McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning

Excellent interpretation of the events surrounding Senator McCarthy and the Senate Hearings. William F. Buckley, Jr. presented the material in a manner the is meant to enlighten. Product was in the condition advertised and arrived during the timeframe the supplier said it would be delivered in.

In a very recent e-mail to an Ammyland friend (Aaron of Davis, California - this website's funniest reviewer in my humble, expert opinion) I recommended McCARTHY AND HIS ENEMIES: The Record And Its Meaning by William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell. Then I added: "I should post a review of Buckley's book on Ammyland, too, one of these days. But I'm always thinking: Who's gonna read it now? Old out-of-print book about a subject that everyone thinks is dead and decided." But the fact is that recently I DID submit a review for Roy Cohn's excellent book, McCARTHY, and I got to thinking: If I don't inform the public about these outstanding old books that sort out the myths and the lies of the liberal spinmeisters from the truth and the hidden history, who will? Should I wait for Al Franken, Al Gore, or Alan Colmes to do it? It seems al be waiting a very long time if I do! Along with Cohn's aforementioned title, it was the extraordinarily well-docmented information in McCARTHY AND HIS ENEMIES that transformed me years ago from being just another sheep in the flock of American Sheeple (who assume that the broadly used but seldom understood pejorative catchword "McCarthyism" stands for some injurious black mark on the American psyche) into a well-informed but heartbroken fan of the most unfairly maligned and tragically heroic character in our country's history. Heartbroken? As I said to a different Pal not long ago in referring to my Ammyland review of the movie Good Night, And Good Luck: "When it comes to Senator McCarthy, my heart is in a perpetually broken state. I loathe what the powers did to him and his good name. ... It is a national disgrace that the American people don't know the true McCarthy story and have instead been brainwashed (quite literally) into believing that he was some kind of evil and menace to American society and American principles. He was a flawed hero, but far more heroic than flawed!" Before using the term "McCarthyism" (or allowing someone else to use it in your presence) you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with the facts of the case. Would you pronounce a man guilty of a crime before hearing the evidence? McCARTHY AND HIS ENEMIES will provide you with the information necessary to render a judgment either for or against the infamous Senator from Wisconsin. The book is meticulously researched and flawlessly organized, and to the best of my knowledge, remains the most comprehensive examination of McCarthy's part in the so-called "Red Scare" that is bound between covers. (This may change with M. Stanton Evans' forthcoming promised magnum opus, BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY: The Real Story Of Joseph McCarthy And His Fight Against America's Enemies. I can't wait to get my nasty, politically incorrect hands on a copy!) Buckley and Bozell have herein addressed nearly every one of the oft repeated liberal complaints against McCarthy: unsubstantiated accusations; "smearing" innocent people; publicizing his charges

There are tons of blather, mostly from the bleats of the so-called intellectual class, that will forever bury the truth of Soviet subversion in the United States. They scream "witch-hunt," and the learned nod and scratch their chins, and imagine Lillian Hellman as a heroic figure. But, as Dwight MacDonald (no conservative) said, there ARE little witches. The Venona de-crypts, the testimony of the actual Soviet case-officers, the later confessions---all these things mean nothing to liberal myths. In this volume, brothers-in-law Buckley and Bozell (with an uncharacteristic lack of humor, but with a surgeon's scalpel) look at McCarthy's charges. From Moss to Lattimore, the dramatis personae and the evidence and the words of McCarthy's critics are laid before us. The conclusions are left to the reader; but the authors make a central point: nothing, EVER, said by McCarthy was as outrageous as those yawped by his critics. This book will inform those who have the Schrecker view of communism ("non-traditional patriotism"), the Appleton loyalists, as well as those who seek the facts. Recommended.