Ronald Radosh's Blog, page 20

How a Stealth communist wrote the New Deal National Labor Relations Act, and Hid his True Beliefs

You may not have heard of Leon Keyserling, but he was one of the bright young men who rushed to our nation’s capitol to work for FDR after he was elected President, and who helped to fashion a great deal of the New Deal legislation. As his obituary in The New York Times pointed out, “as an aide of Senator [Robert F.]Wagner, a Democrat, [N.Y.] Mr. Keyserling helped draft such measures as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the Social Security Act of 1935 and the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act.” Later, as his Wikipedia entry shows, he went on to work for President Harry S. Truman and continued to advise him on major domestic programs.

His most recent biographer, Donald K. Pickens, argues that Keyserling was what he calls a representative of  “integrative liberalism,” which he defines as a phrase that best explains the realistic and pragmatic quest for a “deeper national community” that would unite all Americans around economic growth and a government commitment to programs to help the needy and regulate business. Hence, it would be a “country in which no one is left out.” According to FDR’s other aide Rexford Tugwell, it meant a series of programs, which they helped build for the New Deal, that was accomplished “without resort to revolution or abandonment of the Constitution.”

His previous biographer, W. Robert Brazelton, argues that Keyserling believed in economic growth as the prerequisite for progress, but that he understood that some sectors of the economy were weaker than others, as were some groups in society, and hence that meant the Federal Government had to institute policies to maintain full employment. In other words, like other mainstream liberals, he believed the economy need government programs to keep it in keel, and that it was the job of government, not the free market, to create full employment.

You might wonder, at this point, why I am even writing about him. The answer comes from a review that appeared recently in The Times Literary Supplement (London) of July 12, 2013, by David Hawkes, a review that unfortunately is not available online.  Hawkes offers the first review of a recent book by a left-wing historian named Landon Storrs, titled The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left.

Storrs presents a typical left-wing narrative of the 1930s. As she develops her story, Professor Storrs argues that the Red Scare of the 1950s forced out of government an entire group of reformers who believed in social-democracy, and who were dismissed and marginalized by McCarthyite zealots who quashed dissent in the name of fighting subversion, as those fighting to oust them failed to distinguish between mainstream socialists and Communists. As the publisher’s summary states, “Storrs demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal and crippled the American welfare state.”

In her book, Storrs tells us that Keyserling and his wife Mary were “prime targets of the anticommunist right.” Both “publicly dismissed their experience” with the loyalty investigations of the 1950s, she writes, “as fleeting manifestations of Red Scare hysteria.” Nevertheless, when Leon Keyserling advised Truman, Storrs acknowledges that the couple “took leading roles on behalf of policies that were at the top of conservatives’ most hated list, including price control, high wages, strong protection of union rights, and the European Recovery Plan.” The essence of what they supported were policies that favored “directing more of productivity’s gains to wages rather than profits.”

Later, the Keyserlings would dissemble, arguing that they had always been political centrists, while they were actually on the left of the Democratic Party. Later they would serve Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society endeavors, and are remembered by many, Storrs writes, “as loyal Johnson Democrats who favored Cold War military spending, backed U.S. policy in Vietnam, and argued that poverty could be eliminated through economic growth rather than redistribution” of wealth.

It is at this point that historian Storrs uncovered the hidden truth about Leon and Mary Keyserling, a truth that undermines her own thesis, and comes as a revelation that many might have missed, if not for the Hawkes review. Both were not only secret Communist sympathizers and members of various Party front groups, but Leon Keyserling actually advocated violent revolution while he was in the New Deal writing reform legislation!

Mary Keyserling became enthusiastic about communism after she visited the Soviet Union in 1932, and wrote that she became “sympathetic to Communist not only as a Russian idea but as a feasible program when altered for many other countries.” She wrote home that “many of us have come round to an acceptance of the major elements of Communism- altho I think we or I shall work thru the Socialist Party for a while.”

As for Leon, Storrs notes that he became converted to the doctrines of Marx while studying at Columbia University. “Economically,” he wrote to his father from college, “socialism is probably sound…the rich and the poor should not be ‘equal’ before the law. The law should help the weaker party.” In 1932 he supported Communist candidate William Z. Foster for President, and hoped that he would get two million votes that “will mark in the future the definite turn toward socialism in this country.”

As Hawkes writes of the findings made by Storrs, the first historian to make use of the Keyserling’s previously unavailable personal letters, that somehow, the FBI and the Congressional investigators failed to find, “this new evidence resoundingly corroborates many of the investigators’ charges.” Indeed! Keyserling wrote his father that FDR’s victory was a good thing, but “without a revolution which transfers power to the workers and takes up a socialized state, little will be gained.”

While he was working for Senator Wagner as a legislative aide, and working on the draft of the National Labor Relations Act, that gave organized labor legal collective bargaining rights, Keyserling wrote in 1934 that “the country is recovering too rapidly. A few more years of depression would have promoted violence, and without violence fundamental reform is unlikely.” (my emphasis) He saw hope, however, “in the certainty of even more serious depressions in the near future.” He then wrote that “there is no chance for lasting gains to either farmer or laborer save by revolution, and the only materials for revolt are the industrial workers.”

These comments puts Keyserling in the ranks of the far left of the Communist movement, a supporter of those who believed in the doctrine of “the worse the better,” the stance taken in Germany by the German Communists, who branded the Socialists in Weimar  Germany as “social fascists,” and who eschewed any front or alliance between the two leftist groups to defeat Hitler and the Nazis at the polls.

At that point in Communist politics, the Comintern had not as yet created the new policy of the Popular Front,(an alliance of Communists with liberals and socialists) and was still beholden to the belief that revolution was imminent, and that Communists had to oppose reform and try to split the trade unions and get members into CP led trade unions that would work for revolution rather than reform.

As reviewer Hawkes acknowledges, “clearly the McCarthyites were right to be suspicious.” I would put it a bit differently, and say instead:  the Red-baiters, and not the Reds, were right! Both Keyserlings hid their real views, and clearly had gone into governmental work to advance the revolution by stealth means, through creating laws that they hoped would strengthen the working class, give them true class-consciousness, and then play their rightful role as the agent of Revolution, as Marx predicted was their role in history and the class struggle.

As time passed, like President Harry S. Truman, both Keyserlings began to understand the true face of Soviet Communism, and came to understand that their earlier communist beliefs and their faith in the USSR was ill conceived. They became part of the founding generation of Cold War liberals—the group that founded Americans for Democratic Action- and that was based on the belief that liberals could and should not form any alliances with Communists and fellow travelers in the United States. In personal terms, it meant backing for the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the anti-Communist Minnesota political leader and future Vice-President, rather than the naïve and Communist dupe, Henry A. Wallace.

As Hawkes and scholar Landon Storrs see this change, they argue instead, as Hawkes writes, that Leon Keyserling and his wife “tried to curry favour with their inquisitors,” who forced them to “renounce deeply held, perfectly rational beliefs through the very process of self-examination itself.” Parse that amazing sentence. Hawkes actually is suggesting that changing one’s beliefs—Communism is apparently a “rational” belief-means trying to gain the approval of the right-wing by lying! He evidently cannot even conceive that any sane person could become disillusioned with the Soviets and Communism, and for any other reason that he did not want to harm his chances for a government job.

FBI investigations, Hawkes writes “rattled the bravest people,” and “the Keyserlings were not especially brave, and they were more than rattled.” Yes, Leon Keyserling did foolishly lie about his past to investigators and Congressional committees, even claiming falsely that he was a Republican in the 1930’s and that he held views “to the Right of…the New Deal.” Hawkes says that the Keyserlings “were  otherwise highly principled people who must have been deeply troubled at having to perform this kind of public self-abasement.”

One can forgive them. After all, they had changed, much to the consternation of leftists like Mr. Hawkes and historian Storrs. This was especially the case because, having understood the need to stand firm against Soviet expansionism and Stalinism, the Keyserlings now supported, as Hawkes writes, lobbying “heavily for enormous increases in military spending,” for a high defense budget, “necessitated by the dire threat to national survival posed by the Soviet Union.” Mr. Hawkes thinks, foolishly, that there was no Soviet threat. Thus he argues, without evidence, that the Keyserlings “were otherwise highly principled people who must have been deeply troubled at having to perform this kind of public self-abasement.” According to Hawkes, they decided to make

their lies into truth.”

Hawkes argues that Leon Keyserling even repudiated wealth redistribution, “pointing out that it was the policy of Communists, and persuaded the leaders of American labour to follow the ‘guns for butter’ strategy of full employment through huge defence spending, rather than social welfare programmes.” Actually, Keyserling took a position very similar to that of the social-democratic and anti-Communist civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who argued in the 1960’s that America could afford both guns and butter, and both defense spending and necessary social welfare policies and programs. His argument that Keyserling alone is the man who “convinced the leaders of the AFL-CIO to back the Vietnam War” is an insult to the very smart George Meany and his associates, who had the advice of men like Jay Lovestone and later Tom Kahn. They did not need Leon Keyserling to “convince” them to stand with a strong U.S. foreign policy in opposition to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Hawkes then writes that one former leftist, Wilbur Cohen, once a radical welfare expert. “become an advocate for workfare rather than cash assistance.” Shocking! Imagine someone concerned with the poor arguing that handouts from the government is not the answer to poverty. Clearly to Hawkes, such a person is a sell-out. His arguments reveal much about his own views, which he transfers to those he is writing about

He ends by bemoaning the fact that “the anti-communists could claim to have scored a convincing victory.” Thank God! At least the American people, unlike Mr. Hawkes, showed that they had common sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Racial Hucksters and Liberal-Left Journalists Seek to Inflame Anger in the African-American Community

The jury in the trial of George Zimmerman has spoken. Evidently, their verdict is not satisfactory to the racial hucksters and demagogues. Leading the pack, as usual, is Reverend Al Sharpton, whose own role in the Tawana Brawley debacle has not worked to discredit anything he says for the media.

“An atrocity,” Sharpton called it, “one of the worst situations that I’ve seen. … We had to march to even get a trial, and then at trial when he’s exposed over and over again as a liar, he is acquitted. This is a sad day in the country. A slap in the face to those that believe in justice in this country.” Later, he added: “We intend to ask the Department of Justice to move forward as they did in the Rodney King case and we will closely monitor the civil case against Mr. Zimmerman. I will convene an emergency call with preachers tonight to discuss next steps and I intend to head to Florida in the next few days.”

The Reverend Al, as he is called by his supporters, was joined in a call for a Department of Justice indictment of George Zimmerman for violating Trayvon Martin’s civil rights by Ben Jealous, head of the NAACP. “We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” Jealous said in a statement. “We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed. … The most fundamental of civil rights — the right to life — was violated the night George Zimmerman stalked and then took the life of Trayvon Martin.”

The problem that Sharpton and Jealous have is that the FBI already had investigated the case, and could not come up with any proof that racial hatred was what motivated Zimmerman to follow Martin. Indeed, George Zimmerman was shown to have mentored black children, and to have publicly complained about police actions that he thought were unfair to the African-American community. His best friend is a black man. The tragedy that developed was hardly the same as when white cops were found to have beaten Rodney King and used unnecessary and brutal force out of racial animus.

Joining the attempt to fan the flames of discontent among the African-American community were a slew of liberal writers, led by Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. Like many others of his ilk, Tomasky seems to think America is back in the early ’60s, when racial segregation existed and the Southern states were in command of a racist Democratic Party whose leaders sought to preserve the system of segregation at all costs. Indeed, he argues that under President Obama, America’s racial divide has gotten worse.

Zimmerman, Tomasky writes, would have thought twice about shooting a white kid, evidently even if he feared for his life and the white kid was on top of him pummeling his head into the cement. “He’d know in his bones,” he writes, “that white lives are accorded more value in this society than black ones, and you don’t go around shooting white people and expect not to pay a price.”

Zimmerman, of course, did not say anything about race when he was speaking to the 911 dispatcher until he was asked about it –he thought Martin might be black, but was not sure. After all, it’s not so easy to identify the race of a person wearing a hoodie at night viewed from a car. Does Tomasky think that at the moment when the weaker Zimmerman feared for his life, even if he knew at that point that the boy on top of him was white, he would not have reached for his gun if he thought his life was in danger?

As for the Stand Your Ground laws, The New York Times editorial board wrote: “The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr. Zimmerman’s actions in light of the now-notorious Stand Your Ground provision in Florida’s self-defense law.” As most followers of the case know, except for the supposedly learned editors of the paper, the defense did not once invoke that law in waging their defense of George Zimmerman.

Instead, they argued that Zimmerman reached for his gun when he was pinned down and his head was being slammed into the ground, fearful as he was for his life. That is a standard that would have applied to all the states of the union.

Nevertheless, the Martin family counsel, Ben Crump, stated that Trayvon Martin would go down “in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till as symbols of the fight for equal justice for all.” Evers was a brave fighter against segregation in an era in which the KKK and White Citizens’ Councils were active in segregated Southern states and most often were protected by the law, if indeed the lawmakers and police themselves were not members of either organization. Till was a young black boy killed by racists for the offense of supposedly whistling at a white woman.

If you want to read first-rate commentary taking up the arguments of the racial demagogues, read Abigail Thernstrom’s fine piece that appears on CNN’s website. While the station was most notoriously stacking the decks in favor of those who argued racial injustice was committed by the jury in finding Zimmerman innocent, perhaps their website editor decided it was time for some of its viewership to at least have the option to read a different perspective. “People such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson,” she writes,  “see white racism as endemic and elevate what’s wrong with America over all that is remarkably right.” She continues to argue that if President Obama’s Justice Department “brings civil rights charges against Zimmerman, as the NAACP has urged and which it is reportedly still considering, the ugly racial politics of this prosecution will be undeniable.”

The Racial Hucksters and Liberal-Left Journalists Seek to Inflame Anger in the African-American Community

The jury in the trial of George Zimmerman has spoken. Evidently, their verdict is not satisfactory to the racial hucksters and demagogues. Leading the pack, as usual, is Reverend Al Sharpton, whose own role in the Tawana Brawley debacle has not worked to discredit anything he says for the media.

“An atrocity,” Sharpton called it, “one of the worst situations that I’ve seen…We had to march to even get a trial, and then at trial when he’s exposed over and over again as a liar, he is acquitted. This is a sad day in the country. A slap in the face to those that believe In Justice in this country.” Later he added that “We intend to ask the Department of Justice to move forward as they did in the Rodney King case and we will closely monitor the civil case against Mr. Zimmerman. I will convene an emergency call with preachers tonight to discuss next steps and I intend to head to Florida in the next few days.”

The Reverend Al, as he is called by his supporters, was joined in a call for a Department of Justice indictment of George Zimmerman for violating Trayvon Martin’s civil rights by Ben Jealous, head of the NAACP. “We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” Jealous said in a statement. “We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed….the most fundamental of civil rights — the right to life — was violated the night George Zimmerman stalked and then took the life of Trayvon Martin.”

The problem that Sharpton and Jealous have is that the Justice Department already had investigated the case, and could not come up with any proof that racial hatred was what motivated Zimmerman to follow Martin. Indeed, George Zimmerman was shown to have mentored black children, and to have publicly complained about police actions that he thought to have been unfair to the African-American community. His best friend, moreover, is a black man. The tragedy that developed was hardly the same as white cops who were found to have beaten  King and used unnecessary and brutal force out of racial animus.

Joining the attempt to fan the flames of discontent among the African-American community were a slew of liberal writers, led by Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. Like many others of his ilk, Tomasky seems to think America is back in the early 60’s, when racial segregation existed and the Southern states were in command of a racist Democratic Party whose leaders sought to preserve the system of segregation at all costs. Indeed, he argues that under President Obama, America’s racial divide has gotten worse.

Zimmerman, Tomasky writes, would have thought twice about shooting a white kid, evidently even if he feared for his life and the white kid was on top of him pummeling his head into the cement. “He’d know in his bones,” he writes, “that white lives are accorded more value in this society than black ones, and you don’t go around shooting white people and expect not to pay a price.”

The problem with that, of course, is that Zimmerman had told the police when he was speaking to the dispatcher that he thought he might be black, but that he was not sure. After all, a young boy wearing a hoodie at night viewed from a car makes it not so easy to identify the race of a person.  Does Tomasky think that at the moment when the weaker Zimmerman feared for his life, even if he knew at that point that the boy on top of him was white, he would not have reached for his gun if he thought his life was in danger?

As for the Stand Your Ground laws, The New York Times editorial board wrote that “The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr. Zimmerman’s actions in light of the now-notorious Stand Your Ground provision in Florida’s self-defense law.” As most followers of the case know, except for the supposedly learned editors of the paper, the defense did not once invoke that law in waging their defense of George Zimmerman. Instead, they argued that Zimmerman reached for his gun when he was pinned down and his head was being slammed into the ground, fearful as he was for his life. That is a standard that would have applied to all the states of the union.

Nevertheless, the Martin family counsel, Ben Crump, stated that Trayvon Martin would go down  “in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till as symbols of the fight for equal justice for all.” Evers was a brave fighter against segregation in an era in which the KKK and White Citizen’s Councils were active in segregated Southern states and most often were protected by the law, if indeed the lawmakers and police themselves were not members of either organization. Till was a young black boy killed by racists for the offense of supposedly whistling at a white woman.

If you want to read first rate and to the point commentary taking up the arguments of the racial demagogues, read Abigail Thernstrom’s fine piece that appears on CNN’s website. While the station was most notoriously stacking the decks in the favor of those who argued racial injustice was committed by the Jury in finding Zimmerman innocent, perhaps their website editor decided it was time for some of its viewership to at least hear a different perspective on the station’s website. “People such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson,” she writes,  “see white racism as endemic and elevate what’s wrong with America over all that is remarkably right.” She continues to argue that if President Obama’s Justice Department “brings civil rights charges against Zimmerman, as the NAACP has urged and which it is reportedly still considering, the ugly racial politics of this prosecution will be undeniable.”

President Obama’s statement was hardly memorable. But if the DOJ decides to suddenly indict Zimmerman for racial hate crimes and come up with new “evidence” it somehow failed to find earlier, it will only be because it is once again surrendering to public outcries from the civil rights establishment. At that moment, Barack Obama could come up with his own Sister Souljah moment, and inform the public that the Jury verdict must be respected, and that no reason exists to mount another trial on spurious grounds.  Or, he could tell his Attorney General to stop wasting taxpayer money by fielding yet another investigation to try and prove a racial motive for Zimmerman’s pursuit of Trayvon Martin.

Let me end by saying that because George Zimmerman was found not guilty, and that the Jury believed the prosecution had not proved the charge of second degree murder beyond reasonable doubt, does not mean that Zimmerman is a hero or a role model. He should have listened to the advice of the dispatcher, gone back to his car, and not followed Martin as he was walking back home. He acted precipitously and foolishly, and the entire tragic episode could have been avoided. But once Trayvon Martin accosted him and the struggle ensued, Zimmerman reached for his gun when he believed his life was in danger. One might also have wished that young Martin had simply told Zimmerman he was going back to his father who was in a unit in the development, and not decided to engage in a fight with a man he thought was harassing him.

The outcome is what makes this a tragedy. I sympathize with the Martin family at the loss of their son, and I understand their anger at the verdict and their feeling that in their eyes, justice was not served. But I have none for those who are seeking to use this tragedy to bolster their own worn-out credentials as civil rights leaders, and who use their so-called authority to create anger and a mob sentiment among the African-American community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Left, Wal-Mart, and the D.C. City Council Fiasco

Yesterday, the liberal majority of the D.C. City Council voted that if Wal-Mart opens three stores in the underserviced poor areas of the nation’s capital — inhabited largely by African-Americans — it cannot do so unless the chain raises the minimum wage of its employees to $12.50 per hour.

That action reflects how far removed from reality the council members are. Their supposed concern for the poor will only hurt those they claim to be representing. The action also displays how the arguments and activism of left-wing groups — who have for years campaigned for what they continually call a “living wage” — have had an influence on Democratic Party politicians.

In the District of Columbia, the minimum wage is already $8.25 an hour, higher than the established federal minimum wage. Moreover, the Council’s action would apply only to the three stores that Wal-Mart planned to build. It is clearly a discriminatory piece of legislation, since it targets only one employer — a firm which we all know is the chain most hated by Left activists like those of the old ACORN. (To see typical leftist arguments on the issue, read here.)

Investor’s Business Daily notes that if Wal-Mart cancels the three stores under construction and the other three that were being planned, it means a loss to D.C. residents of 900 retail jobs and 600 construction jobs — 1500 people who would be able to gain much-needed work. More important, however, is that Wal-Mart is building in areas of the city that have few, if any, supermarkets or chains at which residents can locally buy produce at prices they can afford.

The Daily editors write:

At a time when millions of marginally employed Americans are scraping by, prices at Wal-Mart average 10% to 40% below other retailers for food, clothing, medicines and many other items.

In that manner, consumers shopping at the popular chain — popular except among the denizens of the Left who get their produce at Whole Foods and other upscale chains — achieve savings totaling over $50 billion per year. On the individual level, a shopper buying his food and other items exclusively at Wal-Mart saves up to $2000 per year.

To the poor, Wal-Mart is actually “progressive.” Local resident Yvonne Williams informed a D.C. weekly free paper:

We’ve been praying for food in this neighborhood for about 40 years. … God has brought what was supposed to be here — a first-class progressive thing.

Daniel Ellsberg Tries to come to Edward Snowden’s Defense—and Fails!

Writing in today’s Washington Post, Daniel Ellsberg comes to the defense of Edward Snowden. His op-ed has evidently come as a shock to many people. For days, scores of commentators in print, TV, and radio have argued that when Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, he acted differently than young Snowden. After all, they point out, Ellsberg stayed in the United States, faced the music and a major trial, and did not go into exile.

This is only partially correct. Unlike Snowden, Ellsberg at first did not make it known publicly that he was the man responsible for giving The New York Times the Pentagon Papers. By doing so, he was escaping the eventual indictment he faced for violating the Espionage Act, for the act of theft and conspiracy in releasing them. (His trial was eventually dismissed in 1973, when the court was presented evidence of governmental misconduct, including illegal wiretapping.)

Ellsberg, most people forget, was outed by the late journalist Sidney Zion, who breached the trust of the journalist fraternity by calling a friend’s radio talk show and informing the listening audience that Ellsberg was the one who had given the papers to the Times.

As for Ellsberg, he says he did the same as Snowden — going underground with his wife for two weeks, in order, he writes, “to elude surveillance while I was arranging – with the crucial help of others still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers.” He defied an arrest order for three days, therefore making him, supposedly, “like Snowden, a ‘fugitive from justice.’”

There is, however, a vast difference between defying an arrest order for three days before surrendering to the court in Boston, having given out the last copies of the Pentagon Papers the day before, and what Snowden did.  Snowden is not surrendering and returning to the United States; instead, he is seeking asylum in either Nicaragua or Venezuela, both countries having offered to take him in on his terms. By seeking sanctuary in leftist authoritarian regimes that have scant regard for press freedom or civil liberties, Snowden has made it quite clear that his motives are anything but libertarian.

Secondly, Ellsberg argues that in Nixon’s time, when he and the Left daily castigated the country as near fascist, the country was freer than it is today. Forgetting their hatred and disdain for the Nixon administration, Ellsberg writes that after he was indicted, he was freed on bond and was “free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures.” Considering himself part of a “movement against an ongoing war,” he stresses that he did not want to leave the country, and that such a step never crossed his mind.

According to Ellsberg, Snowden did not have the choice he had in the ’70s. Now, he argues, had Snowden stayed in the United States, he would be denied bail and held in prison incommunicado, like Bradley Manning. (Manning, of course, is in a military prison and is subject to different rules than Snowden would be.)

Ellsberg then writes “Snowden believes that he has done nothing wrong.” That statement simply is mind-boggling. Since when is one’s private view of actions taken a defense against an indictment for committing a crime? Recall that Alger Hiss claimed innocence despite proof of his guilt, and that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg did the same, and their defenders today rationalize their acts — since guilt by now has been proven and the damage they did established — as being understandable since they did it for good motives!

How Not to Remember Gettysburg: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Abysmal Speech

This week our nation remembers the battle that raged at Gettysburg 150 years ago. Thousands were killed in three days of fierce fighting. Had the Union troops not won, an outcome that was not a sure thing when the fighting began, our nation would have been quite different than it is today.

If you want to know what it means, many commentators have eloquently explained its critical importance. Today, David Brooks writes that the soldiers who fought did so not just to protect their immediate comrades, but out of “love for country” and a feeling of “indebtedness to the past.”  At Commentary, Peter Wehner writes that this three-day battle, in which 51,000 were killed, wounded, or missing, the outcome was essential to our future: “It ended slavery and it preserved the Union, which meant it preserved and extended liberty in America and the world.”

Few have written about its meaning more eloquently, however, than the esteemed Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo, author of the recently released book Gettysburg:The Last Invasion.  Writing in National Review, Guelzo points out that it might have been the Southern states’ last chance to win their fight for independence, and hence, to win the war. General Robert E. Lee’s strategy of luring the Union troops after him and then smashing them to oblivion was close to being accomplished. As Guelzo writes, “it nearly worked.”

Fortunately, Union troops arrived in the town of Gettysburg first, and were “ready to fight for dear life to hold it.” The Union won, but at great cost. The  final toll on the Union side was “3,903 dead, 18,735 wounded, and 5,425 ‘missing,’ so that the entire butcher’s bill edged up to 28,063.” Guelzo writes:

Gettysburg did not end the war in one stroke, but it was decisive enough to restore the sinking morale of the Union, decisive enough to keep at bay the forces that hoped Lincoln could be persuaded to revoke emancipation, and decisive enough to make people understand that the Confederacy would never be able to mount a serious invasion again.

In the New York Times, Guelzo sheds more light on how and why the Confederates lost the battle and the Union won: “But win it they did,” he writes, “and as that realization sank in, it rejuvenated the sagging weariness of the Union as no other single event in the war.”

Either of Professor Guelzo’s two articles would have made an appropriate and powerful speech at the official commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the battle held two nights ago at Gettysburg National Park. If the National Park Service and the Gettysburg Foundation had any integrity, they would have asked Gulezo, or perhaps our nation’s most well-known historian of the Civil War, James McPherson, to give the keynote speech.

Instead, they went for celebrity and chose the well-known television historian and best-selling author Doris Kearns Goodwin. My wife and I watched it live two nights ago, and were stunned at what we heard. Goodwin barely mentioned Gettysburg, except for a perfunctory acknowledgement at the start of her comments.

Those in attendance were forced to listen to a self-absorbed, narcissistic, and politically correct bromide about how Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg was important as a precursor to  LBJ’s support of the Civil Rights Act, the fight for gay marriage, the  “women’s liberation” movement of the ’70s, and, of course, the need for a female president (there were numerous references to Hillary Clinton, Kearns Goodwin’s obvious choice).

Anyone who has heard Kearns Goodwin talk on interview programs, or read her essays, or seen previous speeches had heard it all before. A historian who was widely condemned some years back for proven plagiarism — an act that did not harm her career or standing one bit — she even plagiarized herself, taking segments almost verbatim from her 1998 commencement address at Dartmouth College, and similar themes and words she used in her 2006 speech to the Abraham Lincoln Association.

The Anti-American Far Left Rallies to Edward Snowden’s Defense

Know Edward Snowden by taking a look at who his friends are. As it becomes more and more obvious that Mr. Snowden is not a civil-libertarian whistle-blower, but someone committed to engaging in espionage, his list of supporters is beginning to dwindle.

Even his father recently acknowledged that his son broke U.S. law; he wants him to come home and trust his fate to the American system of justice. “And if folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact he has betrayed his government,” he told NBC News. “But I don’t believe that he’s betrayed the people of the United States.”

Lonnie Snowden then added the following statement about those surrounding and encouraging Snowden, including the followers of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks: “I don’t want to put him in peril, but I am concerned about those who surround him. I think WikiLeaks, if you’ve looked at past history, you know, their focus isn’t necessarily the Constitution of the United States. It’s simply to release as much information as possible.”

So who exactly is left defending Edward Snowden, and trying to gather support for him by circulating a petition demanding that the government of Ecuador grant him political asylum? There is the group that calls itself “Just Foreign Policy,” which, in translation, means a desire for a weak and ineffective United States that will fold before its Islamist enemies, seek to appease them if not openly welcome them, and continually apologize for what its adherents believe is America’s bellicose imperialism.

In an online petition posted three days ago, the group accused our government of “severe abuses of the basic constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and the rights of people in other nations.” It declared that Snowden is a “brave whistle-blower who, at great personal risk, decided to step forward and inform the U.S. public about what is being done in their name and what is being done to them.”

They say nothing about the countries he has decided to seek aid from, all of them leftist dictatorships. The President of Ecuador, the nation to which Snowden has supposedly asked for asylum, has a clearly mad president, Rafael Correa, who has already stuck his nose in the face of our country. He has announced that Ecuador has “unilaterally and irrevocably” given up its tariff-free trading pact with the United States. He would rather bankrupt his nation to show the Latin American left that he stands with the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the Castro brothers.

Now the “Just Foreign Policy” group calls the U.S. indictment of Snowden a “grave assault against freedom of the press,” a “political persecution,” and they argue that Snowden’s prosecution was handled in a “completely arbitrary fashion.” In their eyes, Snowden only revealed NSA actions that were violations of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. To them, President Obama is clearly a fascist who “seeks to silence those who have brought these abuses to light.” Hence, the Obama administration is guilty of “political repression,” the Left’s most favored term.

So who signed the petition? The answer is the usual suspects—all leaders of the far Left fringe in our country. The headline on the petition reads: “Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden Urge President Correa to Grant Snowden Asylum.”

Oliver Stone, as readers of PJ Media well know, is a friend to any leftist thug, from Fidel Castro (whom he honored in two television documentaries,) to Hugo Chavez, and of course, a man whose recent TV series on Showtime honors the legacy of Joseph Stalin and his appeasers in the United States. Noam Chomsky is an open friend to terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, an enemy of the state of Israel, and a man who is second to none in his hatred of the United States. Tom Hayden, once the hero of the New Left, has descended in his mature years to another in the chorus of left-wing crazies, becoming more and more extreme in his utterances with each judgment.

The remaining signers are a virtual Who’s Who of the anti-American far Left. The list includes actors Danny Glover, Shia LaBeouf, John Cusack and Rosanne Barr—reminding us that actors have no more sense than any other set of fools; leftist activist Medea Benjamin of “Code Pink,” Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine, leftist history professors Peter Kuznick, (Stone’s co-author of the TV series) Carolyn “Rusty” Eisenberg of Hofstra University, Greg Grandin, Sinclair Thomson and Marilyn Blatt Young of New York University, Bob Buzannco of Houston University, and 60’s activist lawyer and historian Staughton Lynd.

Of the others listed, one must also mention Daniel Ellsberg, who gained fame as the man who released the “Pentagon Papers.” Say what you will about Ellsberg, he did not leave the country, faced the music, and argued that what he released was an informational study about how the U.S. got into the war in Vietnam, which he hoped would get the American public to see the war as an unnecessary and unjust intervention. Since then, Ellsberg has revealed himself to be just another in the chorus of far left extremists, and a man close to Noam Chomsky.

One has to wonder if Edward Snowden, when he started out, really knew that he would become the propaganda tool of far leftists, and a stooge for America’s enemies abroad and at home? In today’s Wall Street Journal, Edward Jay Epstein connects the dots and shows that before he took his job with Booz-Allen-Hamilton, he already had got in touch with “with people who would later help arrange the publication of the material he purloined. Two of these individuals, filmmaker Laura Poitras and Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald, were on the Board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation that, among other things, funds WikiLeaks.”

That means that Snowden planned to release information that he had sworn to protect, a violation of the oath he took when he received his security clearance. He misappropriated communications intelligence, and as Epstein writes, it was a “well-planned theft of U.S. secrets,” probably aided and abetted by others who were his accomplices.  He was not any kind of a whistle-blower.

Hopefully, unless they want to remain in the same camp with leftist extremists, some of the libertarians who have supported Snowden, like Glenn Beck, will reconsider their actions.  To offer support and gratitude to Edward Snowden, at this point, is to support those who would like to bring the United States down. That should be clear when we look at the politics of those who approve of what he has done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Continuing Edward Snowden Saga: The Traitor in Limbo

Russian President Vladimir Putin has now explained the status of Edward Snowden. He is not technically in Russia; rather, per the Associated Press:

[He] is in the transit zone of a Moscow airport and has not passed through Russian immigration, Putin said, meaning he is not technically in Russia.

Once again, the Russian president has humiliated the United States. Putin also claims that the Russian security services have not met with Snowden and are not working with him. Moreover, he cannot grant the United States request for extradition since the U.S. and Russia do not have an extradition treaty.

Writing in The Guardian (Glenn Greenwald’s paper), Tom McCarthy explains that Putin’s excuse for not grabbing Snowden is not exactly accurate. He cites the report of their Moscow correspondent Miriam Elder, who says:

Passengers transiting through Sheremetyevo are usually given 24 hours to pass through the international transit zone. Snowden arrived Sunday.

If Elder is correct, then obviously Russian security services are allowing the rules to be stretched in Snowden’s case. Like that African man who lived in JFK Airport for a few years since he was legally stateless and no country would grant him exile, Snowden could be living in Moscow’s airport for quite some time, dining on the horrendous food available at that notoriously subpar international airport.

President Putin could not pause from sticking the knife in President Obama and the United States, suddenly becoming a defender of human rights. Elder quotes Putin:

Assange and Snowden consider themselves human rights activists and say they’re fighting for the spread of information. … Ask yourself this: should you hand these people over so they’ll be put in prison?

With that argument, Putin reveals himself to be a master of hypocrisy. Cathy Young, who grew up in the old Soviet Russia and follows the country regularly, points out:

[Russia] is in the grip of an intense crackdown on dissent since Vladimir Putin’s return for a third presidential term a year ago. …  This crackdown includes draconian penalties for unauthorized protests; legislation requiring non-governmental organizations that receive any money from abroad to register as “foreign agents” and submit to punitive regulations; a vague new treason law that could target dissent; legislation criminalizing insults to religion; and widespread harassment and persecution of opposition activists and leaders.

As for Mr. Snowden, any pretense of his being motivated by a desire to protect the fundamental freedoms that Americans enjoy has evaporated completely. Yesterday, he gave an interview in which he now claims he got a job with Booz Allen in the first place precisely so he could gain access to NSA secrets that he could then share with the world. That new explanation contradicts his earlier claim — that only after working there and learning what American security services could do did he decide on principle to leak classified data. Perhaps wandering in an international transit zone in a bad airport has gone to his head, and we should take anything he says at this point with a grain of salt.

Should the U.S. Intervene in Syria? The Debate Continues

The collapse of Barack Obama’s policy in the Middle East, the result of  “leading from behind,” is apparent to all but the most obtuse of Obama’s former defenders. Charles Krauthammer aptly spelled it out last week. As he and many others have observed, we are witnessing a replay of the Spanish Civil War, in which Italy and Germany came to Franco’s rebelling generals with aid, while the West stayed neutral. The Soviet Union, seeking to gain influence in the region, supplied the Spanish Republic with arms, but not enough to win, and only enough to defend themselves for a short amount of time. As Krauthammer writes, now “Obama has chosen to do just enough to give the appearance of having done something,” but only a small amount that will not be sufficient to win.

As a result of the inept and incredibly backwards policy, Obama has found that he has no place left to hide. He faces incredibly different choices to make, none of them good. They are spelled out today by Thomas Friedman, who sees three options, which he calls “the realist, the idealist” and “the God-I-hope-we-are-lucky approaches.” As he aptly notes, none of them are without great risk, and all could leave the U.S. in an even deeper pit and in worse shape in the region.

Friedman thinks to succeed if the US really intervened in Syria, it would take a full scale Iraq type invasion, led by the dreaded “boots on the ground,” which no Commander in Chief would in their right mind now advocate. So we citizens are left trying to guess which approach Obama believes is the right course, and what he really has in mind.

As a result, a new chorus of ardent interventionists has emerged. They have good arguments, and are repulsed about the failure of the Obama administration to use American power for good when it had an opportunity, and the resulting 80,000 or more deaths in Syria, the result of U.S. inaction. The two sides do not follow any usual left-right divide. It includes a coalition of anti-interventionists on the radical Left and the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right; a coalition of ardent interventionists on the neoconservative Right and the moderate Left, and conservatives and leftists who unite around arguing that the United States should not at present intervene in Syria with aid to the rebels.

Here are some of the strange bedfellows and their arguments. The influential British magazine The Economist presented the most coherent analysis, concentrating on the need for the West to curb Iran’s power in the region, and to prevent its growing power, which would result from an Assad victory. The magazine’s editors favor both a no-fly zone and arming the Syrian rebels.

Joining them in urging intervention are two TNR editors, Leon Wieseltier and John B. Judis. Both are irate at their fellow liberals and leftists who eschew intervention. Wieseltier is upset, as he should be, that “The foreign policy discourse of American liberalism no longer includes an emphasis on freedom or democracy.” He is the penultimate liberal hawk, a man who takes the same position re Syria that he took in the period before the Bush administration moved into Iraq, and which he and his colleagues later regretted.  His colleague Judis, a man of the Left, breaks with his comrades at The Nation and Mother Jones who vigorously see U.S. imperialism involved in any intervention, and favors what he calls “benign intervention for humanitarian or for worthy geopolitical ends.” At least he is honest in acknowledging that he has no idea what can be done, and only says that as a “card-carrying member of the American left,” he thinks, “we should try to do something to rid the world of the Assad regime.”

Last week, I presented my own reasons for why I think it is futile to go into Syria. I respect the arguments and analysis of those who favor intervention. I understand their motivations and their frustrations, all the result of our President’s failed policies. I comprehend Elliot Abrams’ analysis, and his argument that “the central fact about the region today is Iran’s use of raw power in Syria, with Russian support.”  To counter Iran and Russia, Abrams believes that necessitates arming the rebels and more, and the announcement of a coherent and strong U.S. policy on Iran and Hezbollah. Abrams cites the work of Frederic C. Hof, who believes that we are militarily capable of stepping in without “boots on the ground,” and that we can “destroy and degrade” Assad’s capability without our own forces getting involved. Hof writes that “Syrians are being slaughtered and US friends and allies are suffering the consequences. A family regime supported by terrorists threatens to plunge the region into war as it systematically wrecks the Syrian state.” But he thinks the U.S. can act even without a no-fly zone, which others see as a minimum necessary first step.

For a layman like myself, and most readers, we can only consider the judgment of the experts, and then try and sort out their arguments and reach our own conclusions. For now, I still believe intervention is shortsighted and likely to bring even worse results. I agree with my PJM colleague Victor Davis Hanson, who argues the following in National Review Online:

There is no guarantee that American air support or close training might not end up in some sort of American ground presence — the only sure guarantee that so-called moderates might prevail should Assad fall. Of course, any costly intervention would eventually be orphaned by many in the present chorus of interventionists in a manner that we also know well from Iraq. We are told that dealing a blow to Iran and Hezbollah would be a good thing, and no doubt it would be. But in the callous calculus of realpolitik, both seem already to be suffering without U.S. intervention.

And I take serious notice of the admonition of Michael Rubin, who recently returned from a trip through Iraq, where he often goes. Rubin writes that “many Iraqi Shi’ites warned against any support for the Syrian opposition, claiming they were more radical than the Americans realized,” and that they were joined in this analysis by Iraqi Kurds, Christians and Sunnis! Rubin thus advocates only use of U.S. air power, which he thinks is sufficient to stop Assad. He argues, “Arming the Syrian rebels is wrong and would gravely undercut U.S. national security.”

With such different perspectives and arguments from those who know the military situation, and what arming the rebels would or would not do, I think it only prudent that the U.S. stay out. As we have seen from other recent examples, the law of unintended consequences has shown that outcomes we expected are more than likely to occur. We must hope for the best, and be prepared for the worst, which it looks like will soon take place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oliver Stone Disgraces Himself — Once Again — and This Time in Communist China

Our old friend Oliver Stone is at it again. This time, as The Hollywood Reporter informs us, he is being feted and wined and dined in the People’s Republic of China, where he is the star attraction at this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival. The festival will be screening his big flop Alexander, his film Savages, as well as an episode of his Communist propaganda series The Untold History of the United States.

I’m certain the ideological guardians of the Communist regime, who still reverently pay homage to the Stalinist dictator and founder of the People’s Republic Mao Ze Dong, will be thrilled to see how the official propagandist picture of American imperialism depicted by Stone and co-writer Peter Kuznick fulfills the ideological requirements of how the regime regularly treats history. They should especially enjoy his portrait of a benign Stalin who only wanted secure borders and fought for peace.

As the report informs readers, Stone “brought thunderous applause to a crowd of more than 500 festivalgoers…when he praised whistleblower Edward Snowden as a ‘hero.’” So while Dick Cheney rightfully condemns Snowden as a traitor, a word that Snowden himself says is a badge of honor when bestowed on him by the former vice president, Oliver Stone gets the backing and support of an audience in statist China. The People’s Republic’s government controls propaganda and censors free news reports, has its own repressive gulag system of prison camps, and is anything but a free society. It has not dawned on the filmmaker that attacking the United States as not free in a land in which dissenters are arrested and persecuted on a regular basis shows anything but an understanding of what freedom and liberty are.

Stone did just as his hosts required. The article by reporter Richard Trombley tells us the following:

In response to a passionately worded indictment from an audience member accusing the U.S. National Security Agency of “eavesdropping on the world,” the celebrated — and provocative — director said, simply: “Snowden is a hero,” before launching into a brief discussion of the revelations about the U.S. spy programs and their aftermath….Stone went on to praise the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and whistleblower Bradley Manning. He condemned President Barack Obama’s administration for prosecuting six whistleblower cases despite campaign promises of a more progressive administration.

Stone joined prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To in a master class entitled “How Does Film Have Its Influence on Real Life?” held at the newly opened Shanghai Film Museum with moderator and state-owned newspaper China Daily film critic Raymond Zhou.

“Mr. Stone, you sound like one of China’s angry young men,” chided Zhou.

Despite repeated attempts from the moderator to redirect the discussion and Zhou’s requests not to discuss political matters, Stone castigated the Bush administration, the Iraq war, the Kuwait Invasion and American imperialism.

Stone defended movies that criticize authority, from war movies to crime movies. But he did caution that violence must be used responsibly. He also pointed to the media’s influence on the culture of violence, from Newtown and Columbine to the Bush-era wars.

Cherish the irony. The Chinese hosts wanted the event to appear non-political, in order to highlight their film colony’s entrance into the world arena. But evidently they did not know Oliver Stone well enough.  As he noted, “Movies that glorify war give permission to the leaders to make war,” although his criticism was reserved only for the United States, and not to any of the many times that the Communist nations he supports have used their own media to do precisely that which he claims to find objectionable.