Here's what Truman had to say (via Dover Bitch) about dealing with the threat posed by domestic communism (a threat at least as real and "existential" as Islamic terrorism is even pursuant to the most exaggerated fears):
"Now I am going to tell you how we are not going to fight communism. We are not going to transform our fine FBI into a Gestapo secret police. That is what some people would like to do. We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think. We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat."
Our country has faced a long and diverse series of threats, and we have defeated them while preserving our founding Constitutional principals and basic liberties, and without bestowing the President with monarchic powers, even in times of war. Leaders who are truly strong and resolute find ways to combat those threats while still preserving the defining attributes of America which have always made it so worth fighting for.
They only praise those democrats like FDR Kennedy and Truman because they're long dead. If they were alive, they'd be traitors and cowards like the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteUnless they did like Lieberman does and got on their knees and bowed 5 times a day towards the White House. In which case they'd be OK.
Look at how clear, blunt and firm he was when he spoke, though. We really could use a lot more of that, on both sides.
ReplyDeleteLove your blog, by the way. I love finding new blogs that I get addicted to and I am definitely addicted to you! Keep it up in 2006, please!
A lot of leftist academics regard Truman as Satan, as these book titles would indicate: Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origin of McCarthyism(Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971); and Richard Freeland, The
ReplyDeleteTruman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York: Knopf, 1971).
In The New Criterion, Cold War scholars John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr state:
Writing in Radical History Review in 1994, [Brown University's Paul] Buhle judged Truman as “America’s Stalin” and went on to declare, “when the judgment of the twentieth century’s second half is made, every American president will be seen as a jerk. After Truman, Nixon yields only to Reagan—still another Truman heir—as the jerkiest of all.”
So, it is true that a lot of leftists (who often are apologists for Communist spies) hate Truman for precisely the reasons many on the right endorse him, and many historians actually do insist that Truman road roughshod over individual liberty. In fact, Truman came a bit late to understanding the threat of domestic Stalinists -- he did not want to believe that FDR's New Deal program had been significantly constituted by traitors, and resisted that idea for some time -- but the evidence eventually got to him, and he instituted loyalty requirements for govt employees and much stricter security screening. To some degree, he was pushed into it, by a GOP that was touting the Democrats as the party of Communism, a not entirely baseless characterization.
Eventually Truman and other Democrats purged the party of Stalinists, who ended up in the Progressive Party, which fizzled out.
You have some very good points. I value your blog and opinion and check it often because you present a reasoned arguement withought the bumpersticker talk I have grown accustomed to. I do not always agree but it is refreshing indeed to see.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Glenn, are you not applying the Truman quote to Bush policies in order to justify your own past activities?
ReplyDeleteThe situation Truman faced is not comparable to today. This is getting repetitive...
Solomon2 2 2 2 2 2 2's analysis speaks a greater truth than he realizes.
ReplyDeleteHistory indeed reveals Truman had a lot of warts. Let's not look at the current toad and think a sweet kiss will turn him into a prince.
The situation Truman faced is not comparable to today. This is getting repetitive...
ReplyDeleteAgreed. President Truman was facing the rise of the Soviet Union, a massive, hostile military power, at the beginning of the Atomic Age. The threat of nuclear annihilation raining down from the skies during the Cold War that followed was nothing compared to the existential threat we face today from Islamic terrorism. For this menace, our supposedly precious liberties must be sacrificed, in order to protect what America stands for.
Now I'm curious, though, what past "activities" of his own that Mr. Greenwald is trying to justify by invoking Truman. Something juicy, I hope? Perhaps...cross-dressing as Bess?
--mds