The railroads [in the decades immediately following the U.S. civil war] saw advantages to regulation. Unstable prices, disliked by rail customers, could also be detrimental to the railroads. A recession in 1884 led to the failure of a number of railroads, and the railroads wanted to undertake pooling arrangements for their mutual profitability. Thus, the railroad industry, which was very competitive, wanted the ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] to stabilize rates, regulate routes, and protect their profitability. Essentially, the ICC cartelized the industry, allowing it to be more profitable than it could have been in a more competitive unregulated environment.
Randy Holcombe, Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History, (2019).
February 4, 2024
QotD: American railroads and the Interstate Commerce Commission
February 3, 2024
The climate alarmists long ago gave up honest scientific reporting
Tom Knighton says he used to fully buy in to the climate alarmist message, but eventually realized the fix had been in for years, especially when it came to the predictive ability of all the climate change models … as in, their total lack of predictive ability:
When Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth came out, I watched it. I was terrified by the world being described, and since I was still pretty liberal and sort of an environmentalist, I took it all to heart.
Over time, as my personal politics shifted, I still had concerns regarding climate change. After all, it is what it is, right?
Until I came to look deeper into the issue and the one thing that shattered my belief in the whole concept: The fact that not a single climate model has ever panned out as predicted despite pretty much none of the draconian measures we’re told we need in order to avert disaster ever coming to fruition.
Science is supposed to be predictive. If it can’t predict something in its models, then scientists need to back up and figure out what the problem is. Instead, they seemingly just keep doubling down.
[…]
Let’s be clear here, the idea of taking measurements in heat islands is freshman year stuff. There’s absolutely no way they’re unaware the effect that’s having on their readings, even as most of their instruments are subject to heat bias.
In other words, I can’t accept this is a good faith error.
No, I believe this to be malicious.
Climatology isn’t exactly a field of science that would ever be considered sexy. Before all the climate alarmism, research grants were likely few and far between. People weren’t overly worried about the climate because it simply ways.
Then scientists started screaming that we were all doomed. The end is nigh, they told us, screaming at the top of their lung and acting just shy of wearing a sandwich board in Times Square.
With that came money and prestige.
Suddenly, climatologist could get recognition and write bestselling books. They could get grants from everyone and their brother to fund their research. The thing is, they had to keep up the charade. People had to believe that we were going to die if we didn’t do something.
Maybe they actually want the draconian measures they suggest, measures that pretty much amount to going back to living in mud huts, but with solar- and wind-created electricity so we won’t need to burn wood to survive.
Or something.
February 2, 2024
J.M. Browning Harmonica Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published Sep 6, 2015Have you heard of Jonathan Browning, gunsmith and inventor? Among his other accomplishments, he is credited with designing the harmonica rifle in the US — and we have an example of one of his hand-made guns here to look at today (made in 1853). Browning was a Mormon, and spent several years slowly moving west periodically setting up gunsmithing shops before he reached his final destination of Ogden, Utah. There he settled down for good, and had 22 children with his 3 wives. One of those children also showed an aptitude for gunsmithing, and formally apprenticed to his father. You might recognize his name …
January 31, 2024
The LA Times recently laid off a bunch of “activists masquerading as reporters”
Tom Knighton illustrates one of the reasons so many legacy news organizations are being forced to cut back on staff in hopes of staying afloat:
Last week, the LA Times announced a massive layoff of journalists. They were just one of several places that kicked the activists masquerading as reporters to the curb.
This, of course, was met with consternation by the journalistic field as a whole.
Everyone seemed ready to warn of doom and gloom, telling us how important they are to society and that we need them.
Yet absolutely none of them seemed remotely interested in actually examining why the field is shrinking so horrifically.
Sure, the current landscape is very different due to technological advancements. For example, there’s places like Substack where I can reach out to readers directly instead of needing to filter things through a newspaper’s editorial voice.
But journalists also did this to themselves.
[…]
Because journalism’s “inherently political” tribe uses their politics to decide which stories are worth reporting. Journalists, if we can even really call them that anymore, aren’t simply sharing truth. They’re amplifying some stories and smothering others.
How often do we see stories claiming so-and-so is a white supremacist because he favors welfare reform or a tougher stance on illegal immigration? How many publications amplified the nonsense about Border Patrol agents “lassoing” illegal immigrants because of a picture they didn’t understand?
Journalism doesn’t represent the American people. It represents the Democratic Party.
In 1971, Republicans accounted for just over a quarter of all journalists. In 2022, they were 3.4 percent.
Original can be found here – https://www.theamericanjournalist.org/
Now, in 1971, those independents were probably divided between left-leaning and right-leaning to some degree or another, though the survey didn’t capture that.
In 2022, I suspect many who called themselves independent did so because they thought the Democrats were too right-leaning for their tastes.
What’s more, despite the lack of ideological diversity, that same source found that only 21.8 percent see that as needing to change.
What’s more, starting in 2016, news publications really stopped even trying to pretend they were unbiased. A form of blatantly activist journalism became common, with virtually every news agency in the nation showing at least some signs of it.
January 30, 2024
The Most Expensive Machine Gun Ever Sold
Forgotten Weapons
Published Nov 6, 2023Morphy’s recently took the world record for the most expensive machine gun ever sold at public auction — with a transferrable FN Minimi. It sold for a winning bid of $490,000, which became a total price of $588,000 after adding the 20% buyer’s premium. Good heavens. So today, let’s consider why someone might speak THAT MUCH money for a Minimi …
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January 29, 2024
Peter Hitchens isn’t onboard with the march to yet another war
Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens decries the apparent drift by western politicians into yet another war:
Are we the baddies? What if the Ukraine war is just as stupid and wrong as the Iraq war, but the state propaganda has been more successful and hardly anybody has realised … yet?
Many people to this day still think the damaging and morally dubious Western attacks on Serbia and Libya were justified. Many still think the gory attempt to destroy Syria was a good thing. It took ages for opinion to swing on the Vietnam war, back in the 1960s. And, as one who opposed the Iraq war, I remember only too well just how many (who now think they were against it all the time) were fooled into backing Sir Anthony Blair and George W. Bush.
The issue is more pressing as generals and admirals warn we must live in a militarised society and prepare for what they think is an inevitable war against Russia. They could get their way. If you go on backing this policy, you could be condemning yourself, your children or grandchildren to a world of war, privation and perhaps conscription into some sort of military service.
[…]
This is what I have never been able to work out. We have a Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, who has perfected the art of shouting loudly while carrying a very small stick – thunderous, belligerent declarations while our Armed Forces melt away thanks to neglect and badly targeted spending. Perhaps, if the long-feared Russian invasion of Western Europe takes place, we can fend it off by dispatching our troops on the pestilential e-scooters and e-bikes which are this former Transport Secretary’s major contribution to the nation.
Certainly these vehicles are terrifying to those not riding them. They have nearly killed me more than once. And, piled up in heaps, they make formidable obstacles, as the people of London are finding.
What Mr Shapps does not seem to grasp is that Britain became great by staying out of continental conflicts, and letting others do the fighting. Even in the battle against Bonaparte, we paid our European allies to do most of the hard work.
Our greatness ceased when bombastic moralising took over, in 1914. We flung ourselves, supposedly nobly, into a Russo-German war. Within two years we were bankrupt, and bereft of the flower of our young manhood.
People still refuse to believe me when I say accurately that Britain has not paid off its huge 1914-18 war debts (now worth about £40 billion) to the USA. But I promise you it is true.
Four years of terrible loss left the Russo-German problem unsolved and we had to do it all again in 1939. After that we were even more bankrupt, and in 1946 had to ration bread, like some desperate People’s Republic. But for many years afterwards we were largely governed by grown-ups who had fought in actual wars and been wounded, and had seen death very near them, or endured bombing and a war economy. And so we largely stayed out of major foreign trouble.
QotD: Amtrak’s improvements
No, Amtrak is in good shape. The cars have been rebuilt, the blankets no longer draw blood when they come in contact with human skin, the tracks are smoother, and the Pit of Hazy Death — the snack car — is now smoke-free.
That means it’s not packed with throaty-voiced semi-toothed drifters who emit a Pompeii-sized cloud of ash every time they start in on one of those up-from-the-ankles 20-minute hacking fits. And somehow — don’t ask me how — the general aromatic profile of the train is no longer “feet, with a top note of septic tank.” The train actually smelled good. Bravo, Amtrak.
James Lileks, “A windy narrative of a trip to Chicago”, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 2004-12-19.
January 28, 2024
We had to destroy the democracy to save it
Matt Taibi asks if there’s already an “electoral fix” in place, as we see more and more evidence that Joe Biden and the Democrats will stop at nothing to keep Trump — and would-be Democratic challengers — off the ballot completely:
The fix is in. To “protect democracy”, democracy is already being canceled. We just haven’t admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet.
On Sunday, January 14th, NBC News ran an eye-catching story: “Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House”. It described “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” that is “quietly” making plans to “foil any efforts to expand presidential power” on the part of Donald Trump.
The piece quoted an array of former high-ranking officials, all insisting Trump will misuse the Department of Defense to execute civilian political aims. Since Joe Biden’s team “leaked” a strategy memo in late December listing “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” as Campaign 2024’s central talking point, surrogates have worked overtime to insert existential or democracy in quotes. This was no different:
“We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, adding that Trump is “a clear and present danger to our democracy”. Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the advocacy groups organizing the “loose” coalition, said, “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy”. Declared former CIA and defense chief Leon Panetta: “Like any good dictator, he’s going to try to use the military to basically perform his will”.
Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and current visiting Georgetown law professor Mary McCord was one of the few coalition participants quoted by name. She said:
We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to.
The group was formed by at least two organizations that have been hyperactive in filing lawsuits against Trump and Trump-related figures over the years: the aforementioned Democracy Forward, chaired by former Perkins Coie and Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias, and Protect Democracy, a ubiquitous non-profit run by a phalanx of former Obama administration lawyers like Ian Bassin, and funded at least in part by LinkedIn magnate Reid Hoffman.
The article implied a future Trump presidency will necessitate new forms of external control over the military. It cited Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s bill to “clarify” the Insurrection Act, a 1792 law that empowers the president to deploy the military to quell domestic rebellion. Blumenthal’s act would add a requirement that Congress or courts ratify presidential decisions to deploy the military at home, seeking essentially to attach a congressional breathalyzer to the presidential steering wheel.
NBC’s quotes from former high-ranking defense and intelligence officials about possible preemptive mutiny were interesting on their own. However, the really striking twist was that we’d read the story before.
Summer, 2020. The TIP media blitz.
For over a year, the Biden administration and its surrogates have dropped hint after hint that the plan for winning in 2024 — against Donald Trump or anyone else — might involve something other than voting. Lawsuits in multiple states have been filed to remove Trump from the ballot; primaries have been canceled or invalidated; an ominous Washington Post editorial by Robert Kagan, husband to senior State official Victoria Nuland, read like an APB to assassins to head off an “inevitable” Trump dictatorship; and on January 11th of this year, leaders of a third party group called “No Labels” sent an amazing letter to the Department of Justice, complaining of a “conspiracy” to stop alternative votes.
Himmler Takes Command – WW2 – Week 283 – January 27, 1945
World War Two
Published 27 Jan 2024A new German Army Group has been formed, tasked with protecting the Reich from the east and commanded by none other than Heinrich Himmler, who has never held such a command. The Soviets are really on the move in the east and have even begun reaching the prewar German border. In the west the Allies have cleared the Roer Triangle and are also working hard to eliminate the Colmar Pocket. In the Far East the Americans are advancing on Luzon, and in Burma the Allies have success on the Arakan and the Shwebo Plain, and finally manage to re open the Burma Road with China.
01:27 Soviet advances in East Prussia
09:23 Hungary and the fight for Buda
11:19 Operations Nordwind, Cheerful, and Blackcock
14:23 Block 5
16:14 American advances on Luzon
18:55 Allied successes in Burma
22:06 Summary
22:26 Conclusion
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Adolescence is “a profoundly unnatural life-stage”
Sarah Hoyt on the plight of the younger Millennials and the Gen Z kids in our over-supervised safety-at-all-costs culture today:
Child labour laws did generally get younger children out of dangerous places like mines, mills, and factories. Modern child labour laws instead keep young adults from gaining work experience in many cases.
Photo of pre-teen children working in a mill in Macon, Georgia in 1909. Photo NCLC.01581, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons.
Mostly, it gets attributed to “kids these days” but unless you have kids, these days, you don’t know how they are bound. And even if you do, you might not realize it, because all you see is the infantilization of a generation, and not that they, themselves, aren’t the ones doing the infantilizing, but all those “good rules” and regulations and laws are doing it.
I realized about 10 years ago that my son’s generation was about 10 years behind where we were. In their mid twenties they were doing things we did in our teens. It was disconcerting. And even I had no idea why, other than too much regimentation in school, too much of a never end of button counting, and not enough room or freedom to think or be on their own.
Since then … I’ve seen more. And a lot of the reason they are younger than we were is that the entire world is geared not to let them grow up. I mean, let’s be glad that — unprepared or not — they’re legal adults at 18, or people would be denouncing them for walking alone down the street, without an “adult” at 25.
There’s also … adolescence is in some ways a profoundly unnatural life-stage, and more or less invented in the 20th century. In the past, sure, people were children, and people grew to be adults, but there wasn’t this protracted time period where they were adults in size and at least some ability, but weren’t allowed to be adults: they weren’t allowed to earn or spend, or make their own decisions, for years.
The earn or spend thing is important. Kids used to grow along with their tasks. Read Tudor or colonial memoirs, and you find four year olds looking after cows or horses, or learning Latin, or other unlikely things even for twelve year olds in our time.
Mom went to work at 10 and started getting a salary. It wasn’t much, and 90% of it went to her parents’ budget. But she was working, holding down a job, doing things that were maybe not at adult level, but could lead to it, eventually, if she applied herself. This was normal for her generation. In my own generation, amid the working class, most people went to work at 10. Heck, amid the middle class, most people went to work at 15 or so, after 9th grade. Were they more mature than the rest of us that went all the way to college?
I wouldn’t have thought that at the time, but yes, of course they were. Most of my elementary school classmates were married, with kids by the time my biggest worries were final exams. Of course, with my intellectual pride I looked down on them but now I understand they were managing a very difficult job, which at the time I could not have done.
I always feel stunned and shocked when someone says the kids should be “holding down two jobs like I was at 16” or “working to pay their way through college”. (That last is a giggle as it has two impossibilities. Finding a job that pays enough after college which has a lot of make-work expectations, and making a full-time middle-class salary, which is what college costs these days.) Two Jobs. At 16. The difficulties in giving work to 16 year olds, increasingly restriction of hours, etc. combined with chaotic scheduling in the only unskilled jobs remaining (mostly just retail) means that until recently none of them could find A job. Let alone two. And the recently was during Covid. I haven’t seen so many little 16 year olds cashiering, or serving at tables recently. And that’s because most people I’m seeing are around my age: I guess unemployment is biting hard.
But you know, all these strong rules against “child labor” mean that most kids hit 18 or, if they’re going to college, 22 or — more likely, as most degrees (remember make work?) are taking 6 or 7 years — 24, with absolutely no job experience. Which means their applications aren’t even looked at. Not seriously.
Honestly, almost every young person — particularly young men — I know who found a job, and is doing relatively well, did so through contacts. Through friends of friends. Through knowing someone.
This is a bad sign, because it’s how Portugal functions, and it is not in any way shape or form meritocracy, which in turn contributes to other things falling apart.
But more and more what I’m seeing is young people hitting their mid twenties lost, and doing this, and doing that, and trying this and trying that, and nothing ever gels. To make things worse, they don’t have the habits mom had by 10, because they haven’t been allowed to acquire them.
There was a similar generation — one, while here we’re well into two — in Portugal, where unemployment was so bad (the generation before mine) that most people weren’t “established” on a path till their mid thirties. I’d guess about half of them never got the knack of it: of the day to day of working, fulfilling the work duties, just … the unglamorous day to day that makes us adults.
Food That Time Forgot: Pemmican, The Ultimate Survival Food
Townsends
Published Oct 29, 2023Pemmican is and has always been the ultimate survival food. Pemmican revolutionized trade in the 18th century by giving travelers a new compact source for energy. Originally used as a food to help Native Americans make it though harsh winters, pemmican turned into an entire industry by the late 1700s.
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QotD: Never depend on “surveys” for real-world issues
The respondent pool is, overwhelmingly, college kids taking them for class credit. Knowing what we know about Basic College Girls, who again are the majority of all college kids, is it any surprise that the results just happen to confirm the conclusions the slightly older, but no less Basic, Grad Student Girls were looking for? Throw in the design problem — questions about as subtle as “Do you think all races should be treated equally, or are you a monster?” — and you’ve got scientific proof that Liberals are good people and Conservatives suck.
Severian, “Is vs. Ought II: Moral Foundations Theory”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-04-20.
January 27, 2024
Flashpoint: Texas
Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:
I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.
Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.
Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.
This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.
Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.
However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.
AFN-49: The Forgotten Full-Auto Brother of the FN-49
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Oct 20230:00 Introduction and Overview of the AFN 49
1:23 Detailed Insight into the AFN 49’s Global Presence
3:01 Demonstration and Explanation of the AFN’s Unique Features
5:05 Auto Trip Feature: A Deep Dive
7:27 Unique Characteristics of the AFN 49
8:48 The Journey of AFN 49s to the US
10:17 Conversion of Luxembourg AFN 49s: A Historical Perspective
10:43 Conclusion and AcknowledgementsA note to censors: This video is not a tutorial on full auto conversion. It is an explanation of how the system works, and provides no instruction of how to fabricate or modify parts to modify a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic one. Doing that would be illegal for most people — although certainly not all; conversion or ownership of machine guns is legal in most places with the appropriate government permission.
The SAFN, aka FN-49, is one of the classic post-war European battle rifles, and was sold to nine different countries in the early 1950s before the FAL became FN’s primary combat rifle offering. What is often forgotten is that despite being limited to a fixed 10-round magazine, nearly half of all FN-49s produced were actually fully automatic AFN-49s. The Belgian Army, Luxembourg Army, Luxembourg Gendarmerie, and Belgian Congo all purchased the automatic pattern. So today, we’re going to take a look at how it differs from the regular SAFN that we are used to seeing.
Interestingly, a batch of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie rifles were imported into the US without anyone realising that they were automatic until they arrived and were being unpacked. InterArms went to the IRS (the NFA was a tax law administered by the Treasury; this was before the formation of the ATF) and proposed removing the selector levers and auto sears, as well as milling off their attachment points on the receivers. The IRS agreed that this would be an acceptable conversion to render the guns legally semiautomatic only, and the changes were made before the rifles were sold. They remain on the US collector market today as an interesting example of legal conditions prior to the adoption of a pointless and punitive decree of “once a machine gun, always a machine gun”.
Many thanks to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels for access to this very cool piece! Check them out here: https://www.klm-mra.be/en/
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QotD: McCarthy was right
Yet McCarthy was right – not just in a general sense of clearly understanding that communism is not merely an alternative path to a brighter future but an evil and inhuman ideology at war with the liberal, democratic and Christian West, but also in focusing on the federal bureaucracy’s strangely ineffectual response to the presence in its ranks of many people, often in very senior and influential positions, suspected of working for the communist cause.
Contrary to the official version, it was never McCarthy’s role to unmask Red agents; a job more appropriately done by investigative agencies. In his legislative role overseeing federal bureaucracies, he made it his mission to inquire why so many individuals, whose loyalty has already been put under the question mark by numerous internal and external investigations, had no problems staying in sensitive jobs for years and moving unhindered from one agency to another. Those named by McCarthy (on the Democrat insistence) were not simply some random individuals with vaguely progressive sympathies; already at the time many of them have been identified as Soviet agents and security risks in the testimony of communist renegades (like Whitaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley) or through secret FBI surveillance. Others were suspects on the account of their associations with Eastern European or local communists and causes.
Over the following decades, most have been further incriminated from a variety of sources, including Soviet defectors and the deciphered Venona transcripts of secret Soviet intelligence cables, which mention some 400 individuals in the 1940s and 50s United States as active agents and contacts or abettors and helpers. The problem was not Reds under the beds, but Reds quite literally in positions of access to highly valued classified information or positions of influence over the shape of US policy, from the White House, through the State Department, to a host of other departments and agencies. All this is now beyond any dispute, but these weren’t mere idle speculations at the time either. Lauchlin Currie, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Silvermaster, T.A. Bisson and dozens and dozens of others did conspire in small groups and networks to pass on classified information to the Soviets or steer the American foreign policy into the direction favourable to the communists (particularly in China during and after the war). And yet, despite all having serious question marks over them, they were allowed to work in government for years undisturbed. It was not because of some giant communist conspiracy at the highest levels of government but because of the bureaucratic inertia, old boys’ networks and the organisational reluctance to admit problems – but also because communist agents within protected and promoted each other. Time and time again mistakes got buried instead of rectified. McCarthy dared to shed the public spotlight on the continuing outrage and ask why. It was like a poor country cousin being invited to a formal dinner by his big city relatives and dropping a loud fart between the entree and the main.
But the story of McCarthy goes beyond these well-established historical facts to the campaign of character assassination and falsification of the record that succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. There is truly nothing new under the sun when the entrenched liberal establishment wants to protect its turf and fend off its enemies and as you read what McCarthy has been subjected to in relatively short period of 1950-54 you will no doubt experience a sense of deja vu from recent history: indiscriminate mud throwing in a hope that something sticks; blatant lies, misrepresentations and misinterpretations of evidence; politicians working hand in hand with public servants to coordinate the attacks; destroying and withholding of information and evidence (for example, the security information about the suspected individuals being physically transferred from the State Department to the Truman White House so that it could not be subpoenaed or otherwise accessed; a practice condemned by the Republicans and then continued by the Eisenhower White House); blackmailing witnesses or preventing them from testifying; biased media running the narrative (fake news is nothing new); whitewashing the accused and discrediting the accusers; incessant lawfare; trumped up charges and defamation. Coincidentally, McCarthy too was compared to Hitler while at the same time being accused of helping Russians. McCarthyism is not what McCarthy has done to his supposed victims; it’s what the left has done to him. It’s what it keeps doing to people who get in the way and threaten to disturb the business as usual.
Arthur Chrenkoff, “Before there was Trump, there was Joe McCarthy”, Daily Chrenk, 2019-09-30.
