On the Cover: Katie Couric, Jesse Jackson,
Madeleine Albright, Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton,
Martin Sheen, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy,
Phil Donahue, Jane Fonda, Peter Jennings,
in a gridwork pattern of boxes, indicating many more could be added ...

Useful Idiots

How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First

Mona Charen

Regnery, 2003, 308pp

Introduction: None Dare Call It Victory

Who won the Cold War?

- The Wall is Torn Down (Nov 1989)

- [Liberal] Bewilderment

- Rewriting History

Left-liberals are trying to rewrite history, claiming a) we westerners were all united in opposing Communism b) it had a life of its own, noone was in control, noone won c) it was an amoral conflict, 2 scorpions in a bottle, not liberty v. tyranny or good v. evil. Churchill had said in 1946 "A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory, from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent" (6). Liberals mourned the collapse of the USSR as "a defeat for human aspirations" (8, Robert Heilbroner). "Lenin is widely credited with the prediction that liberals and other weak-minded souls in the West could be relied upon to be 'useful idiots' as far as the USSR was concerned" (10).

1: The Brief Interlude of Unanimity on Communism

- The Origins of the Cold War

Reagan's "use of the term 'evil empire' provoked a fusillade of contempt from the American liberal left (11) ... In retrospect, it is clear that denying legitimacy to the Soviet Union was a stroke of brilliance - a moral challenge that resonated from Berlin to Vladivostock. The [USSR] did not deserve legitimacy. But at the time it was heresy" (14).

"When the Bolsheviks hijacked the Russian Revolution in 1917, most Americans responded with dismay. It was understood that while the Russian Revolution had been a mass uprising with mulifarious leadership, the Bolsheviks were thugs who used force to silence and eliminate the more democratic elements in the coalition of which they were a part. But by the 1930s, when the US and other industrialized nations were enduring the Great Depression - a crisis that many believed marked the 'death throes' of capitalism - sympathy for Communism and Soviet Russia expanded markedly" (15). By 1939, having heard of "widespread repression and slaughter dwarfing anything ... [done] by the tsars" (16) and witnessing the Stalin-Hitler nonaggression (i.e. Molotov-Ribbentrop) pact, most Americans became firm anticommunists. Even McCarthy's excesses didn't shake this consensus, but leftists fanned McCarthy into mythic proportions. Compared to WWII's mass hysteria (e.g. "mob violence; abolition of due process; raids on private premises by public officials and vigilante groups; arbitrary arrests" 22, antiGermanism), "nothing of that sort shook America during the 1950s. The fact that 'McCarthyism' is invoked so authoritatively is testimony only to the mythmaking power of the Left" (22).

2: The Consensus Unravels

While the 1960 election [Kennedy/Nixon] centered on the Cold War to a striking extent (both were vigorous cold warriors), by 1972 the Democratic Party had abandoned the fight against Communism (23).

- The Antiwar Movement

"It was during the Vietnam era that [this consensus] was permanently shattered" (28). "The profound tremor that went through American society starting in about 1965 was not just about the Vietnam War. Some deep wellsprings of dissatisfaction, petulance, and irritability were tapped by the war. All at once ... America['s] 'materialism' and 'militarism' [and poverty, consumerism ...] were decried and despised ... While leftist opinion had certainly held the US in low regard for most of the century, in the mid-1960s, leftist anti-Americanism went mainstream" (29). While sympathy to communism in the 1930s was partly driven by sincere hope to minimize human suffering (but also partly by admiration of brutality), such sympathy in the 1960s couldn't claim this. "The New Left was aware of Communism's ... treachery, tortures, murders ... [so their sympathy] was an outgrowth of hatred for the US" (30).

- The Press Takes Sides

- Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh

When lefties began openly sympathizing with the enemy, even travelling to Vietnam to identify with them as "political pilgrims" (39) and flying their flag, Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson said "'Our party has room for hawks and doves, but not for mockingbirds who chirp gleefully at those who are shooting at American boys.' But Jackson's was a lonely voice in the Democratic Party" (42). Pages of examples of left-biased media.

- The Communist Victory

"While the Nixon administration had every intention of preserving South Vietnam's viability with military and other aid after an orderly American withdrawal of combat troops, Watergate soon robbed the administration of bargaining power with Congress" (48). Charen describes the aweful consequences of communist rule in Vietnam after 1975 (200-1000K imprisoned, 65K executed, 800K boat-people). "The bald truth was that [most liberals] affirmatively wished for a Communist victory in SE Asia - and have not to this day acknowledged the horror of what they achieved. Liberals were horribly, catastrophically wrong about Vietnam. More importantly, they were wrong about the US ... A reasoned and credible case could have been made, and here and there was, that sending ground troops to Vietnam was neither prudent nor necessary. But the shrill and vituperative attacks on [America] ... were dishonorable and dishonest. And the willful blindness to the reality of the Communist enemy was a grave moral lapse" (54).

3: The Bloodbath

"To keep hope alive one must, in spite of all mistakes, horrors, and crimes, recognize the obvious superiority of the socialist camp"
- Jean Paul Sartre

"There was a sequel to the Vietnam War. For 3 years and 8 months, beginning in April 1975, when the Communist Khmer Rouge movement defeated the forces of Marshall Lon Nol, the little nation of Cambodia was plunged into hell" (55).

- The American Left Responds

Liberals tried to pin the blame on America and especially Nixon.

- Ugly America

4: The Mother of All Communists: American Liberals and Soviet Russia

Having rejected anti-communism, post-Vietnam liberals (incl. George Kennan) suggested isolationism.

- Anti-Anticommunism

"Right-wing isolationists of the 1930s had wished to keep America out of foreign entanglements on the grounds that we were too good for the world. Post-Vietnam liberal isolationists saw the world as too good for us" (81). As many nations fell to communist coups d'etat, and "despite the clear evidence of history that Communists had never won a free election, liberals persisted in the argument that they represented the popular will and took communist regimes at their word when they claimed to be pursuing the 'people's' interests" (82). Liberals seemed to think this represented the natural course of history. After the fall of the USSR, even many Soviet officials admitted that Reagan had precipitated it, but liberals clung to the notion that nobody had "won," least of all Reagan.

- First Impressions

NYT reporter Walter Duranty's lies about Stalin. Malcolm Muggeridge tried to report truth, but wasn't believed.

- Post-Vietnam Adjustments

- The Soviet Union According to Andrew Young

- Those Secretly Liberal Soviet Bosses

5: Fear and Trembling

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
- Robert Frost

While liberals abandoned anticommunism during the Vietnam War, "they became even more hostile to the enterprise as their fear [and trembling] of nuclear war grew in intensity during the 1970s and 1980s" (119). Whereas liberals had downplayed the idea of 'Cold War' (to them meaning Eisenhower-Kennedy years) in favor of 'detente,' 'peaceful coexistence,' and above all arms control (remember my GH wedding shower conversation w/J on his belief in 'the Christian duty to unilaterally disarm'!?), Reagan was determined to fight and win it. Tho many liberals now claim Reagan's views, at the time liberals were infuriated by them, considering them 'dangerous and foolish' (121).

- KAL 007 and the Nature of the Regime

She recounts the Aug 1983 Soviet shootdown of KAL 007 (k. 269 passengers) and the furor (huge European protests) over NATO deployment of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe (in response [requested by Germany, Britain, other NATO allies] to Soviet SS-20s, emboldened by Carter passivity). Later, Reagan's proposed MX missile enraged liberals.

- About That Arms Race

Charen says there wasn't really an 'arms race' as liberals loved to characterize it, since before Reagan, the US weakened and the Soviets strengthened. The Dems' policy seemed to be 'Be weak, but just don't talk about it' (135).

- The Churches Weigh In [on the wrong side]

The RCC NCCB and mainline Protestants (NCC) joined liberals in "antipathy to nuclear weapons and American military strength" (137) and insisted on 'no first use,' citing 'just war' concerns. A popular leftist slogan was 'better red than dead' (Michael Novak noted that history shows those who chose former often don't avoid latter 139).

- The Establishment Left

"They had, in short, a total loss of will [nerve] for the confrontation with Communism [Evil]" (145).

- The Fear Mongers

Liberals made a hero of 10yo Samantha Smith, "preferring to call self-delusion and childishness [cute in kids, not in adults] 'idealism' ... As it turned out, those who understood the Soviets best were the very 'hardliners' scorned by liberals ... It wasn't that both nations, essentially benevolent [and morally equivalent], mistrusted one another due to ... some sort of mad and inexplicable race to destruction. Rather, the Soviets were aggressive and predatory, and the US (along with its allies) sought to thwart it ... Innocence is a precious quality in children. It is less appealing in adults. It is particularly unappealing when it is put in the service, whether intentionally or not, of a deeply cynical and criminal enterprise like the Soviet Union" (149-50).

- Weapons and the Minds Behind Them

"The true cause of WWI [Patrick Glynn argues in his book Closing Pandora's Box, and contra Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August that it resulted from an arms race between Germany and Britain] was Imperial Germany's drive for European dominance" (153). Liberals picked up this [false] old idea that weapons cause wars. The Left, sympathizing with the USSR (and therefore not seeing a war as worth it), but realizing most Americans don't share that view, attempted to 'up the ante' by claiming [highly speculatively, very unlikely] that nuclear war would annihilate the planet (Sagan, ...) and destroy ALL life!

- The Strategic Defense Initiative

Reagan's SDI ended up working rather well, tho it faced withering criticism.

6: Each New Communist is Different

- Communism with Sex Appeal [Fidel Castro and Che Guevara]

Charon spends many pages examining Cuba, Castro, Che Guevara; "his legend enhanced by his early death in 1967, added movie star good looks to the Communist movement - a quality not in large supply among revolutionaries before then ... a cruel fanatic. After Castro made him a commander of a resistance unit, he gained a reputation for harshness ... After the revolution's success, Che became state prosecutor ... In his will, he praised the 'extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless, and cold killing machines'" (175-6).

- Grenada: Rorschach Test

"In the late 1970s, when the US was still febrile with post-Vietnam syndrome, revolutionaries in Central America and the Caribbean pushed their advantage" (187).

"Marxist Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement unseated Eric Gairy in a 1979 coup d'etat. Grenada immediately smiled in the direction of the USSR, Cuba, Libya, and N Korea ... In Oct 1983, competitors within NJM murdered Bishop and the island was plunged into chaos ... The presence of about 1000 Americans in Grenada, including 700 medical students, alarmed the American govt. Responding to an urgent request from 6 Caribben nations - Jamaica, Barbados, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, and Antigua - the Reagan admin launched Operation Urgent Fury ... a success" (188). She then describes leftist backlash (5pp).

- El Salvador: "Death Squads" and Democracy

Marxist guerrilla army FMLN stepped up its war against the noncommunist govt (187). Although liberals cast the FMLN 'good guys' (excesses excused) v. govt 'right-wing death squads,' there was violence on both sides and Reagan's asst. SoS Elliott Abrams "successfully pressured the Salvadorans to police their ranks" (194). US leftist groups sprang up to declare "that only a revolution could save the country. Hundreds of churches offered 'sanctuary' to Salvadorans who fled to America ... The movement did not offer sanctuary to Nicaraguans fleeing the Sandinistas" (194). Liberals were driven by their rage against Reagan's anticommunism and also their "near universal assumption ... that the existence of a Communist insurgency was evidence of the desperation and poverty of the people ... Yet never in history was a Communist regime voted into office [socialists have] ... the left rarely if ever argued that the answer to poverty and misery was free enterprise, free trade, and political pluralism ... [the insisted the] insurgency could not be defeated until the underlying conditions [i.e. root causes] - poverty, illiteracy, hopelessness - were cured" (195-6). Liberals "presented the issue as a contest between peace and war rather than choosing sides between communists and noncommunists [freedom]" (197). They saw FMLN as "homegrown democratic revolution[aries]" (198), tho they were neither homegrown nor democratic. Liberals claimed Reagan's assertiveness would make it more likely US troops would need to be sent. In fact the opposite was true; by empowering local freedom fighters we avoided the need to send US troops (which would have been required had the Soviets succeeded).

Many in the RCC favored the FMLN; "One of the most notorious communist-sympathizing religious groups was the Catholic Maryknoll order [to which Tip O'Neill's aunt belonged, bending his ear], which enthusiastically endorsed liberation theology and even communism. In one of its publications, Maryknoll declared: For any Christian to claim to be anti-Communist, without a doubt constitutes the greatest scandal of our century ... For Jesus, whether conservatives like it or not, was in fact a communist ... Jesus explicitly approves and defends the use of violence ..." (!? 201).

It was Jeane Kirkpatrick at the July 1984 GOP Convention who coined the phrase "blame America first" for the attitude of liberals. Eventually Reagan's policy of pushing for democratic reforms and countering the communist insurgency with military force was successful; In 1984, Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte was elected President there, after which "El Salvador retreated from the headlines. But its place in the heated debate over the Cold War was immediately taken by Nicaragua" (204).

- Nicaragua: Unpack the Cliches

Assisted by Castro, the Sandinistas seized power by joining other opposition groups to oust the dictator (and "smarmy despot" 187) Anastasio Samoza. "In an almost eerie repetition of its early stupidity about the Khmer Rouge, the NYT advised its readers that the FSLN was a 'broadbased organization that was founded in 1962 and now includes Roman Catholic youths, young businessmen, peasants, priests, and leftist students'" (204). After the Sandanistas seized power, President Carter gave them "more aid than any other nation provided ... and more than the US had contributed to Somoza in the previous 4 yrs" (205). They were openly aided by Cuba and the USSR and were clearly guided by Marxist ideology. "It is difficult to understand how American liberals, having watched Communist regimes repeat the same pattern again and again for 60 yrs, could have failed to anticipate that the Sandinistas, once in power, would squeeze out all opposition, shut down the free press, and militarize the country. Yet time after time, liberals would follow their own well-worn pattern: first deny that the revolutionaries were Communists [merely 'agrarian reformers']; second, assert that the no longer deniable repression was a response to US actions; and third, laud the accomplishments of the revolution while offering perfunctory criticism (if that) of the human rights situation" (206). "Like all other Communist regimes before it, the Sandinistas also produced the one, most reliable product of communism - refugees" (212, about 1 in 10 Nicaraguans fled). "Shirley Christian, one of the few reporters to remain unseduced, wrote ... 'Reporters ... saw the Sandinistas through a romantic haze ... Probably not since [the Spanish Civil War] has there been a more open love affair between the foreign press and one of the belligerents in a civil war'" (215). Due to the growing 'Contra' army (only initially seeded by the CIA), economic collapse (30% unemployment, 34K% inflation), pressure from neighboring nations, and the weakening Soviet Empire, the Sandanistas were forced to hold elections 25 Feb 1990 (226). "Violetta Chamorro, the principal opposition candidate, editor of La Prensa newspaper, won a resounding victory with 55% of the vote" (227, official figure, likely much higher). "Of the 3 nations that so preoccupied the US during the 1980s ... all are now free and democratic. Had liberal policies prevailed, it is questionable whether any would be free today. And liberals would still be urging that the problem is poverty (now that Central America is no longer a Cold War hot spot, liberals seem to have forgotten about poverty there). The outcome in Latin America contradicted every favored liberal myth - that the Sandanistas were basically popular, that the guerrillas in El Salvador represented the 'tide of history,' that no progress toward peace was possible while the underlying causes [e.g. poverty] went unaddressed - and yet liberals have soldiered on as oblivious to this rebuke as they were to the Vietnamese boat people and the Cambodian genocide. Not only has there been no reevaluation ... there has been an effort to punish those who were proved right" (227-8).

7: Post-Communist Blues

"There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest of men"
- Lord Acton

Charen notes how, even as the capitalist tide washes over them and the world, liberals still wax nostalgic about communism, complaining of lost jobs and security in the face of capitalist 'greed' (creative destruction, rationalization, efficiency). "It seemed to gall many American reporters that the peoples of Eastern Europe were so desperate to be rid of a system that liberals considered to be, in many important respects, superior to the US" (233).

- The Domestic Cold War Never Ended [i.e. the Elian Gonzalez affair]

- The Sep 11 Aftermath: Still Blaming America First

"Katha Pollitt demonstrated the reliable theme of America-loathing that informs much leftist thinking" (245). "Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine (and reputedly one of Hillary Clinton's favorite spiritual thinkers) ... takes it as an article of faith that all suffering everywhere is somehow America's fault - even if only because we don't feel anguished enough about it" (249-50). Liberals are "so marinated in cynicism about their own country that they find it difficult to discern evil in anyone else" (256). These elites, unlike normal Americans, can't seem to admit any good in America (they regard any effort to do so as 'Puritan' and self-righteous, i.e. they're riddled w/guilt, hmmm, probably related to their largely non-Christian condition!).

Epilogue

"Liberals failed one of the 2 great moral tests of the 20C [i.e. communism, they passed nazism, and] they still do not know they failed and have not grappled with the implications of that failure. The challenges posed by the 2 totalitarian systems of the 20C were comprehensive. They forced Americans to respond politically, culturally, economically, and above all morally. Liberals had no difficulty meeting the challenge of fascism. They found its barbarism despicable and said so. They feared its aggression. And they found its ideas disgusting. Even at the cost of 484,375 Americans (those who lost their lives in WWII), they were prepared to make whatever sacrifices were required to thwart and defeat that assault on world peace and simple decency. Antifascism came as naturally to liberals as breathing - which is as it should be. The Nazis, in the more than half century since their defeat, have become synonymous with evil in our intellectual and cultural life - again, just as it should be. And yet the Communists, whose crimes were nearly comparable (and the debate about which was worse is shabby and irrelevant), have never even entered the evil category for liberals. Quick: try to think of a single movie about the horrors of Stalinism. This is not a failure of imagination. This is a moral meltdown. Time and again throughout the latter part of the Cold War, liberals chose a morally perverse pose. They would seek to find any suspect motive or impure act on the part of the US rather than confront the staggering scale of destruction and misery being wrought by our adversaries [completely lost their nerve, courage]" (261). Incredibly, liberals haven't lost prestige or credibility for their appalling judgment (as Charles Lindbergh did for his nazi sympathy). In the face of Islamofascism (which hates things liberals love: female emancipation, sexual license, religious tolerance), most liberals still choose to blame America first, providing "evidence that the rotten kernel of their appeasement and weakness throughout the second half of the Cold War [and continuing to this day] was [and is] America-hatred. To explain the phenomenon would require a separate book - but in light of the sanguinary history of the world and the shining place America deserves on any list of humanitarian and civilized nations - it is a grotesque injustice as well as a sign of moral delinquency" (260-3).

Other UIs: Robert Heilbroner, E L Doctorow, Tom Wicker, Frances Fitzgerald, Strobe Talbott, Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Bill Bradley, Lord Carrington, Henry Steele Commager, Hendrik Hertzberg, Mary McGrory, Anthony Lewis, Seweryn Bialer, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, Walter Duranty, Lincoln Steffens, William Z. Foster (1932 Communist Pres. cand. 103K votes!), Lillian Hellman [Stalinist], Owen Lattimore, Corliss and Margaret Lamont, I F Stone, PM Neville 'peace in our time' Chamberlain, [Bernard?] Baruch-[?]Lilienthal plan, Harry Dexter White [spy], Alger Hiss [spy], Donald Hiss [spy], Harry Hopkins (likely spy, FDR's 'most trusted advisor' 20), Bertrand Russell, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen, Angela Davis, Nicholas von Hoffman, Sydney Hook (not to be confused w/anticommunist leftist Sidney Hook, also John Dewey, Lionel Trilling, and Committee for Cultural Freedom), Ted Sorensen, Oliver Stone, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Stokely Carmichael, Mark Rudd, LeRoi Jones, Peter Arnett, Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, George McGovern, Susan Sontag, Ramsay Clark, William Sloane Coffin Jr, Mary McCarthy, Jonathan Schell (author: The Fate of the Earth), Ron Dellums D-CA, Al Hubbard, Tom Downey, Dick Gregory, Phil Ochs, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Donald Sutherland, John Kerry, Tom Hayden, Richard Barnet, Marcus Raskin, Harrison Salisbury, Noam Chomsky, Paul Cleary, Linda Ellerbee, Joan Baez, the Berrigan brothers, Pete Seeger, Bob Carr, Chris Dodd D-CT, Sydney Schanberg, Claiborne Pell D-RI, David Puttnam (director: The Killing Fields), William Shawcross (author: 1979 Side-Show), Richard Dudman, David Frost, Richard Cohen, Richard Gott (brit, Soviet spy), George Bernard Shaw, Cyrus Vance, James Reston, John Kenneth Galbraith, Frank Church, Ronald Steel, George Kennan (81, switched sides to 'anti-Cold War' in 70s), ? Brzezinski, Paul Warnke, Michael Dukakis, Jerry Hough, Walter Rodgers, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Edmund Wilson, H G Wells, Julian Huxley, VP Henry Wallace, Dashiell Hammett, Harry Ward (ACLU chairman), Max Lerner (and 400 others who signed 'a full-throated defense of Stalinism' in the Nation 'just [10 days] before the announcement of the Hitler-Stalin pact that unleashed' WWII), Larry King, Stephen Cohen (Princeton prof and fave 80s MLNH guest), Upton Sinclair, US Ambassador to USSR Joseph Davies, Paul Robeson, Armand Hammer (and his father), Andrew Young, Lester Thurow, W E B DuBois, John F Burns, Ted Turner, Stuart Loory, Bruce Morton, Richard Threlkeld, Dusko Doder, Gail Sheehy, NBC Bob Abernethy, Tip O'Neill, Sydney Blumenthal, Alan Cranston D-CA, Paul Tsongas, Arlo Guthrie, Adm Gene La Rocque (dovish, anti-defense spending, PBS regular), Patricia Schroeder D-CO, George Crockett D-MI, Ed Markey D-MA, Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro (84 cand), Les AuCoin D-WI, Gary Hart D-CO, McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, Natl Conf of Cath Bishops, mainline Protestants (NCC), Episcopal Bishops, American Luthurans, American Baptists, conservative and reform Jews, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell (of NCC), Bishop James Armstrong (Pres. of NCC), "a grab bag of old leftists, Communists, ad hoc groups, aging hippies, earnest housewives, young professionals [yuppies], as well as a good portion of the liberal opinion makers in the nation" (141), Foundations (Rockefeller, Stern, Ploughshares, New World [member: Hillary R C]), Jesse Jackson, artist Robert Morris, Harry Belafonte, Coleen Dewhurst, Jules Feiffer, Meryl Streep, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Blake, many other celebs, Ed Asner, Muhammad Ali, Dr. Helen Caldicott (Physicians for Social Resp.), Bill Moyers, Phil Donahue, Vladimir Pozner, Ellen Goodman, Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, William Colby (frmr CIA chief), Thomas J Watson Jr (IBM), Morton H Halperin (ACLU), Mark O Hatfield R-OR (pro-nuclear freeze), Ted Koppel, Michael R Gordon, Phillip Geyelin, Dr. Wolfgang Panofsky of Stanford, Dr. Victor Weisskopf of MIT, Thomas Friedman (SDI critic, 'will make war more likely'), Robert Scheer, C Wright Mills, Norman Mailer, Jonathan Kozol, Jean-Paul Sartre, Todd Gitlin, David Dellinger, Saul Landau, Julius Lester, Barry Reckord, Suzanne Ross, United Methodist Rev. Russell Dilley, Bryant Gumbel, Don Podesta, Cathy Booth, Kathleen Sullivan, Cynthia McFadden, Michelle Singletary, Charles Rangel D-NY, Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur), Maxine Waters D-CA, Carl Levin D-MI, Ted Weiss D-NY, Barbara Boxer D-CA, Robert Torricelli D-NJ, Richard Cohen, Pete Stark D-CA, Pat Leahy D-VT (forced to resign Sen Intel Cmte 1986 after leaking docs), Robert Kaiser, John Conyers D-MI, Julian Dixon D-IL, Mervyn Dymally D-CA, Henry Gonzalez D-TX, Mickey Leland D-TX, Parren Mitchell D-MD, Carlottia Scott (Dellums aide), Barbara Lee (only rep to vote against military 9/11 response), Barbara Milulski D-MD, Barney Frank D-MA, David Bonior D-MI, Mary Rose Oakar D-OH, Steven Solarz D-NY, George Brown D-CA, Jerry Studds D-MA, United Presbyt, Church of Brethren, Unitarians (supp. lawsuit of Reagan over El Salvador), George Miller D-CA, Warren Christopher, Karen de Young, Robert Garcia D-NY, Byron Dorgan D-ND, Tom Harkin D-IA, Prof. Stanley Hoffman of Harvard, Abraham Blumberg, Robert Coles, Henry Fairlie, Vint Lawrence, R W B Lewis, Mark Crispin Miller, Robert B Reich, Richard Strout, Anne Tyler, Michael Walzer, C Vann Woodward, Richard Falk, Benjamin Spock, Jessica Mitford, aka the 'Sandalistas' ;), James C Harrington (TX CLU), Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Betty Friedan, Abbie Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Susan Anspach, Jackson Browne, Mike Farrell (MASH?), Diane Ladd, Bianca Jagger (frmr wife of Mick), Michael Harrington, Ruth Harris, Matthew Martinez D-CA, Michael Barnes D-MD, Jim Wright D-TX, Bill Alexander D-AR, Matthew McHugh D-NY, Edward Boland D-MA, David Obey D-WI, Lee Hamilton D-IN, Graham Greene, Guenther Grass, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Julio Cortazar, William Styron, Heinrich Boell, Charles Schumer D-NY, Clark Clifford (replaced Robert MacNamara), Edmund Muskie, liberal Republican Elliott Richardson, Vic Fazio D-CA, Ed Rabel, NPR's Steve Inskeep, Bill Goodfellow, Wayne Smith, Dessima Williams, ABC's Jerry King, CBS' Bert Quint, CBS' Connie Chung, Barbara Walters, Peter Van Sant, CBS Bob Simon, ABC Mike Lee, ABC Jim Butterman, CNN Steve Hurst, USNWR, LA Times, Robin Wright, ABC Richard Gizbert, NBC John Chancellor, CBS Byron Pitts, Newsweek Evan Thomas, Joseph Contreras, Time' Tim Padgett, Eleanor Clift, Katha Pollitt, Barbara Kingsolver, Prof Edward Said, Vivian Gornick, Sean Wilentz, Joel Rogers, Michael Lerner, Leon Fuerth, David Westin, Ted Rall, Michael Moore, Bill Maher, Richard Gere, David P Barash, Robin Morgan, Prof Eric Foner (historian and lifelong leftist).

Notable Dem. dissenters: Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson D-WA, Les Aspin D-WI, Michael Kinsley, Howard Metzenbaum D-OH, Lane Kirkland AFL-CIO, Martin Peretz (New Republic editor).

Mona Charen (d/l)

In Atlantic Monthly (July/August 2004), Robert Conquest says "The most remarkable thing about the Soviet phenomenon ... was not its complete control over [and degradation of] the minds of Soviet citizens but its extraordinarily successful effort to instill its falsifications in the minds of many abroad, who were under no compulsion to accept them ... a full view of Stalinism can hardly fail to note the worldwide propagation of its ideology and myths ... communism ... was seen as a form of 'progressive' [reform] ... of the market, of exploitation ... [whereas] the Holocaust stood clearly as a monstrosity from the start ... the communist record was more blurred ... retain[ing] remnants of its initial luster (something that [nazism] never enjoyed outside Germany) ... There will probably always be an alienated intelligentsia, especially in tolerant, democratic societies. But the extent to which this stratum was penetrated, misled about reality, and to some degree fanaticized by Moscow's manipulations is striking. William James wrote that philosophical opinion is largely a matter of temperament. This applies to political and other types of opinion as well. The sort of temperament we have seen during the 20C, combining at its worst a blend of zealotry and unteachability, can be found in earlier eras. It will doubtless always be lying in wait for us. Knowledge of its recent embodiments, although useful, will not eradicate it. The evil will, alas, simply ake new forms" (167-8).

George Weigel (FT Apr 2005 p12 in a "just war" exchange): "Then there is the sad and, to my mind, unmistakable fact that people who have adopted the co-called 'presumption against war' [i.e. pacifist stalking horse] tend to get things wrong, time and again: as the US bishops got the dynamics of the Cold War wrong in their 1983 pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace"; as most religious leaders and intellectuals got it wrong in predicting a Middle East Armageddon in the first Gulf War and the recent Iraq War. When a moral lens constantly yields a distorted view of reality, then, I submit, something is wrong with is prismation."

Other books by Mona Charen:
- Do-Gooders (see br-dg)

The phrase 'blame America first' was coined by Jeane Kirkpatrick (70).

Here's Human Events' list of the "52 Most Dangerous Liberals in America," 1rst edition, 2004 election: (borrow from J&L)

2nd edition, 2006 election, Fall 2005: Jokers: Howard Dean and Jesse Jackson, 1S Hillary Clinton, 1H George Soros, 1C Sen. Chuck Schumer D-NY, 1D Sen. Ted Kennedy D-MA, KS Bill Clinton, KH moveon.org, KC Michael Moore, KD Sen. Harry Reid D-NV, QS Sen. Dick Durbin D-IL, QH Rep. Nancy Pelosi D-CA, QC The 5 liberal Supremes (Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens), QD Sen. Joe Biden D-DE, JS Sen. Chris Dodd D-CT, JH NYT, JC Sen. Barbara Boxer D-CA, JD Jimmy Carter, 10S Sen. Arlen Specter R-PA, 10H Sean Penn, 10C Harold Ickes, 10D Sen. Pat Leahy D-VT, 9S Jon Stewart, 9H Jane Fonda, 9C Sen. Dianne Feinstein D-CA, 9D AARP, 8S Sen. Robert Byrd D-WV, 8H Rep. Henry Waxman D-CA, 8C Al Franken, 8D Arianna Huffington, 7S Bill Maher, 7H Katie Couric, 7C Rep. Charles Rangel D-NY, 7D Laurie David, 6S James Carville, 6H Rep. Bernie Sanders I-VT, 6C Peter Lewis (CEO Progressive Ins., favors drug legalization, hmmm I agree w/him!), 6D Maureen Dowd, 5S IRS, 5H NARAL, 5C Barbra Steisand, 5D Rev. Al Sharpton, 4S Gloria Steinem, 4H Sen. Jon Corzine D-NY (now NJ Gov.), 4C Sen. Carl Levin D-MI, 4D Tina Fey (SNL), 3S David Brock, 3H Paul Krugman, 3C Eliot Spitzer, 3D ACLU, 2S Alan Colmes, 2H Norman Lear, 2C Kerry-Edwards, 2D Al Gore

Perhaps this would be a good place to include a review of the Liberty article awhile back severely criticizing Robert MacNamara's (mis)management of the Vietnam War.