Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism Ann Coulter Crown Forum, 2003 There is a dilemma that bedevils the scholar. Intellectual discourse most often prefers a less-than-strident, sometimes even equivocal, presentation of arguments, precisely because, at least as ideally conceived, this makes possible the nuanced consideration of ideas. It invites discussion by leaving open the possibility that on a number of things "reasonable people can differ. " And it encourages a context in which ideas of all kinds can be put forward without having reason to anticipate that the exchange will turn into an ad hominem slugfest. Civility among the proponents of differing ideas is also important because the world is so deeply divided, as at most times in history it has been, and because the divisions portend to become vastly deeper in the decades ahead as the economic displacement caused by globalization and ever-advancing technology polarizes the world. At the same time, there is much to be said for an honest, straightforward telling of something "as it is. " This is what Robert A. Taft had in mind when he said that "tact is dishonesty. " A fully honest presentation will often be strident, not because of gratuitous slurs upon an opponent, but because the subject-matter itself is unappealing. In that context, there is merely the finest line between an acceptable stridency and a lack of civility. In Treason, Ann Coulter never withholds a punch. She gives her readers the "red meat" they long for. She plainly charges American "liberals" with hatred for their country and treachery toward it. One is tempted to think of it as a lack of civility. But most of what she says differs only in tone from what scholars speak of more genteelly when they refer to the "long-standing alienation of the intellectual from bourgeois society. " She spells out the alienation's implications bluntly, and only on occasion throws in a gratuitous insult that takes her over the line. Her discourse occurs within the realm of the "rough and tumble" of ideas that is often praised. It isn't phrased as the scholar prefers, but it isn't beyond the pale, either, except occasionally. This is to say, readers with an intellectual bent should not write off what Coulter says because of her style. It is for those who disagree with her to meet her head-on with facts and arguments that negate what she is saying. Coulter no doubt draws from an extensive file in which she has documented many facets of the American Left's mindset. A hard-hitting presentation of those facets makes up, in effect, the last two-thirds of her book. Those who agree with her will relish being given chapter-and-verse about ideological double-standards, blacklistings of ideas from outside the Left, demagoguery and opportunism, and the like. An example: it is commonplace today to decry the 1948 "Hollywood Blacklist" against Communist screenwriters as a hateful abuse of people and their right to express themselves. But Coulter, for her part, points out several instances in which blacklisting runs the other way. The New York Times, she says, barely mentioned the release in 1995 of the Venona cables (the extremely significant Soviet cables decrypted by the U.S. government starting in the 1940s that, now that they are in the public record, show the extensive penetration by Soviet agents into the American government). And "the eminent historian Ronald Radosh is blacklisted from every university in the nation because he wrote the book definitively proving the guilt of executed spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. …