In an exchange about my post quoting a 1952 Irving Kristol essay, Brad DeLong redefines priase to encompass calling someone a “vulgar demagogue” but “unequivocally anticommunist.” Funny. I always thought to praise someone you had to say nice things about them.
I suspect DeLong’s commentary is due, at least in part, to his contemporary opinion of Kristol — and his dislike of Kristol’s worldview may well be justified. (I have plenty of disagreements with Kristol myself, especially in the context of free speech and civil liberties.) But it’s worth reiterating that when Kristol wrote the words I quoted — 1952 — he was still considered a man of the Left, albeit the anti-communist Left. Whether Kristol has since genuinely praised McCarthy or not, I have no idea, but I remain flabbergasted that DeLong thinks the language I quoted constitutes praise.
UPDATE: A reader is “puzzled” by DeLong’s post, as “What does the fact that McCarthy was crude, opportunistic, and ineffective have to do with the stance of many liberals/progressives in 1952?” He goes on to note that “Kristol was writing soon after the Wallace campaign of 1948. Many liberals went for the Progressives because they were appalled by the foreign policy of Acheson, Marshall, and Truman. Seems somewhat disingenuous to cite the record of A/M/T in order to prove the anti-communist bona fides of Arthur Miller or The Nation.” The reader concludes, just because McCarthy was wrong to accuse Acheson, Marshall, and Truman of treachery, “that doesn’t make Alger Hiss innocent or Lillian Hellman a persecuted liberal.”
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