Is it the case that liberals like Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy sided with the enemy? Of course not. They were anti-Communists, hated by the left as “cold war liberals.” And they were not alone. There were many liberals – Scoop Jackson and Jeanne Kirkpatrick among them – who were just as worthy defenders of America and prosecutors of the anti-Communist cause. Until 1963, Ronald Reagan was a pro-Kennedy, anti-Communist, cold war liberal. In Coulter’s book, Democrats (whom she inexplicably conflates with liberals) come under blistering attack for their perfidious role in the so-called “McCarthy Era.” A lot of what she says about Democrats is true, but nearly half the members of McCarthy's own Senate Subcommittee on Governmental Operations were Democrats (as were members of the later-demonized House's Un-American Activities Committee). Bobby Kennedy was a McCarthy staff lawyer. Not all Democrats were liberals and not all liberals sided with the enemy. In 1968, Tom Hayden – a radical supporter of the Communist cause in Vietnam -- organized a riot at the Democratic Party convention in order to destroy the presidential candidacy of Humbert Humphrey. The reason? Humphrey was an anti-Communist, pro-Vietnam War liberal.
By failing to draw a clear line between satirical exaggeration and historical analysis, by refusing to credit the laudable role played by patriotic, anti-Communist liberals like Truman, Kennedy and Humphrey, Coulter has compromised her case and undermined her attempt to correct a record that desperately needs correction. Liberals have – just as she charges – distorted postwar history to protect the guilty. Franklin Roosevelt did laugh off the information that Alger Hiss -- one of his top aides -- was a Soviet spy and did -- despite the warning -- elevate Hiss to be his one of his chief advisers both at Yalta and at the founding conference of the UN.
Democrats did allow the Communists to penetrate their party and their administrations in the 1930s and 1940s. The Truman Administration did dismiss Republican charges of Communist influence as partisan politics and was lackadaisical before 1947 in taking the internal Communist threat seriously. But in 1947 all that changed. Truman instituted a comprehensive loyalty program to ferret out Communist influence in government. It was the Truman Administration that prosecuted Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. In fact the decisive battles of this era took place inside liberalism. It was Walter Reuther – a socialist – who purged the Communist from the CIO and it was Truman’s anti-Communist policies that provoked the Communists into leaving the Democratic Party and forming the Progressive Party to oppose his re-election in 1948.
