Welcome to our death spiral.
I am sorry to report that my occasional series defending the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy now turns to John Solomon, one of the precious few journalists with the grit and professionalism to be on the trail of Mueller-gate, Comey-gate, Rosenstein-gate, Uranium-gate, and the rest.
Solomon writes: “When I was an undergraduate student at Marquette University, I got an invaluable assignment: Write a thesis about someone who employed illogical arguments but still caused public impact.
“History was littered with global despots who fit the bill, but I chose someone closer to home: former Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose infamous pursuit of communists gave us ‘McCarthyism,’ one of the evil terms of American politics.”
Strong word: “evil.” Solomon goes on to set forth his bona fides.
“I read his speeches, listened to audiotapes, read his Senate reports, studied his Senate censure, and talked with political leaders who witnessed his tactics firsthand.”
Why, he’s a McCarthy expert! But who are these “political leaders?” Solomon mentions just one.
“One of those was professor George Reedy, a gracious educator and extraordinary witness to history who saw McCarthy’s campaign up close, as a reporter and then as a press aide to Lyndon B. Johnson.”
We are all victims of “media bias.” Whether he knows it, Solomon has just telegraphed his own: McCarthyism is “evil” but LBJ’s George Reedy is “gracious” and “extraordinary.”
For about 15 years, Reedy served by LBJ’s side, joining him in 1951 because, he said, LBJ was going to become president. His tenure coincided with “the McCarthy Era” (1950—1954), which ended in McCarthy’s censure—that hang-the-crepe day for anti-communist America, but that’s another story. In an interview, Reedy called LBJ “all-important” to the McCarthy censure, asserting he “basically devised the strategy.”
Solomon’s “educator” and “witness” was himself—as a senior LBJ staffer —an anti-McCarthy partisan.
“‘[LBJ] never once tried to find out what had made me a socialist or what had led me to renounce Marxism or what life was like on the streets of Chicago,’ Reedy wrote. ‘In fact, the only time he ever mentioned my background was in a telephone conversation with a member of the House of Representatives who also had a former socialist working for him.’”
How “former” were these “former socialists” in the House, anyway? Not so much, according to LBJ.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is so late to this party.
Solomon continued: “Reedy told me that what marveled him most was McCarthy’s ability to ask questions or make statements insinuating something evil about a person he was questioning without formally lodging an allegation. In fact, he said, McCarthy might add a qualification to his question, suggesting that wasn’t making an accusation—before implying that very accusation.”Hyman, by the way, is a textbook example of what journalist and author M. Stanton Evans called “Fifth Amendment pleaders.”
Solomon continues: “McCarthy’s questions whipped up hysteria that marked those he questioned as ‘guilty as charged’ without a shred of evidence.”
I'll let the “whipped up hysteria” pass. It’s that “without a shred of evidence” that sticks out.
These confirmed Soviet agents are Solomon Adler, Cedric Belfrage, T.A. Bisson, V. Frank Coe, Lauchlin Currie, Harold Glasser, David Karr, Mary Jane Keeney, Leonard Mins, and Franz Neumann.
Oblivious, we may assume, Solomon continues: “Those lessons had long faded into the recesses of my memory, until Thursday. That’s when a question-and-answer exchange involving Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) resurrected them.”
How can the analysis that follows stand on what is, we might say, Fake History?
It can’t.
If Solomon reads this, I hope he decides to study the record and determine whether a correction is in order. I hope he decides that 61 years of posthumous slander of one of our most courageous patriots is enough.
