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Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First

Mona Charen

3.70 · Rating details · 239 ratings · 11 reviews

Meet the "Useful Idiots" Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, and all the other liberals who were -- and are -- always willing to blame America first and defend its enemies as simply "misunderstood."

Now that the Cold War has been won, these liberals, amazingly, are proud to claim credit for the victo ...more

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published February 3rd 2004 by William Morrow Paperbacks

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Start your review of Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First

Apr 02, 2017 Adam Balshan rated it really liked it

Shelves: politics, communism, the-cold-war

4 stars [Politics]
Writing: 4, Use: 4, Truth: 5.

The true account of the Cold War, communist sympathizers, and historical revisionism.

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Oct 14, 2012 Garrett rated it did not like it · review of another edition

This book is as idiotic and full of errors as it sounds.

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Nov 01, 2011 Lisa Shininger rated it did not like it

Shelves: horror

No.

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Dec 31, 2008 Eric rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-history, modern-history, non-fiction, books-from-library

I was fairly excited when this book first came out (not excited enough to buy the hardcover, of course - I checked this out of the library). It was about time that someone held the Left to account for its blatant appeasement and outright sympathy for the Soviet Union and communism.

Now that I've read the book, I hope someone else gives it another shot.

Not that Charen does a bad job, or even that this is a terrible book. It could have been much better, and, quite frankly, better written.

In fact, t I was fairly excited when this book first came out (not excited enough to buy the hardcover, of course - I checked this out of the library). It was about time that someone held the Left to account for its blatant appeasement and outright sympathy for the Soviet Union and communism.

Now that I've read the book, I hope someone else gives it another shot.

Not that Charen does a bad job, or even that this is a terrible book. It could have been much better, and, quite frankly, better written.

In fact, the first two or three chapters are so bad I almost threw the book away. The introduction contains some truly horrid sentences. I'll share some examples:

* Page 1, 2nd sentence: "It seems absurd to pose the question, and yet, the past decade has become so clouded by revisionism and retroactive self-justification that a measure of clarity on the matter has been lost." It's okay until the end, with that unfortunate blend of two prepositional phrases followed by the weak passive tense verb.
* Page 1, 2nd paragraph, last sentence: "It is so obviously false that it seems unbelievable that this theory has slid so smoothly onto the history shelves." Even allowing for poetic license, I don't think it's possible for a "theory" to "slide."
* Page 2, 3rd paragraph, first line: "The end was so abrupt that it gave rise to a kind of vertigo in the West." Can vertigo rise? I don't remember any vertigo when the Soviet Union fell, to be honest.
* Page 3, first paragraph, first line: "As they had one in East Berlin in 1953, in Budapest in 1956, and in Prague in 1968, the people of Eastern Europe saw the light glinting through the unlocked door and rushed to pry it open further." Light cannot glint through a door, but it can glint around the door frame. One assumes this door was closed, so how could it be pried open "further?" Had the Commies left a door open?
* Page 4, 3rd paragraph, last sentence: "But the fall of the Berlin Wall was such an epochal event that the existence of distractions is inadequate to explain the neglect of it." Yikes.
* Page 10, 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence: "But the record of their actual positions on matters from the nature of the Soviet system to the need for defense spending, to aiding anticommunist guerillas around the globe, is available." Charen does this annoying tactic throughout the book - introduce the subject, throw in numerous little clauses, then finally add the verb at the end, leaving it dangling and separated from its subject, so the reader has to return to the beginning of the sentence to remember what the subject was so the sentence makes sense.

I could go on, but you get the point. Luckily, the writing improves by about chapter 3. It's as if the editor skipped the first few chapters.

Once you get beyond the writing, this isn't a bad book. Charen methodically examines the atrocious records of numerous Communist regimes - the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada - and quotes several leftists and Democrat politicians who excused, apologized for, and aided, against the interests and security of the United States. Then, after the Soviet Union fell, they tried to tell everyone that they were cold warriors too! Charen refuses to let them re-write history in such a dishonest manner.

It is interesting to read quotes from Democrats twenty or thirty years ago, because they still say the same things today. Many predicted, for example, a "quagmire" in Grenada or El Salvador. Where we have heard that word recently?

Charen wonders why the Left behaves this way, ignoring the countless crimes and horrors committed by Communists while rejoicing in the far fewer and comparatively mild mistakes made by the United States, and concludes that the Left hates America. I don't know if I'd go that far. I think the Left loves socialism, and communism was the closest real-life system of implementing the worker's paradise.

So my thanks to Mona Charen for tackling this important subject. I just wish it were better written. ...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Andrew Stergiou rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: students of propaganda and bigotry

Shelves: propaganda-junk-trash-nonsense

Garbage in, garbage out, after the American Civil War when America joined the reactionary imperialists in its jingoistic rhetoric, America burned its own Declaration of Independence and joined forces with the crown heads of Europe and made a pact with the devil on issues that relate to foreign intrigues and standing armies.

I am amazed though some what not surprised at America's consistent maintenance of its naive perspectives for over a full century since it began in it adventures overseas in th Garbage in, garbage out, after the American Civil War when America joined the reactionary imperialists in its jingoistic rhetoric, America burned its own Declaration of Independence and joined forces with the crown heads of Europe and made a pact with the devil on issues that relate to foreign intrigues and standing armies.

I am amazed though some what not surprised at America's consistent maintenance of its naive perspectives for over a full century since it began in it adventures overseas in the Spanish-American Europe that was started essentially by the yellow journalism of the very ambitious publisher Hearst. Where America proved American equality and superiority it could be as reckless and criminal as any other imperial cannibal.

Where in history they learned from the confederacy the ways of southern gentility taught by the crude General Bedford Forrester accustomed to slaughtering black troops who had made the fatal error surrendering to his butcherous command.

American Imperialism whose roots began in the intentional European/American slaughter of "native" Americans Indians which progressed to where American soldiers slaughtered tens of thousands of Filipinos when they invaded the Philippines. Where Filipinos had their heads chopped off and stacked into piles by the American Soldiers who murdered them. Just if those American soldiers were in the armies of Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge seventy years later that were encouraged by this country (USA USA USA), and which covered up the slaughter of the East Timorese in tens of thousands by the American allies in Indonesia. Not to mention the CIA's involvement in the slaughter close to a million people in Indonesia during the 1960s.

So any book that begins by selectively referring to others as brutal should first look at their own sins, foibles and brutality.

For this Norman Rockwell facade for America did not ever exist (see Jacob Reis) and at best was the Americ blinded by its superficial sensitivities while it lynched blacks, Jews, Italian, immigrants, often as a legalize for m extortion (see Eda Wells) to put minority businesses out of business.

So I would not take a word this book says serious but would dissect it with a microscope to see why the author and or publisher are so motivated in their biases.

Published by William Morrow Publishers not the much respected and different pioneer of TV journalism, Edward R. Morrow of CBS, who better represented this country working at CBS, confronting Joseph McCarthy and as head of the USIA until he died in 1965.

Also add that most Republicans between 1941 and 1980 or even 1990 or later did or would not represent the vitriolic Republicans who came later on. That the likes of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were closer to traditional Republicans in many ways as they maneuvered after the 1980 win of Ronald Reagan to under cut Republican support amongst independents. ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 Todd Stockslager rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

89, a conservative columnist, concisely recaps the twisted view of history the American liberals ("useful idiots" in advancing communist ideas) have held from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War and even through the American political response after September 11.

This book makes it clear how important it is to understand the facts of history: communism is an unmitigated economic, political, and cultural disaster, the Soviet Union really was an Evil Empire, and Ronald Reagan was right in both ide ...more

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Jan 31, 2008 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Very interesting facts about the cold war and vietnam war. Things that I was not taught in school, and don't know why. Important for us to understand. ...more

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Feb 25, 2014 Curtis Edmonds rated it really liked it

The problem with Mona Charen's invaluable book, Useful Idiots: Holding Today's Liberals Accountable is not only that it is too short, it doesn't cover enough territory.

Of course, if it did cover enough territory, it would be thicker than the Cambridge, Massachusetts phone book. But that is another story.

C.S. Lewis reminded us that people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed. The avowed purpose of Useful Idiots is to serve as a permanent and indelible reminder, a living monu The problem with Mona Charen's invaluable book, Useful Idiots: Holding Today's Liberals Accountable is not only that it is too short, it doesn't cover enough territory.

Of course, if it did cover enough territory, it would be thicker than the Cambridge, Massachusetts phone book. But that is another story.

C.S. Lewis reminded us that people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed. The avowed purpose of Useful Idiots is to serve as a permanent and indelible reminder, a living monument to a sad and sorry history of wrongheaded obstructionism and malignant bloody-mindedness on the part of American liberals in terms of dealing with communism. The phrase "useful idiots", describing pro-Soviet flacks, apologists and lickspittles in the capitalist West, was allegedly coined by Vladimir Lenin his own bad self. Charen finds it more than appropriate to describe more modern liberals and the "blame America first" crowd worldwide.

Useful Idiots is a book that is chock-full of useful and valuable quotes, mostly from liberals, including many that are still running around loose. It covers a long stretch of history -- but not nearly long enough – running back from the early days of the liberal discovery of Soviet Russia to the bitter endgame, briefly passing by sideshows like the diplomatic efforts of the late Samantha Smith (age ten) and the Elian Gonzales fiasco. Even the briefest of random searches provides a wealth of foolish or self-indicting quotes; William Sloane Coffin on the innate sinfulness of nuclear weapons, Jim Wright and cohorts congratulating Daniel Ortega on protecting the right to assembly, Bill Clinton apologizing for slavery, Ted Turner fawning over Gorbachev… Useful Idiots will delight the see-I-told-you-so conservative crowd and should embarrass and chasten the liberals among us.

However, the last phrase there is more of a wish than a hope. Charen makes clear that not only are the liberal apologists for Communist tyranny not sobered by the failure of the false gods of Lenin and Marx and Castro; they are claiming to have been on the side of right and justice all along. Charen effectively refutes the claim of the Left that it was a key partner in winning the Cold War, pointing out the many instances in which left-wing politicians effectively gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Charen also reminds us, from time to time, what sort of enemy we were dealing with in Communist Russia, and what sort of person one would have to be to condone any aspect of that evil empire or its twisted satellite network of tinhorn dictators.

The one problem with the book is that it is not particularly timely. Useful Idiots is more of a history lesson than anything else, or at the very least a museum of failed policy ideas. Anyone looking for the brief, sad history of the “nuclear freeze” movement or the Grenada incursion will find information and data here. But Charen’s book does nothing to address the current arguments against America and the use of American power overseas; it merely names the Usual Suspects and moves on. There is very little data here about the latest round of anti-Americanism, only a showing that the leopards of the left have not changed their spots.

There is a book to be written about the manifestly foolish things that have been said – and will be said – about the current Administration and its war on terror by the Left here and abroad. (The chapters on Susan Sontag and Michael Moore, by themselves, would be required reading; the piece on the French foreign minister might be book-length.) But that book is not Useful Idiots, and it’s a shame. Charen’s writing is crisp and forthright, and is accompanied by an arch, biting wit. But, as efforts in the Middle East and across the world are ongoing, perhaps it is too early for such a book; perhaps history has not pronounced her final judgment. We can only hope that Charen will produce a sequel; we know that she will, in any instance, have the appropriate ammunition available to her.
...more

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Apr 07, 2014 Tom Dougherty rated it it was ok

Shelves: politics

Contrary to popular belief Ronald Reagan did not single handedly win the Cold War. Every President since Truman, both Democrat and Republican played a role in winning it. The Soviet Union collapsed because their system was rotten to the core. The collapse of worldwide oil markets in the 1980's was just the final nail in it's coffin. ...more

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Jan 15, 2009 Brian rated it liked it

A bit on the propaganda side, but not much. Lenin's phrase still rings true. ...more

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Dec 12, 2020 Alvin Hung rated it it was amazing

This is a great book that illustrates, with a lot of examples, how horribly wrong communist apologists have been for the past century. From turning a blind eye to communist atrocities in countries like Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, to mocking the Vietnamese refugees, radical 'liberals' and communist apologisers seem to think that human lives (in particular Asian people's lives) pale in significance, when compared with their 'communist' ideology. As self-proclaimed 'humanists', they cheer for ...more

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