Re: Diana West interview and new book : AMERICAN BETRAYAL The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character Saw Diana West on C-Span. The reviewer classified her as a "conservative" but she sounds far more like a Radical Centrist to me. It is typical "mainstream" mischaracterization to label anyone who is not liberal as conservative, or someone who is not conservative as liberal, and this seems to be the case now. But like a good Radical Centrist, Diana West does not spare Republican presidents in her criticisms even if, in this book, she especially rails against weaknesses in the FDR administration. The trouble, as I see it, was the naivete of the 1930s generally, not an inside plot to "communize" America, which she can be taken as concluding. Indeed, until some time in the 1950s, political and other kinds of naivete was all too common among Americans of all persuasions, and often still is true even if now about other things. This is not an exclusive American trait. I have heard plenty of criticisms of the government of India and India's media not to realize that naivete is also commonplace there, and even the often sophisticated British can be naive. But here is an analysis of naivete as it is found in America and a lesson in how acceptance at face value of what Communists said in the past, and Fascists said in the past, is being matched by what Muslims say in our era of history, and it may be added, what homosexuals also are saying. Nearly all of such special interest rhetoric is no better than half true or even utterly false as soon as you look beneath the surface. What I would add is that, as much as I appreciate Diana West's work, anyone who takes it as a reason to gloat that FDR was a dupe of Communists and that this proves the case made by the Right, would be missing the point altogether. The 1930s were also years when the Right was utterly off its rocker and indulged in such foolishness as isolationism, free trade dogmatism despite how badly the Depression had discredited laissez-faire, and indulged in all kinds of ethnic prejudices. The American Left of today needs to face up to the failures of the Left in the past --as it does for our own time. But none of that demonstrates how good and true the Right supposedly is. It would be pathetically easy to put together a detailed argument about the foolishness of the Right in the 1930s. For now, though, here is a needed corrective for the Left that should not be ignored. Billy ---------------------------------------------------- AMERICAN BETRAYAL The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character by _Diana West_ (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/search/?q=Diana%20West;t=author)
KIRKUS REVIEW A nationally syndicated conservative columnist explores the extent and impact of the Soviet Union’s penetration of the United States government. Referring to Franklin Roosevelt’s “one-man cabinet,” Gen. George C. Marshall once remarked that Harry “Hopkins’s job with the president was to represent the Russian interests. My job was to represent the American interests.” Notwithstanding the many possible alternative readings, West (The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, 2008) takes this comment as further evidence for her dossier demonstrating that Hopkins was Stalin’s complicit errand boy. In this, as in many other instances, she goes too far, challenging conventional histories at almost every turn. But she also makes a number of valid, sufficiently provocative points. Not until the 1990s, with access to the Venona files and Soviet archives, have historians wholly appreciated the scope of Russian spying in this country from the time FDR formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. West matches these new revelations to previously known facts and wonders why we’ve neglected to fully adjust the historical record. Why are whistle-blowers of the era still reviled as redbaiters, informers and rats? How has the stench of totalitarian Marxism, every bit as noxious as its contemporaneous ideologies, Nazism and fascism, failed to fully register? With the aid, she insists, of a small army of occupiers in New Deal agencies, the Treasury, Agricultural and State departments, Stalin had his way with the U.S. government and caused enormous suffering. West blames our elected officials, establishment historians (especially for ignoring intelligence history), blinkered journalists and elites sympathetic to the collectivist agenda for suppressing evidence of what she terms a massive betrayal of our traditions and institutions. A frustrating mixture of incontrovertible facts and dubious speculation. Proceed with caution. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
