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Book Reviews
• BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy by M. Stanton Evans
• WITNESS by Whittaker Chambers
• WHITTAKER CHAMBERS - A Biography by Sam Tanenhaus
• THE VENONA SECRETS (Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors) by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Brandel
• VENONA (Decoding Soviet Espionage in America) by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
• INDOCTRINATION U (The Left's War Against Academic Freedom) by David Horowitz
• THE SEXUAL DEAD-END by Stephen Green
• OPEN SECRET (Gay Hollywood 1928-1998) by David Ehrenstein
• LIBERTY VERSUS THE TYRANNY OF SOCIALISM (Controversial Essays) by Walter E Williams
• PROPHET OF INNOVATION by Thomas K. McCraw
• THE LAST VALLEY by Martin Windrow
BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy
by M. Stanton Evans
Evans' thoroughly researched and documented retelling of the Joe McCarthy story is a must-read for every serious conservative. This book, launched in the Autumn of 2007, has been shunnned by every MSM publication, including the supposedly conservative Wall Street Journal. Since the book is an academic work which covers not only an important period of modern political US history, but also deals with a topic (McCarthyism) that resonates to this day, one would have expected a great debate to ensue. The silence has been deafening for the book has been shunned. Leftist academics, ever ready to earn a buck writing propaganda for the ruling Class, have not put pen to paper. The reason is obvious. Evans thesis, that McCarthy is an American hero who has been smeared with lies and distortions, is unarguable. Not only that, but in the telling of Mcarthy's campaign to unmask the Communists who infested the US Government services, Evans also reveals how so many of the traitors who were driven from Government were placed in influential and well-paid sinecures in the United Nations, the World Bank and other international bodies where they were able to continue advancing Socialism. When McCarthy's reputation ultimately has been publicly restored, we will know that the Media Class has been removed from power.
WITNESS
by Whittaker Chambers
Chambers published this book in 1952, but I recommend the paperback 50th Anniversary edition of 2001 which has forewords by the late William F. Buckley and Robert D.Novak. We include a recommendation of this book from the past for several reasons.Conservatives, Nationalists and Traditional Christians are not well-served these days with intellectually important books. This is not surprising, given that most serious and well-researched books have to be written by academics who have the (publicly paid-for) time and who are almost all busy rewriting modern history to fit a Leftist agenda. So a book that sets the record straight on US politics in the decades 1930/40/50's is like a tree on the prairie (and lucky to find a publisher). If the above three beleaguered and overlapping groups are to have stamina in tough times, they need access to their predeccessors beliefs and to know the truth about their struggles.
Chambers certainly knew about struggle in the same way that Joe McCarthy knew about it for he changed political sides and became a conservative, patriot and Christian just when these things came under attack from anti-American Leftist forces both with-in the US and across the world.
"Witness" was not 'ghost-written' for Chambers was a true intellectual and a good writer and this is the searingly honest story of his dysfunctional upbringing, his conversion to Communism, and his traitorous descent into the Soviet spy network as a link and recruiter between US government employees and the Soviet agents who worked for Stalin. After several years of this, Chambers 'deserted' for he had concluded that Communism was evil. His defection co-incided with that of a few other comrades in the US and he knew from the 'accidents' some suffered, that he and his family were in danger.
The valuable lesson for us today is the response to Chambers and other defectors from US politicians, bureaucrats and the liberal MSM. It took years for Chambers and others to arouse the US to the infiltration of Government by Communist traitors. Chief of these was Alger Hiss, a highly placed Civil Servant with an Ivy League background who fed the USSR crucial information. Hiss was eventually tried and found guilty, but the US Left and Liberal Establishment treated him as a victim and Chambers as a liar and worse. The information in Eastern European secret police archives revealed in the 1990's that Hiss was indeed a traitor and that Chambers account was wholly truthful, but the Media and Academia continues to ignore the facts. There is a lesson in the Chambers experience for all who care about the survival of the West and care about truth.
WHITTAKER CHAMBERS - A Biography
by Sam Tanenhaus
Published in 1997, this 520 page study of Chambers is an essential supplement to the Chambers autobiography which has already been reviewed on this website. Tanenhaus has had the many years since 1952, when ”Witness” was completed and published, to cover Chambers’ post-trial years until 1961 when he died, and to be aware of many more facts. These include the later confessions of other ex-Communist spies and the revelations from the archives of former Iron Curtain countries.
Readers should be aware that Tanenhaus is a Leftist and he cannot resist down-playing the red menace of the postwar years and impugning base motives to almost all of those who led the attempted purge of Communists from government. He is especially uncharitable to Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. However, to do justice to Tanenhaus, he is too objective to attempt to cast doubt over Alger Hiss’s guilt and will not have endeared himself to that great army of Leftist academics who care nothing for facts and who rewrite history for propaganda purposes.
One point that Tanenhaus, along with all commentators, misses is the significance of Chambers’ homosexuality. It seems wholly possible that Chambers’ embrace of Communist underground work in the 1930’s enabled him to indulge his craving for sodomy with anonymous partners. He was able to enjoy a secret life in more than one sense. Chambers’ breaks with both Communism and homosexuality and his subsequent shame about both fuelled his commitment to marriage and family and to his native country and its Christian-based freedom. In his last years (Tanenbaum reveals) Chambers increasingly viewed the struggle with Communism as a moral/religious one and not as an economic struggle between free markets and Socialist planning. The divide between religious conservatives and economic conservatives remains and greatly weakens the current struggle against the Leftist Media Class.
THE VENONA SECRETS (Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors)
by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Brandel. Regnery Publishing Inc.
This important book on the role of US Communist Party members as spies was published in 2000. The authors, both American Jews, have a long pedigree as anti-Communist researchers, though sadly Brandel, who also worked for Fox News, died in 1998 at age 42. We would advise those interested in learning the truth about Soviet penetration of US Government, to only tackle this work after reading detailed works that provide context such as those by Whittaker Chambers, Sam Tanenhaus, M Stanton Evans, and Haynes and Klehr, for by its very nature this book is patchy.
The Venona Project is the name given to the decoding by the US Army of over 3000 spy messages that passed between Red agents in the US and their masters in Moscow between 1940 and 1980. Many messages have never been decoded and others only partly understood, so those that became available to researchers in 1995 and which form the focus of this book do not present a whole picture. The authors spent some five years researching and still much remains to be discovered. What is clear is that the American Communist Party members were loyal to the Soviet Union and that the Party, always tiny in numbers, was never intended to win power through the ballot box. Rather it was a recruiting ground for the Soviet Intelligence Services both for spies and for those in important government positions who could influence US policy for the advantage of the USSR.
It is now beyond dispute that not only highly placed bureaucrats like Alger Hiss, Dexter White and Lauchlin Currie were enthusiastic traitors but that there were others who were not suspected until recent times. These include Harry Hopkins (who greatly influenced Truman) and J. Robert Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb. Even Albert Einstein emerges as a likely Soviet helper from the messages that have been decoded. Unfortunately, the door into further research of Russian archives has been closed, so many traitors will remain unmasked but it is clear that the Soviet penetration of the US was staggering. Joe McCarthy's infamous list of agents was in fact pathetically short, though he was right to believe that even humbly-placed Communist public employees were a dire threat.
The authors, being Jews, claimed to demonstrate that Stalin was anti-Semitic and that Jews were victims in this esponiage. My reading of their evidence is that at least half of the ungrateful immigrants who served the USSR were Jewish, as were very many of the Soviet agents sent to the US. I am not sure why so many Jews served and still serve Leftist causes that undermine the US that protects them but it has to be said that many other Jews have been in the forefront of unmasking US enemies. One explanation I have heard is that religious Jews are conservative and patriotic while those who abandon their religion are also suckers for Leftist substitutes?
A wide reading of books such as this, all thoroughly researched, reveals an uncomfortable truth - not just the extent of Soviet activities but that Leftist Academia and the Mainstream Media are wilfully wrong in painting anti-Communism as a baseless phobia.
VENONA (Decoding Soviet Espionage in America)
John Earl Haynes & Harvey Klehr. Yale University Press 2000.
The second major book to cover the evidence from the Venona papers. It is more detailed than the Romerstein and Breindel "The Venona Secrets" and is available in paperback. More importantly, the authors had the opportunity to visit Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union and inspect some of the Comintern records and so were enabled to verify the Venona facts from the other end. Unfortunately, Russian officials soon brought the curtain down on such investigations, but enough was learned to show that Venona veracity was beyond doubt. Most likely we will never learn the identities of many traitors and we can conclude that there were far more than the 349 identified so far. This book lacks the outrage that is surely appropriate and the authors seem to regret that the Rosenburgs were executed. Many US citizens might feel that not enough of the traitors were executed and that it was scandalous that because of the American legal system and the security services' need to keep sources secret, few were even prosecuted. Two things are worth noting for they fly in the face of the 'Blame America' intellectuals who are rewriting history. America owes a big debt to J Edgar Hoover and the FBI, for while the other counter intelligence services were sleeping, the FBI was not. Hoover, like Joe McCarthy needs to be reinstated as an American hero. Secondly, Americans should not conclude that those who find refuge in the generous USA will be grateful. In dealing with new threats from Islamic Imperialism, from China, from Iran and Russia we should be aware that many with past ties to these and other hostile countries and alien religions will be willing to betray the country that has given them citizenship.
INDOCTRINATION U (The Left's War Against Academic Freedom)
by David Horowitz
Many conservative books are long on rant and short on cool and reasoned facts. This book, detailing Horowitz's campaign to remove ALL political indoctrination from public education and restore the role of impartial enquiry, is well written and highly informative. I think he is overly optimistic that Academia can be reformed without cutting off public funding and starting again without the multitude of Leftist subjects (social work, women's studies etc) and a weeding out the dedicated Leftists in both the faculties and the administrations. However, the chronicle of his efforts to engage in a civilized dialogue with Academia, and its response, will convince any objective reader that the Left now controls the educational system and boldly uses it to engage in continual propaganda.
THE SEXUAL DEAD-END
by Stephen Green. Broadview Books 1992.
'The Sexual Dead-End' is essential reading for every conservative and Nationalist as well as every Christian and every parent of young children. Mr. Green's book, which describes the homosexual movement's speedy advance from criminal status (1950's) to privileged status in Law and State education (1990's), is packed with evidence. Most of that evidence is taken verbatim from the mass of literature that the homosexuals themselves produce, for they are nothing if not pornographic in habit. Of course much of their printed material was written to be read only amongst themselves, at least until legislation and government began forcing it upon us all, for Mr. Green demonstrates clearly that the homosexual political agenda is nothing less than a world where sodomy is the least of the many degrading practices that we must all accept as 'normal' and to which our sons must be exposed to at the earliest possible age.
Green makes the case that there is no demarcation line between male homosexual activity amongst adults and the pursuit of ever-younger boys. Not all homosexuals seek sexual relationships with pre-teen boys, not all homosexuals are insatiably promiscuous and not all are driven to extremes of sado-masochistic rituals, but those that are not are on the fringes of the movement. The activists demand no limits on their appetites and their appetites are unlimited. If you do not believe me, inspect Mr. Green's evidence for his book is full of their material and it is all from their mainstream.
For a broader review see our article 28 Oct 2008
OPEN SECRET (Gay Hollywood 1928-1998)
by David Ehrenstein. Paperback William Morrow and Co. 1998.
Ehrenstein is a Hollywood insider who has been involved in film making and writing. He is openly homosexual and this book will not be pleasant reading for many Christians, conservatives and Nationalists, for it approvingly monitors the growth of homosexual influence in Hollywood film and TV. Still, Ehrenstein is an engaging and skilfull writer and clearly knows the film-making industry and its most powerful people. This book is essential reading for all those who wonder why the big screen and the small box are continually pushing the envelope on homosexuality and providing it with a falsely harmless face. Incidentally, by packing the book with quotations from Hollywood homosexuals, Ehrenstein provides credibility to the claims of Stephen Green in his book 'The Sexual Dead End' about the spiritual emptiness and transient nature of homosexual relationships. We also get more than a peek into the affinity of sodomy and sado-masochistic practices. On page 27, when covering James Dean and his 'boyfriend' Jack Simmons, Randall Riese is quoted as saying, "Simmons silently waiting on Dean hand and foot is scarcely mysterious to those familiar with the master/slave dynamic of the gay leather scene."
It is in the sitcoms that homosexual propaganda is most successfully promoted. On page 302 Ehrenstein writes, "The gay and lesbian TV writers of today have been pushing the envelope every chance they get". On page 302: "In short, when it comes to sitcoms, gays rule". And gays have "risen through the ranks to dominate sitcoms as never before." As this book is clearly written for a wider readership than just homosexuals in the Media, Ehrenstien is predictably coy about telling us just what homosexual men do with each other beyond worshipping young male bodies but on page 303 he quotes Phil Hartman: "God forbid a straight person should acknowledge that there are pleasures associated with their anus. That's a big door that people don't want to open". Damn right that normal people don't want to open the lavatory door in search of sexual relationships!
After ploughing through this book I began to wonder if many in the film industry are straight. It is not just actors we should note but more influentially it is the directors, producers and writers who seem to be increasingly of just one persuasion. Many are not only powerful but rich too and they have bankrolled Obama and his Democrat comrades into the White House and Congress. Pipers call the tune and these homosexuals, a core element of the ruling Media Class, will be calling the tune once Obama takes office.
LIBERTY VERSUS THE TYRANNY OF SOCIALISM (Controversial Essays)
by Walter E Williams. Hoover Press 2008.
This paperback is a collection of essays covering the period 2001 to 2007. Williams is an African American and a long-time Professor of Economics at George Mason University (USA). Many American conservatives will know him as an occasional stand-in for Rush Limbaugh on Talk Radio, when he is funny, very entertaining and extremely knowledgeable on economic issues. If Americans had wanted to elect a Black President able to understand and solve the Nation's current economic and financial problems, then Williams was the ideal candidate. Unfortunately, Williams is highly intelligent, extremely lucid, expert in his subject, a patriotic American and totally non-PC - so quite unqualified for the job! To give an example of his willingness to enrage both Black race activists and White Leftists, Willaims reminds Blacks that they are lucky to be living in the US and not in Africa. He is also a strict Constitutionalist and believes that the US Government should not be involved in activities except where there is a clear mandate in the Constitution. This would rule out Federal education, Federal welfare and all the other Government services which now empower politicians through taxation and spending. He is particularly good at making his points through analogies and I recomment this book to serious conservatives in both the US and the UK.
PROPHET OF INNOVATION
by Thomas K. McCraw
Anyone who has read this website regularly, will have found occasional references to the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who died in 1950. He was a trail blazer in the defense of free market capitalism and political freedom and wrote at a time when Communism and worldwide state control of economic life seemed inevitable. He belongs in the same pantheon of thinkers and writers as Milton Friedman, Hayek and Hannah Arendt - intellectuals who laid the postwar foundation for opposition to totalitarianism. I read Schumpeter's "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" almost by accident, when I was a teenager much impressed by Trotskyism and Marxism in general. I did not become an immediate convert to free markets, but his rational and stimulating arguments set off niggling doubts in my mind about the superiority of central planning by government. I have since read it several times. Until McCraw's book, I knew nothing about Schumpeter's life and the tragedy and hardship he experienced. This book should be on every conservative's bookshelf alongside "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy".
THE LAST VALLEY
by MARTIN WINDROW
Subtitled 'Dien Bien Phu and the French defeat in Vietnam', this hugely researched and detailed book covers a war and battle that many young people will know little or nothing about. A pity, since those who know nothing of the past are doomed to repeat mistakes and this harrowing book incidentally describes how the USA became embroiled in its own Vietnam war and also lost.
IndoChina had been a French colony until the 2nd World War, when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Vietnam. After the war, the defeated and demoralized French were given permission by the US/UK victors to reclaim IndoChina. The war had however awakened rebellion in colonial peoples and a Vietnam nationalist movement began resistance. The Vietminh nationalist rebellion was soon infiltrated and taken over by Ho Chi Minh, a dedicated Communist intellectual with a Stalinist history. Together with Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Minh led a guerilla war from bases inside Communist Chinese territory. Minh, using techniques borrowed from Mao Tse Tung, combining terror with promises of land reform gradually dominated the countryside of northern Vietnam and also threatened the French control of neighboring Laos.
The French Government in Paris was divided and weak with a large Communist/Socialist presence and whilst not wanting to lose an Empire was nevertheless unwilling to abandon IndoChina. The French military in Vietnam, always starved of resources and political direction from Paris attempted to draw Giap's guerrilla force into a direct confrontation, believing that air superiority and French military skills would win. A valley near the border with Laos was turned into a fortress with 10,000 French-led troops and artillery. However, the Communist victory in neighboring China enabled Giap to acquire the necessary heavy weapons and using terror he was able to put together a vast army of porters and troops. The French fortress became a trap for the troops within, and for those subsequently parachuted in as replacements for the dead.
Soon the air support was minimal and some 15,000 very brave soldiers were sacrificed by lack of supplies and political indifference. Many of the Paras and Legionaires fought to the death in horrendous circumstances before the 'fortress' was overun by Giap's masses. Few survived when captured. As Windrow reveals, a little more support and determination from French politicians and top brass could have produced a very different outcome, for Giap's losses were staggering - probably as many as 100,000 casualties.
The lessons for us are clear. When fighting an opponent who has no compunction about the losses of his own forces and who is driven by a revolutionary doctrine, wars must be fought with every means available. Western politicians have little stomach for a war that drags on and Western nations are infested with defeatists, pleasure-seekers and enemy-lovers. Unless the 'War Party' and its leaders are prepared to motivate the civilian population day in and day out, the troops at the sharp end are eventually sacrificed.
In the end, the US trod the same disastrous path as its French predecessor in Vietnam and surrendered. The cost of defeat was millions of our Indo-Chinese allies and neutral innocents killed, tortured and starved, a newly invigorated Fifth column at home and an emboldened set of new enemies around the world.
Copyright Mr Radical and Mr Right Radical and Right ©2007, ©2008, ©2009