Randy and Sasha’s posts on the alleged soft-spot some liberals had for the Soviet Union during the Cold War brings to mind the closing line of Irving Kristol’s 1952 Commentary essay on civil liberties and Communism. While noting Joseph McCarthy was a “vulgar demagogue,” Kristol argued that there was reason to suspect more than a few of McCarthy’s most vociferous critics — the anti-anti-Communists — were indeed soft on Communism. He then concluded (and I paraphrase) that there was one thing most Americans knew about McCarthy, and that was that he, like them, was unequivocally anti-communist. Yet about the spokesmen for American liberalism, they knew no such thing. Needless to say, this is arguably the most controversial thing Kristol ever wrote.
UPDATE: I fail to see how anything in the above passage consists of “gloating” about some on the Left’s past inability to see the true evil of Communism, nor do I accept Brad DeLong’s suggestion that I “praise or excuse” McCarthy simply by noting the parallels between my co-bloggers’ reflections on liberals and Communism, and Kristol’s 1952 assessment of the anti-anti-Communists. (Indeed, at least one of DeLong’s commentators is as flabbergasted by this interpretation as I am.)
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