Matters of Treason: Reply to Roger Clegg
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/horowitz/2001/dh06-06-01p.htm
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com
IN HIS REVIEW of Ronald Radosh's important new book, Commies, Roger Clegg
raises a provocative question: Are conservatives too forgiving of the
crimes committed by the left against America, specifically the crime of
treason? Here are some ways to think about an answer.
It is certainly the case that the "progressive" left, which has never
really looked back with second thoughts about its radical commitments,
which is still dedicated to its small "c" communist agendas, which still
defends its old subversive heroes, is an anti-American left that is ready
to aid and abet virtually any enemy of the United States, including
apparently Saddam Hussein. It is a near certainty that thousands of
so-called new leftists actively worked with the intelligence agencies of
Communist governments whose objectives were to weaken, injure and if
possible destroy the United States. The most obvious cases of this kind of
treason were the radio broadcasts from Hanoi of Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden and
others accusing America of war crimes and urging American troops to defect
during the Vietnam conflict, and the collusion with Cuban intelligence
operatives during the 1980s in the setting up of "solidarity committees"
as part of Castro's plan to destabilize and overthrow central American
governments. At one point, a Salvadoran operative working for Cuban
intelligence actually set up shop in the congressional offices of Ron
Dellums, with the conniving of the Congressman himself.
Roger Clegg is right that these and other crimes should not be regarded
lightly, and that a double-standard governs attitudes towards former Nazis
and neo-Nazis on the one hand and former Communists and neo-Communists
among whom I would include Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and Carlottia Scott,
the current political issues director of the Democratic Party. This
nation's democracy would be in much healthier shape (and I would probably
retire from political activity) if there was no such double standard and
if all Americans, and conservatives in particular, took the assaults on
this nation's institutions and ideals more seriously than they do.
Where I differ with Clegg is that his interrogation of this question is
directed almost exclusively at the left. He notes that conservatives are
forgiving, and properly so since it is a conservative insight that we are
all sinners, and it is pragmatically wise to "encourage people to break
with a wrong-headed past." The conservative movement, for its part, has
benefited tremendously from its generosity to ex-Communists and
ex-radicals. The shaping intellectual forces of the magazine in which
Clegg makes his observations were recruited from the ranks of the
Communist movement by its founder William. F. Buckley. I, myself, am
deeply grateful to the conservative movement for the warmth with which
they have accepted an ex-radical like myself, and for the generosity of
their support despite what I did for my attempts to repay my country
for the damage I was responsible for.
That said, the problem that Clegg overlooks, and the problem that has
continued to puzzle me, has been the failure of nerve by those who love
this country, and who should be leading the efforts to defend it, in
fighting the left. If leftists do not take seriously their acts of
treason, it is partly because nobody else does either. When is the last
time the United States government executed a spy? Aldrich Ames to name
only one convicted traitor among many not only worked for the enemy, he
caused the death of Americans the government has identified. If the United
States Government doesn't regard spying and murder as such a big deal, why
should anyone else?
Turning to the Fonda problem, we encounter the same message. Fonda
committed treason during the Nixon and Ford Administrations but was never
prosecuted. Perhaps that is because the United States never declared
itself at war. The decision of Lyndon Johnson to put Americans in harm's
way without a formal declaration of war and the fact that this provoked
no great congressional revolt probably tells us more about the nature of
the problem that Roger Clegg has raised than anything else. It is just
part of a syndrome.
Why weren't the student radicals who occupied university buildings in the
1960s (and who then went on to run the universities themselves) expelled
or jailed? Why was Bernadine Dohrn, a terrorist in the Seventies and now a
prominent and unrepentant figure high up in the American Bar Association
never prosecuted for her crimes? Why did Republicans not protest (or even
notice) the appointment of Carlottia Scott, mistress of the Marxist
dictator of Grenada and colluder in his anti-American schemes? How was
Defense Secretary William Cohen able to give Ron Dellums the highest medal
the Pentagon can bestow on a civilian without a peep of protest from the
right? How come the present Republican Justice Department has not launched
an investigation of the collusion between the Clinton Administration, the
Democratic Party and the Chinese Communist dictatorship in transferring
previously protected military technologies to America's number one
potential adversary?
These are the questions that conservatives should be asking.
I would like to end this note with a personal request to my conservative
comrades-in-arms. When you go into your next battle with our opponents,
would you please stop referring to leftists who despise America, who have
waged a forty-year war against its foundations, whose agendas are a
socialist and even fascist utopia (redistribution by racial preferences)
as "liberals." These are not liberals. They are leftists. The only thing
they are liberal about is hard drugs and sex. In every other respect, they
want to control your lives. Their traditions are of the left, their ideas
are of the left, their agendas are of the left. You can't really complain
about the double standards for the past, if you continue to apply those
double standards to the present.
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David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president
of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
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