Christina’s Common Sense

To be accused of “McCarthyism” is among the highest criticisms a politician can receive. It carries with it connotations of wild-eyed Red-scare-era witch hunting. The expression, of course, finds its origin with the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in the early 1950s. The typical History 101 story goes as follows: Joe McCarthy needed a reelection platform, so he decided to go after Reds in the American government. Of course there were none, and McCarthy drank himself to death a few years later.

If that’s what you thought, M Stanton Evans stands ready to tell you why it’s wrong. And he does a darn good job.

As I’ve said before, I always like to challenge conservative authors to convince my Liberal Hat of how wrong it is. Evans could do it. Not only could he do it, he did it splendidly. I cannot imagine the patience Evans must have had to go through all that information and distill it into a 600-page book. That may seem like a lot, but Evans gives about 1200 pages’ worth of information in those pages.

Don’t be fooled—the book is deep. I will probably have to read it a few more times before I can make total sense of it. Evans combs through an unbelievable number of documents and weaves them into a historical account that feels like a spy novel (which is basically what the Red Scare was). And if you had any doubts about the authenticity of Evans’ research, he fills up pages and pages with scans of unadulterated original documents proving the existence of not just communist sympathizers, but actual Red spies within the State Department.

So yes, Evans did convince my Liberal Hat that it had been wrong about Joe McCarthy all these years. I defy anyone to read this book and maintain with good conscience that the History 101 story about McCarthy is true. Evans also informed my Conservative Hat, which had a nagging suspicion that McCarthy may have been right after all (after all, anything accepted by the respected historical community it automatically deserves a second look). If you want the other side of what you learned in History 101, go read Blacklisted by History.

I promise, this is my LAST non-post. Finals are almost over. 

When a baseball team wins the World Series, it has two options for next season: win again or do worse. And everyone will be comparing its performance in the next season to its performance last season. Such is James Bradley’s predicament in Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. Having hit a grand slam with Flags of our Fathers (which is really awesome, and it’s a good movie too), he can either repeat that performance or not quite hit the mark. And all his readers are watching his every move wondering if he can do it.

He can’t. Flyboys is not all bad—in fact, most of it is quite good. Bradley’s way with words leaves nothing to be desired. It’s no small feat to keep your readers interested when narrating the ins and outs of a battle. If you didn’t know it was real, you could be tricked into thinking Flyboys was a novel.  And Bradley does repeat some elements of his epic Flags of our Fathers performance. He does a marvelous job of showing the stark differences between the Americans and the Japanese and why that made the Japanese such a vexing enemy. How do you fight an enemy who doesn’t want to get out alive?

Unfortunately, Bradley also takes some pretty serious pitfalls. The first few chapters of the book are various moral equivalency arguments that the Americans were just as guilty as the Japanese. He does point out legitimate things that our side did wrong, but the idea that they are equal to the Japanese’s treatment of POWs—heck, their own guys—is patently absurd. Bradley poses the question “how do you fight an enemy who wants to die?” and then argues with how it’s done: killing the lot of them. He should know better, especially considering that his father was a Navy Cross recipient on Iwo Jima. 

Bradley’s second pitfall is his completely blatant bias. When he refers to the Japanese he interviewed, he attaches the suffix “-san” to their last names. This is a Japanese sign of respect. However, when referring to Gen. Curtis LeMay, Bradley calls him “Curtis.” One who fancies himself a military historian does not call high-ranking officers by their first names. It doesn’t take a particularly astute observer to see that the Japanese are getting the bigger share of Bradley’s respect allotment. 

However, Flyboys still has plenty to recommend it. I particularly enjoyed getting new insight into George HW Bush’s experience as one of the flyboys. Bradley does have a keen eye for detail and a unique way of telling a story. It’s pretty impressive, especially coming from a guy who, to the best of my knowledge, never wrote a darn thing in his life before Flags of our Fathers. It’s definitely worth the read, as long as you’re not expecting the home team to win another World Series.

And as for my misbehaving layout, I have discovered that this is remedied when I use Internet Exploder Explorer instead of Firefox. So if you have Firefox and my blog looks like a bomb just went off in it, try Explorer. I’m still working on fixing this.

Whenever I read a conservative book, I like to put on my liberal hat (yes, I do have one) and see how well the author can convince me. So the question for Steven F Hayward in The Real Jimmy Carter was: could he convince me, a diehard hemophiliac liberal Jimmy Carter lover that the object of my admiration is detrimental to my country?

The answer, sadly, was not really. While Hayward’s book is easy to read, not terribly long, and a well-done work, he offers little of which my liberal hat wouldn’t already be aware. I already knew that Carter wasn’t a great president, but that he tried really hard (and as a liberal, that’s what matters to me). The fact that Carter’s good friends with Yasser Arafat is perfectly fine in my book. When Hayward criticizes Carter’s criticizing the Bush administration, I see that as Carter just doing his job. Hayward said almost nothing to dissuade me from my adoration of St. Jimmy.

However, when I took off my liberal hat and put on my conservative one, Hayward did a great job. Despite his inability to persuade my inner liberal, he really does marshal good evidence and arguments in his defense (and that shouldn’t count against him; what do such things matter to a liberal?). He cites unflattering characterizations of Carter by his White House and campaign staffers, plus contemporary news accounts of Carter’s meddling with current affairs, both of which are excellent insights into Carter. These debunk the perception of Carter as a righteous saint and show him instead to be a self-righteous loser.

So on the conservative end of things, Hayward hits a home run. On the liberal end, he walks to first. Still, The Real Jimmy Carter isn’t a bad read, if you’re already convinced that Carter was an awful president and are just looking for some affirmation. Or if your history prof happens to assign it.

What do you think of the Vietnam War?

If you’re like most Americans, you don’t think highly of it. And why should you? For over a decade our country was embroiled in a war that was a resounding defeat. Not only that, but the American military flagrantly disregarded international law, engaged in indiscriminate killing of civilians, and committed genocide against the North Vietnamese. Right?

If that’s what you think, you need to read America in Vietnam.

I will not kid you. This book is drier than the Sahara in July. But it is an excellent look into how Vietnam’s legacy does not match up with its reality. It’s really very impressive work, especially considering that Guenter Lewy is a political scientist (at The Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy, no less) and not a historian. Also, unlike most people who dare take America’s side in the Vietnam conflict, Lewy is no apologist for the war. It’s very hard to tell from the book which side he is on, as he spends the first half of the book raking Gen. Westmoreland over the coals and spends the second half pointing out what fools the historians and academics have made of themselves in post-Vietnam years (which, at the time the book was written, was only about 5).

If you want to know the side of Vietnam your overgrown hippie history professor doesn’t want you to see, you should read America in Vietnam. In fact, even if you are the overgrown hippie history professor, you should read America in Vietnam. It will provide a different perspective that has been largely buried for over 30 years.

If you’ve never read anything by Thomas Sowell, you should. He is made of awesome. So is his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

In a subject where it’s easy to become bogged down in policy wonkery and partisanship, Sowell cuts through the horse hockey to the truth: there are two basic ideological visions that inform one’s political views. These are the constrained vision, in which men are as they are and there’s no changing it; and the unconstrained vision, in which human nature is a terrible tragedy that can–and must–be reengineered to perfection.

Whichever side of the aisle you’re on, you’ll doubtless be able to make connections to past and present situations as you read about the two visions’ ideas of man, politics, economics, knowledge, and justice. It is about the best explanation of the roots of political strife I’ve ever seen. And Sowell makes it so simple and easy to understand that (if you’re into this sort of thing, at least) it’s kind of fun to read.

I won’t spoil the rest of it for you, just know that this will not be going back to the bookstore and if you’re unfortunate enough to have me educate your young skull full of mush someday, you might just have to read it. So get a head start and read it now.

Also, the print is fairly large and the pages are small. This means the book isn’t as long as it looks. Always a bonus.

There are numerous good things about being a card-carrying member of Young America’s Foundation. One of them is that you wander around CPAC and get free books that haven’t been published yet. Actually, I lied. Anyone could do that. But it’s still cool to be a card-carrying Young America’s Foundation member. You should look into it.

The free not-yet-published book in question is A Conservative History of the American Left by Daniel J Flynn. Having heard Flynn speak before and read some of his columns, I had high expectations. They were not disappointed.

With exhaustive research and dry wit, Flynn exposes the origins and history of current American liberalism. The history is not a flattering one—I mean, if your ideology’s history was one of racism, sexism, eugenics, and communism wouldn’t you want to forget that too? Well, if you’re a liberal, Dan Flynn has revealed that to be your movement’s sad story.

Flynn does a masterful job of showing that the current liberal ideas of big government and lack of personal freedom can trace their origins to the landing on Plymouth Rock. The current liberals use the same schemes that have been tried and have failed for centuries. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

A Conservative History of the American Left will be on sale April 29, but Amazon is currently taking pre-orders. You should order this book if you want a well-done, insightful, and accurate look at the origins of today’s loony left.

The cool part about being an American Studies major, especially an American Studies major at my particular institution, is I get to read cool books about America. Then, since my blog is about liberty, I get to share them with you.

My latest addition to the liberty bookshelf is The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, by none other than Silent Cal himself. The book is very, well, Coolidge-like. No frills, no ruffles, no more words than absolutely necessary. It kind of makes me smile. How many presidents are like that today?

The book was also surprisingly interesting, given that it was written by a guy famous for not talking (he was also allegedly famous for sleeping, but that’s another story). I found the last chapter, “Why I Did Not Choose to Run”, particularly moving. Coolidge states that he chose not to seek another term in office, despite his enormous popularity, because he believed it would be best for the country and party to find another candidate. If he stayed in office, the nation might become too comfortable with him and not be able to acclimate to another president when the time came. The concluding paragraph is as follows:

“It was therefore my privilege, after seeing my administration so indorsed by the country, to retire voluntarily from the greatest experience that can come to mortal man. In that way, I believed I could best serve the people who have honored me and the country which I love.”

A local talk show host in Boston, Jay Severin (whose blog you can link to from my blogroll and whose show you can stream at the WTKK website) frequently distinguishes between politicians and public servants. A public servant recognizes that he works for the people, and puts their interests before his own. Calvin Coolidge was a public servant. And I think that if more politicians would view themselves as public servants, America might be a happier place.