Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General "Reagan Principles"

That's interesting, Senator. I often learn from reading your posts what I might not otherwise find out. I thought McCarthy claimed specifically to have a list of 200 members of the Communist Party who worked for the Department of State, not a more general claim that there were some undetermined number of Communists working in some unnamed branches of government.

But I had never heard of the Venona Papers. Can you describe what it says in the Venona Papers that indicates who these individuals were working for, and that the goal of the people whose names appear there was "communist America"?

I agree with you there, Senator. There was a great shift in the Democratic Party away from the ideology of the Dixiecrats and toward the ideals that would soon be embodied in LBJ's "Great Society".

Since the KGB sent a lot of its messages to its agents in code and with alias it hard to determine exactly who the communist spies were. With carefule research the identities of many of them have been determined. What was the goal of the USSR? A communist world. Any reading of the history of the USSR will show that was the USSR's goal.

As for Sen. McCarthy's claim of the number of communists in our government it flucuated depending on how much the S.O.B. wanted to frighten his audience, how sober he was and how much press he wanted to get. He often lied about the number of communists in our government. What he did NOT lie about was the fact there was communists in our government.

OK I can only take so much of this distortion of reality and then I have to speak up.

Many loyal Americans took up with the Communist cause, often not the party itself, but its ideas during the 1930's and some the 1940's. Those were difficult economic times and many felt that our national and state governments were not doing what was needed to help people survive the times. Some saw it as an opportunity to bring communist ideas into government and the society as a whole.

Very few among them were intent on overthrowing the government, except through the ballot box. The notion that the government was infested with traitors is simply a wild overstatement and except for the witch hunts of McCarthy and others, most of these people would have simply tilted the Democratic Party more to the left and dropped the Communist trappings.

The USSR talked big about dominating the world and converting all coutnries to Communism. By far the biggest motivator of Soviet era actions was the protection of their own country from attack once again by Germany. As the US got more powerful and dominant, part of that strategy shifted to defending against the US.

Now, the US has also always spouted off about converting the world to our version of captilaism. We have had spies in every part of the world and even non-spies who at one time thought communism was the answer to all problems. I lived through the era as well and when I finally got to speak to people who knew more than the press reported, was really shocked at how minisucle the domestic threat was.

The Cold War was a classic instance of two gorillas who couldn't stop threatening each other until one of them just finally went bankrupt. Was all that necessary? From what I have read definitely not. As so often has happened, big power/money interests on both sides saw much to gain by the Cold War and they kept the fires going.

And yet the public at large buys into it every time. I have lost all hope of it ever being different.

And this is a bad thing because....? These were mostly people that were thinking a bit outside the box, at any given time there might be all sorts of thoughts going on inside and outside of our government. Thoughts, Ideas, religions and philosophies, political beliefs and plans to overthrow the government and establish the Utopia we all so deserve. WE are mostly free to have these thoughts and oppinions without being blacklisted because we do not agree with the status quo.

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that there were Soviet Spies in America! AND what is worse, they were trying to recruit Americans to help them!!! No god-fearing, red(white and blue)-blooded American would allow such a travesty, and we must ROOT THEM OUT, and destroy them! Out of MILLIONS of Americans, surely we can find a dozen or so who might agree with us?!

I certainly hope that we did not sink to such despicable tactics.

Some friends and I, in the late 60s, had a little picnic on McCarthy's grave site, as we happened to be passing though Appleton Wi. on a road trip, and it seemed a good idea at the time.

A fun time was had by all and appropriate "refreshments" were served...

Ya wouldnt want to drink in front of, or over, a hard core drunk who died of his hard drinking, but very traditional liver disease.

TAT

Ah. Well. That should come as no surprise. It kind of reminds me, you know, of our current situation in Iraq, having been brought about by the fluctuation in the number and intensity of ties between Saddam and the Terrists, and the fluctuations in the stockpiles of WMD's that Saddam had. I mean, they did find a test tube in the back of someone's refrigerator, and they did come across a missile of some sort with some spent sarin agents in it. So how many lives were saved again by the US invasion of Iraq?

How was Communism thwarted by Reagan's "Freedom Fighters" in Nicaragua?

How was America saved by castigating Charlie Chaplin?

It's all pieces of the same puzzle, and when I put them together, the McCarthy piece, the Reagan piece, the Bush piece, what I see is a picture of the glorious burning down of the barn to get rid of the rat, all for the benefit of the people who own the fire company.

The only thing that temporarily derailed this "Right"ous machine was the Clinton Aberration with help from Perot, and that simply had to be dealt with by what now everybody recognizes as the great right wing conspiracy...



We can only hope that America has finally seen the present GOP for what it has become and permanently remove if for the good of what is left of true Americana. How any rational principled person can still support it is beyond belief.

TAT

The distortion of reality is to claim that the threat of communism was miniscule. To parphrase a comment of FDR; If you see a rattlesnake nest by your home do you wait for it to grow or do you destroy it?