The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (30 page)

No wonder, too, that this
book is hated by ‘the consensus’, who feel perfectly comfortable in today’s
world, and see no moral crisis at all. They have never thought of the Cold War
as a great battle against the ultimate evil that has changed our civilization
beyond recognition. To them, the history of that battle has been no more than a
comfortable job. They never saw establishing the truth about it as a sacred
duty we owe to the memory of millions of victims; but merely as a matter for
“gentlemanly give-and-take” between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, leading to
a sound academic consensus.

Yet, they instinctively know
this whole subject to be a minefield. The more evidence comes to light, the
more scholarship is required to explain it away. Any discussion of the Soviet
influence in the West must be channeled, carefully and professionally, into the
issue of Soviet ‘agents’ (leaving aside all other kinds of secret
collaborators, fellow-travelers, useful idiots, and other forces of progress).
Then, as swiftly and skillfully as before, the idea of ‘agents’ must be
replaced with ‘spies’, leaving aside the only kind of Soviet agents who
mattered – the agents of influence. And then, you can argue as long as
you like about whether or not one particular Hopkins or another really passed
secret information to Moscow, and if yes, just how sensitive that information
was, and whether it really helped to create the Soviet nuclear bomb… A nice,
endless debate with no practical conclusions– just what the academics
need.

Diana West, with her
“reckless” discoveries, has jeopardised their comfortable world. Once you start
talking about moral responsibility for crimes against humanity, what is left of
that academic hair-splitting which has been the whole basis of their consensus,
and their very existence? How great is a moral difference between an
executioner and a mere conformist, between an agent and a sympathiser, between
a ‘liberal’ academic and a ‘conservative’ one?

One thing that has
particularly irritated the Consensus was Mrs. West’s comparison of America,
governed by Soviet agents, to an occupied country. No wonder. If the country
was occupied and governed by quislings, we have to stop talking about ‘spies’
and instead have to talk about collaborationists. Any country that has done
this in the past could not escape the conclusion that the entire Establishment,
to a greater or lesser extent, had been responsible. And this is one conclusion
which the entire Consensus had been working hard to avoid for the past 75
years.

While
American Betrayal
does
reveal many little-known and interesting facts, Mrs. West is very far from
claiming any credit for her discoveries. She pays excessive tribute to her
academic sources. What she does say is that all those facts do not fit into the
overall ‘conventional’ theories of history; that the known facts invite very
different conclusions from those we have been offered. The only role she claims
is that of the child from Andersen’s fairy tale, pointing out that the Emperor
has no clothes on, while the chamberlains still walk behind him bearing the
train that isn’t there. She only claims “to connect the dots”, which is a very
modest description of the huge and brilliant work she has obviously done. Yet,
it is a fairly accurate description of what the Learned Professors have
obviously failed to do.

No doubt, when they angrily
protest that they had known all these facts all along, they are for once
truthful. The sheer number of their academic degrees bears witness to their
infinite knowledge. It is just that they lacked honesty and courage to tell us
the truth.

Clearly, history is far too
important to be left to the historians.

# # #

APPENDIX
1

News Release

Center to Honor Syndicated Columnist
and Author Diana West as
2013 Recipient
of the Mightier Pen Award

Washington, D.C., September 12, 2013: The Center for
Security Policy announced today that the 2013 recipient of its Mightier Pen
Award will be Diana West, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The
Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down
Western Civilization, co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America, and most
recently author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s
Character. The award will be presented at a luncheon on November 20th at the
Union League Club in New York City.

Diana West’s weekly newspaper column is syndicated by
Universal Uclick, and appears in over 100 publications nationwide, as well as
at her website
http://www.dianawest.net
. West also
serves as Washington correspondent for the European weekly newspaper Dispatch
International. Her work has appeared in many publications including The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New Criterion, The Public Interest,
Women’s Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Post Magazine; her
fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly. She has made numerous radio
appearances and as a former CNN contributor, she made frequent television
appearances on the former CNN show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” She was recently
featured in the Glenn Beck TV documentaries “The Project” and “Rumors of War
III.”

Ms. West joins an illustrious group of authors,
journalists and essayists who have received this recognition for their
commitment to a robust national security and their efforts to educate our
countrymen and women about the need to practice the philosophy President Reagan
called “peace through strength.” Previous recipients include: Mark Helprin,
Charles Krauthammer, Roger Ailes, William F. Buckley, Jr., A.M. Rosenthal,
Andrew C. McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Claudia Rosett, and Monica Crowley.

In announcing this recognition, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, observed:

“Diana West is among America’s most thoughtful and
intellectually invigorating writers of our time. Her efforts to illuminate the
contemporary threats to our society and culture — and to map out their
historical antecedents and the appropriate responses to them — in order
to preserve our freedoms, Constitution and nation are exemplary. We take great
pride in bestowing this recognition on a cherished friend and admired
colleague.”

APPENDIX
2

Timeline

Chronology of Attacks
and Pieces I Posted in Self-Defense at
http://www.dianawest.net

July 14, 2013

·
     
I
write:
“American Betrayal Purged at Frontpage”

August 7, 2013

·
     
Frontpage
Magazine publishes
“McCarthy on Steroids”
by Ronald Radosh.

·
     
This
7,000-word-attack inspired a series of copycat attack pieces written by people
who have read the Radosh review, but quite obviously not the book.

·
     
I
write:
“If Frontpage Will Lie about This, What
Won’t They Lie About?”

·
     
Pajamas
Media publishes
“Why I Wrote a Take-Down of Diana West’s
Awful Book”
by Ronald
Radosh.

August 8, 2013

·
     
Radosh
re-publishes his Pajamas Media “take-down” piece at Frontpage as
“Diana West Down Crackpot Alley.”

·
     
Frontpage
editor David Horowitz publishes an editorial headlined:
“Our Controversy with Diana West.”

·
     
David
Mills, executive editor of First Things, posts at First Things’ website a piece
called
“American Betrayal, Truculently
Reckless.”

·
     
I
write:
“If Frontpage Lies about This, They’ll
Lie about Anything, Pt. 2”

August 9, 2013

·
     
Frontpage
publishes Jeffrey Herbst published
“Diana West vs. History.”
Ronald Radosh, too, published another
piece at Frontpage on August 9:
“Diana West Attempts to Respond.”

·
     
I
write:
"Professor Radosh Gets an `F’ "

August 11, 2013

·
     
The
American Thinker publishes
“Demagogic Writers and the People Who
Love Them”
by Clarice
Feldman.

·
     
I
write:
“The War on American Betrayal: On the
Question of Scholarship”

·
     
I
write:
“The War on American Betrayal: The
Collegial Email”

August 12, 2013

·
     
Ronald
Radosh publishes an addendum to his 7,000 word Frontpage review at American Thinker.
It is called
“History as Ideology: Further Thoughts on
American Betrayal.”

·
     
Ron
Capshaw posts at the American Thinker blog a post called
“The Beginning of Wisdom.”

·
     
I
write:
“Ronald Radosh Claims I Attack
Historians: Is He Right?”

August 13, 2013

·
     
I
write:
“REJECTED by American Thinker: My
Rebuttal to Unsubstantiated Charges against My Scholarship”

August 15, 2013

·
     
David
Horowitz publishes at Breitbart News
“What Difference Does It Make? A Response
to Diana West.”

·
     
I
write my syndicated column:
“In Defense of My Livelihood”

·
     
I
write:
“I Got Plenty of Evidence”

August 16, 2013

·
     
National
Review Online publishes
“Defaming FDR: And Other Great Men
Besides”
by Conrad
Black. The New York Sun publishes the same piece as
“FDR Betrayed: How Diana West Errs on
Roosevelt and the Great Heroes of the Cold War.”

·
     
I
write:
“Another Day, Another Attack on American
Betrayal.”
NRO posts
this at The Corner, not the homepage alongside Black’s attack.

·
     
I
write:
“Footnotes to Chapter 9, American
Betrayal”

·
     
I
write:
“Flash: Latest `Collegial’ Email from
Ronald Radosh”

·
     
I
write:
“Harry Hopkins: Did He Warn the
Ambassador or Warn the Embassy”

August 19, 2013

·
     
I
write:
“ `Great Swathes’ and Citizen Journalists
Defense American Betrayal”

August 26, 2013

·
     
I
post:
Flashback: M. Stanton Evans Rebuts Ronald
Radosh 2008

September 3, 2013

·
     
I
write: Clare Lopez:
“Recognizing the Wrong People”

September 5, 2013

·
     
I
write:
“Who Knew? Overconfident Ivy Education
Threatens the Republic”

September 6, 8 and 10, 2013

·
     
“The
Rebuttal” runs in three parts at Breitbart News.

September 7, 2013

·
     
David
Horowitz publishes
“Reply to Diana West”
at Breitbart News.

September 9, 2013

·
     
David
Horowitz publishes at Frontpage:
“Diana West Invents a New Conspiracy.”

September 11, 2013

·
     
Conrad
Black publishes at National Review Online,
“Diana West’s Epic Fail: She Gets History
Spectacularly Wrong.”

Discover
the Networks, the Horowitz Freedom Center’s clearinghouse on anti-Americanism,
now features a new entry:
“Diana West vs. Frontpage.”