life, the mass-murder toll for the Socialist government in Russia alone in the last century was above the 62 million mark: to find greater numbers, or a greater percent, of a government killing its own people, we can look at Red China or Cambodia. It is not a coincidence that these are also Socialist governments.
So why is it socially acceptable to smile upon the lying totalitarian mass-murderers of Communism, but socially unacceptable to smile upon the lying totalitarian mass-murderers of Nazism? This is one of the great mysteries of our age.
The two systems are identical in means and goals, differing very slightly in rhetoric and symbolism. They are both political movements of collectivist, socialist, totalitarian horror, producing slavery, mass-death, and misery wherever practiced; they are both enemies of liberal institutions, free markets, limited government, and the Rights of Man. And yet, one is universally reviled, while the other is respected and revered (slyly or openly) by intellectuals and artists of the Left.
Ann Coulter’s TREASON is a witty, eye-opening book, giving facts and details about the fifth-columnists in this country throughout the cold war. Reviews critical of this book fall into two camps: one thinks the author is too blunt, too rude, too abrasive. The other camp claims she is not being honest.
To critics of the first camp, I ask only this: why should one be polite to totalitarians? What they dream of, what they work for, and what they praise, is a terror-regime that, if successful, would mean your death (if you are an honest man), the death or enslavement of your parents, children, friends, and the ruination of human civilization. Their chosen tools are lies and slander.
To the critics of the second camp, I point to Coulter’s extensive footnotes, and I note her detailed explanations of the events. The websites I have seen attempting to debunk her, I found light on facts and sources, and less than persuasive: the reader can make his own judgment in this area.
Aside from that, let me say: read the book, and prepare to be astonished, prepare to be outraged. The depth of the deceit involved here is astonishing: the Left has lied and lied for years and years.
My own father, who is hardly left-wing by any stretch of the imagination, told me not to tell him the facts and circumstances surrounding the McCarthy hearings. Why not? The myth that McCarthy was a wicked stepmother, resisted by the brave underdogs of the press, was so near and dear to his heart, that my father did not want to hear anything which might undermine that myth. No doubt future generations are going to hear similar myths about the “reign of terror” and the “dark night of Fascism” when American groaned under the totalitarian witch-hunts of the horrid Ken Starr era. No discussion will ever be made, in that future, of whether or not Bill Clinton lied under oath. No discussion is ever made, now, of whether or not there actually were Soviet agents in the State department and the Pentagon, whose superiors ignored reports by the FBI of their espionage.
You heard me correctly. Known Soviet agents, people under FBI surveillance, were employed in sensitive areas, such as the Code Room in the Pentagon. The FBI informed government supervisors that these people were a security risk: the government (in the hands of a Democrat administration at the time) ignored the warnings.
Decrypted Venona-projects cables, as well as KGB archive records, now confirms what McCarthy had been saying at that time. It is not as if there is any real dispute any more about what the truth of the matter is. Alger Hiss was a traitor. The Rosenbergs were spies. Soviet agents in the state department successfully convinced the Truman Administration to back Mao rather than the nationalist forces. Walter Duranty of the New York Times helped the Soviets cover up and misreport news of the Ukraine Famine engineered by Stalin to wipe out the private farms in the USSR. As alleged at the time, paid Communists agents were backing and encouraging the Nuclear Freeze movement, and the anti-war protests. Sound familiar?
You will never hear any of this anywhere in the major media, or in college history texts.
Instead, you will hear Noam Chomsky’s claim that the United States created a famine in Afghanistan in order to carry out a program of racist cleansing. You will hear nothing about Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and the millions who died in the purge. You will hear nothing about how the Rosenbergs handed the military weapons secrets of the United States to the Soviets, so that American cities lived for fifty years under the threat of Soviet incineration, paralyzing our military for decades, and assuring unopposed Red victories in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, China, Indochina, and South America, and the enslavement of millions. Instead, you will see popular and award-winning movies like A BEAUTIFUL MIND, where fear of the Soviet enemy turns out to be nothing more the paranoid schizophrenia (tell that to the Yugoslavs and Poles); or like THE MAJESTIC, or THE FRONT where evil forces of McCarthyism oppress idealistic young screen-writers for Hollywood. But can you imagine anyone making a movie where pro-Nazi writers have to find different jobs because Hollywood moguls don’t want them writing pro-Nazi screenplays?
USEFUL IDIOTS by Mona Charen is an excellent companion to Ann Coulter, and it may please those readers put off by Miss Coulter’s acerbic tone. It reports the last fifty years of unapologetic apologists for the Communism. It names names and quotes quotes. These people have been rooting for the enemy for years, and still no one has called upon them to account for their actions. Highly Recommended.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
