The Fifties

by David Halberstam

who were at the worst guilty of political naïveté and accused them of treason. He set out to do the unthinkable, and it turned out to be surprisingly thinkable. The problem with America, he was saying, was domestic subversion, as tolerated and encouraged by the Democratic party. China had fallen, not because the forces of history were against the old feudal regime, which was collapsing of its own weight. Rather, it was because of Soviet military and political hegemony. If events in the world were not as we wanted them, then something conspiratorial had happened. No matter that most of his closest colleagues, isolationists all, had voted against varying foreign-aid bills, had rushed to cut back American standing-troop levels, and under no circumstance wanted to send troops to fight in Asia. It was a rare free shot in politics. His message was simple: The Democrats were soft on Communism. With that, he changed the nature of American politics. Our control of events was limited because sinister forces were at work against us.