The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (24 page)

The graduates were then challenged by Wallace to recognize
that their education did not necessarily teach them "how to think,"
but rather to realize their ability to determine what to think about. The rest
of his speech focused on that determination and the resulting differences in interpretation
based on one's self-awareness and worldview.

Wallace's wise "
This is Water
" words
came to mind as I watched the drama begin to unfold around conservative author
Diana West's new book,
American Betrayal: The Secret Assault
on Our Nation's Character
.  For if "water" could represent
the generally-accepted reality about whatever it is a person might determine to
think deeply about and then challenge – then not only has West, like the
"older fish" in Wallace's story, been "swimming the other
way." She also asked, "How's the water?" and proceeded to write
a book about her discoveries after she dared peer closely into the water's
depths.

West's book seems to have stirred major ripples in the
taken-for-granted narrative; ripples that have splashed the toes of the
mainstream and its recognized experts, both liberal and conservative.

From the left, the negative response was expected. 
From the right, the reaction from some influential sources could be described,
at the very least, as perplexing.

The current that West dared swim against?  Narratives
such as: McCarthy was wrong; powerful and influential communist spies and
sympathizers did not really infiltrate the highest levels of our government,
media, and entertainment; and any such spying since proven by historians had no
real influence on our strategy during World War II or in its resolution and
aftermath.

Those narratives are certainly popular, but are they true?

Numerous "anti-anti-communist" disinformation
campaigns, such as "Operation Abolition," recently revealed in
declassified archives – have been
observed
by Dr. Paul
Kengor as being so successful, that "after two decades of being wrong and
being duped by Stalin, by Stalinists, and by secret supporters of Stalin, that America's
liberals/progressives...would come together to find their demon not in the
duped liberals/progressives or pro-communists who defended Stalin as he
murdered tens of millions, but in the anti-communists who tried to tell the
truth to Americans about Stalin, his murderous state and his secret supporters
in America."

Decades later, we find that even some conservatives appear
to share not only some of the left's "demons" (using
"McCarthyite" as a derogatory label), but also its heroes (like FDR).

Blogger Robert Stacy McCain, in his ongoing attempt to
defend West and analyze the backlash against her book,
observed
that Roosevelt
has replaced Lincoln "as the sanctified figure who cannot be examined
critically" by conservatives without risk of being labeled
"pro-Nazi." McCain noted the tendency of some conservatives "to
promulgate and defend ‘noble lies' about American history, to decide who are
the heroes and who are the villains, so that in the place of actual history, we
have instead a political myth."

Have the "political myth" and anti-anti-communist
narratives become the water in which we swim?

West was
accused
of being an
"ideologue posing as historian" by noted historian and conservative
Ronald Radosh, who has been West's most vocal critic. Radosh himself was the
subject of similar accusations in a 1996
article
in
The Nation
(which I happened to run
across on a NYU-sponsored
site
dedicated to
the innocence of known spy Alger Hiss) – for having the "ability to
read into documents what he wished to believe in the first place." Another
famous historian, Dr. Ilan Pappe, is credited with the frequent assertion:
"We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are
truth seekers...There is no such thing as truth, only a collection of
narratives."

So who are we to believe - "ideologues posing as
historians," or historians confessing as ideologues?  What is
"actual history," and who are its gatekeepers?

Writer David Solway, after
chronicling
the negative
treatment of West's book by certain conservatives and the ensuing
glee
among the
left, asked:

Why would a respected conservative writer attack a fellow
conservative writer with such muscular rectitude that he opens an enormous
crack in the façade of a much beleaguered movement, inviting its adversaries to
exploit the weakness thus exposed? This is a more serious breach than
presumably allowing anti-anti communism to run amok. What is it in the
conservative sensibility that so readily turns against itself, creating rifts
and fissures where there should be a fundamental unanimity regardless of
intrinsic differences? This is not a crack, to quote Leonard Cohen, where
"the light gets in." It's a crack where the liberal/left gets in,
where the darkness gets in, where the opposition can wreak immense damage.

ritics' use of "buzz terms" like "McCarthyism
and John Bircherism," argued West in her first Breitbart installment of a
three-part
rebuttal
, "are not
being used to shed light and truth but rather to stop debate."  West
referred to David Horowitz's move to pull a favorable review of the book from
the archives of FrontPage and replace it with a highly critical one by Radosh.
Horowitz's
justification
in shutting
down the book's potential-light-shining crack before it could be further
explored:  that "the conservative movement had suffered from
conspiracy-minded demagogues in the past."

Horowitz, in his
rebuttal-to-West's-rebuttal
, declared that
"cover-ups often turn out worse for the guilty parties than the faults
they seek to hide." He went on to make it quite clear who he finds guilty,
apparently overlooking the thorough un-covering of the facts by West.

Clare Lopez, "Distinguished Senior Fellow" of the
Gatestone Institute – who could hardly be accused of lacking credentials
or seeking to hide anything – was apparently fired for her favorable
spotlight on West's book in a recent essay. McCain, reporting on the "
purge
," quipped
that readers should hurry and buy American Betrayal now, "before Ron
Radosh can burn every copy in existence."

Clarice Feldman
warned
potential
buyers that she was not intending to "attack West whose work I have not
read, but to point out the dangers of demagogic writers – everywhere on
the political spectrum and the emotional bonds their fans form with them."

"Dangers?"  To what or whom?  Historical
truth or "political myth?"  "
We
scholars
,"
"emotional" fans, naïve book-buyers who can't be trusted to judge the
water for themselves?  The whole "conservative movement?"

"Don't go there,
Nemo
,"it's not safe!"

Of course, all of us wear worldview goggles that filter our
responses to the information that we notice ("What the hell is
water?") in front of us.  Unless – as Wallace challenged (and
West endeavored) – we make an intentional effort to choose the subject and/or
adjust our perspective.

But most lenses have become so distorted with "cultural
Marxism," argues blogger "
Andrew
Mellon
"
in his positive review of West's book, "that individuals when faced with
truth and logic are unable to process events objectively or with prudence –
the narrative takes precedence over all else."

In his brilliant video on the Trayvon Martin narrative, Bill
Whittle
concluded
:

And if all of this political power and journalistic
malfeasance can be deployed to sell a tortured lie, as in the case of this
little story, then what political power and journalistic malfeasance do you
think might be deployed in making us buy a much larger one?

West's book ponders a similar question.

Mellon, in a follow-up
post
, notes that
while some are focusing on the accuracy of American Betrayal's details and
West's interpretations thereof – we shouldn't lose sight, most
importantly, of the "broader insights of the book, in light of the
current condition of Western Civilization."

We don't need
to be recognized experts to see that, indeed, something has muddied the water.
As conservatives, we should be able to strive, in unity, to get to the bottom
of it – without betraying the principles we represent.

Cindy Simpson is a Christian,
CPA, and business owner residing in Louisville, Kentucky. As a “citizen
journalist,” her writing has appeared at American Thinker, World Net Daily, The
Pearcey Report, and Catholic Online.

# # #

Revisiting the
Diana West Controversy

By
David Solway

PJ Media

September
16, 2013

The
controversy currently raging among conservative luminaries over the substantive
nature and scholarly status of Diana West’s new book, American Betrayal, need
not be rehearsed in detail here; its features are by now reasonably familiar to
most readers of the political sites. But it will do no harm to offer a
schematic overview of the broad contours of the “debate”—to give it the
politest of tags.

It
began when David Horowitz at FrontPage Magazine scrubbed Mark Tapson’s
favorable account of the book and replaced it with Ron Radosh’s intemperate and
distressingly
ad hominem
demolition masking as a “review.” Indeed,
Radosh’s logomachic intervention read more like a personal vendetta than a
scrupulous assessment. As a seasoned writer and veteran debater, Radosh should
have known better. From that point on, a war of words was launched and the
psychodrama shows no signs of tapering off. West published her Rebuttal and was
heatedly defended by the notable historian Andrew Bostom and by many of the
talkbackers to Horowitz’s own site. Meanwhile Horowitz and Radosh, and even the
orotund Conrad Black, continued to pummel both book and author.

I
do not wish to enter into the vortex of the dispute. I readily admit that I am
no expert on the subject West’s volume addresses. Was Harry Hopkins the
infamous KGB agent 19 or was it Laurence Duggan? Was American WWII policy
subtly shaped and surreptitiously directed by Soviet espionage and penetration
of the inner circles of the White House—and if so, to what degree? Was
Eastern Europe lost to “Uncle Joe” Stalin owing to American ineptitude or to
Communist infiltration of the decision-making process? I am in no position to
weigh in on the matter. These issues may—or may not—be
satisfactorily settled in the future, provided an honest, impartial, and
intellectual
debate is permitted to flourish without rancor and personal vituperation.

I
can only say that Diana West’s thesis is surely deserving of
scholarly
consideration, whether pro or con. Whether one agrees with her conclusions or
not, one must recognize that her argument is meticulously researched and
abundantly footnoted. It seems to me that David Horowitz was wrong to remove a
review that he had originally vetted and, furthermore, to substitute a largely
personal imprecation in its stead rather than, say, to post a countervailing
review and let the reader decide. Whatever his motive, the decision leaves an
editorial stench that is not easily dissipated.

This
is unfortunate, for Horowitz is one of the great conservative writers of our
time who has done yeoman service in defending the principles of liberal
democracy, in both the political and educational domains. No less unfortunate,
there has been far too much name-calling on either side of the embroilment. But
it needs to be candidly said that the unseemly fracas began with Radosh’s and
Horowitz’s ill-advised, adversarial tactics.

What
strikes me as even more important is the damage that has been done to the
integrity of the conservative movement—a movement that appears to be
precipitously unraveling. Is it any accident that former CIA agent and
conservative stalwart Clare Lopez was fired from her billet at the Gatestone Institute
after posting an article in which,
inter alia
, she came to West’s
defense? (Like Tapson’s review, her article has been expunged from the site
where it first appeared.) To range further afield, when one regards the
behavior of the Republican-dominated House, which is
supposed
to
represent the conservative side on the American political scene—John
McCain and Lindsey Graham carrying out Obama’s bidding on the Syrian and
Egyptian files, Marco Rubio’s amnesty gambit, John Boehner’s generally waffling
leadership—one can only wonder whether Michael Savage is right when he
argues in Trickle Up Poverty that there is only one political party in the
U.S.—but with two faces. (I’m tempted to call this party the Democans or
the Republicrats.)

I
see the conflict over
American Betrayal
as merely a subset of a much
vaster phenomenon, namely, the ongoing implosion of the conservative ethos in
the U.S. When nominal allies eschew reasoned analysis in discussion about their
respective positions on matters of substance, and instead resort to bilious
invective, ammoniac rhetoric, and invidious claims, we know that we are
witnessing the degradation of a viable and honorable—and
necessary—political and cultural institution. This is nothing less than
giving hostages to the enemy. One does not practice krav maga on one’s peers
and colleagues, and certainly not on the author of The Death of the Grown-Up.
It is time to pull in our horns, cease defaming our own, refrain from
self-extenuation, and begin conducting ourselves like
menschen
again.