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Loyalties: A Son's Memoir

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I love this book and have never understood how and why it went out of print. Maybe it helps the reader to be from Washington, DC. Carl Bernstein grew up around here, went to school around here, and his parents and family were very much part of the local radical scene, so when he names names and locates businesses, schools and houses, it's all walkable for those of us who live in the District. But beyond the local interest, Carl Bernstein gives us a strong sense of what it was to be part of a radical fifties family. This was a time when conformity was so nuanced, so as a kid Bernstein was both proud and ashamed to have his mother's picture appear on the front page of a major newspaper when she was arrested for picketing the Five and Ten. (People forget how much the Communist party contributed to the Civil Rights movement in some parts of the country during a period when there was still a risk of job loss for many who wanted to protest segregation.)

In short, this is a minor classic, much underrated and well worth reading. I teach history and I'd happily use it forone of my classes if I could just get enough copies for my students! My students who have read have all had good things to say.

I've just finished reading a book entitled "Loyalties, a Son's Memoir" by Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame.

Carl Bernstein's dad was a lawyer. He was interested in politics. He got involved in the Roosevelt administration and served on several prominent committees. He joined the military in World War II and went over to Europe to fight against Fascism and Nazism. When he returned to his home, it seems to me, he found more of the same waiting for him right here.

On March 21, 1947 Harry Truman passed executive order 9835. This order was to trigger the American Inquisition of the late 40's and early 50's - the McCarthy Era.

This law basically stated that anyone suspected of disloyalty could be summarily dismissed from their government job. You could be called before a commission on information provided anonymously. You had no right to a lawyer, no jury, no trial. You weren't allowed to confront your accusers, or to even know who they were. No proof or specific evidence was required, but yet if the board found that you were suspect, you would be fired from your job, and labeled as a subversive. You might never find another job. You might have to move from your neighborhood, change your name, lie, hide and keep the knowledge of your appearance before this inquisition committee a secret for the rest of your life. And this all could happen to you because you were a member of some labor union, or an associate of a member of a labor union. Or you were a member of a club that petitioned for the rights of blacks or minorities in America; or you wrote something positive about the Soviet Union, or you associated with someone who did. You could lose your job, your career and the potential for your whole life's efforts on the false accusation of an anonymous, jealous fellow worker; someone who may have had a cousin in line for your job.

Carl Bernstein's dad was one of these people. He was bigger than an unjustly accused victim though. He was an outright champion of the victimized. As a lawyer, he took it upon himself to defend over five hundred of these people brought before Mr. McCarthy and his team of government investigators until finally like, Clarence Darrow before him, he was brought to the firing line by his political rivals and enemies. He lost his status and position. He lost his Washington career. He lost his ability to practice law. He ended up opening up a Bendix coin-operated Laundromat in a black neighborhood, and that is how he earned his living from that time on.

This is quite a story, in itself, but there is more.

Carl Bernstein's dad, a defender of the liberal left was confronted by the McCarthy champions of the right. Two of McCarthy's prominent Knights were the infamous Roy Cohn, and Richard M. Nixon.

Richard M. Nixon, the man who was forced to resign from the highest government job in the land, who had his whole career ruined; who lived the rest of his life fending off accusations and denying his being labeled a crook, and a criminal - this man's life, very much in the pattern of his late rival, Alfred Bernstein, was brought to this disgraceful position, at least in part, by the son of his victim, Carl Bernstein. The man whose life and career Richard M. Nixon had once helped to destroy.

Richard Noble - The Hobo Philosopher - Author of:

"America on Strike" American Labor - History

I heard Carl Bernstein interviewed for this book on public radio. In the interview, he made an amazing statement. First, he described his mother's unhappiness with him writing this book. When the interviewer asked why, he said that she had told him "Because it was true - we were all communists." In other words, McCarthy and the right-wing commie-haters weren't making it up - the people accused during the Red Scare were guilty as charged. And this from an insider.

Very interesting. With all the crocodile tears cried for the poor blacklisted 'liberals,' the truth was, they really were communists or fellow-travelers. Even those who defend them now never come out and say that the accusations weren't true - they just talk about persecution as if these people had been picked at random.

Please note the mention of Bernstein's mother being involved in the Rosenberg defense protests. Of course, she knew that the Roserbergs were guilty - that's the reason she supported them! I have no great sympathy for such people. The fact that they were involved in the civil rights movement does not absolve them of all sins. When I grew up I had nuclear missiles targeted at my head, and the Bernsteins were on the side of the people behind those missiles. With ten million people murdered in the Soviet Union - more than in Nazi Germany! - I think it's fair to say that they were on the wrong side of history.

Read this book, and keep in mind the fact that these people really were communists (it wasn't just wild accusations by mean conservatives), and that this nation had every right to fear communism during those years. If the Bernsteins had their way, blacklists would have been the least of this country's problems - think a Gulag in Alaska, with millions worked to death to protect The Party.

Bernstein talks about getting his butt kicked at school after his folks had to testify before Nixon/McCarthy, and it was in the following mornings papers.

Helps prove that the media is full of commies, and that if you are someone the media loves to hate, you are speaking the truth.
If you are a media darling, you are a commie.

Read this and see it for yourself.

People old enough to remember Watergate, first hand, have told me it was never revealed that Dick Nixon, Hoover, and McCarthy, were after Bersntein's folks, and had surviellance of Bernstein's bar-mitzvah, (to see who was on the invite list.)

My only complaint is all of the Yiddish in the book. The Communist Party must have been exclusivley Jewish, or at least at the mover and shaker level. When Bernstein's Mother was organizing counter-demonstrations to the Rosenberg's (Atomic spies) Death Penalty, she would talk with her family, and other party members, and some of it is related, ver batim. This includes the Yiddish, and Carl doesnt translate it, so I am still clueless as to what the exact phrase was.

It's a minor annoyance however, as you certainly get the flavor that this guy was less than objective from the time he was very little when it came to his desire to whip up the public against Nixon. Remember when Nixon was reelected he had over 60% approval ratings. Ratings as high as the media loved to tell us about comrade Clinton.

Check it out, very informative as to who the players in American Communism were, what their goals were, and how they acheived them.

This book could encourage independent thought among media watching American consumers, but let us not get to hopeful.
Also check out "Silent Coup" from Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin.

I have just read Carl Bernstein's book, Loyalties and found it fell far short of what I would have expected from a man of his high journalistic reputation. His father did not want personal vignettes put into the book and yet Mr. Bernstein had lots of private comments about his parents that I felt were an invasion of their privacy. He also spent a lot of time on his own life at that time which really was secondary to the tumultous events his parents had been involved in. There should have been more input into the causes and events during those McCarthy years and what he did put in was episodic and not put together clearly. I also did not quite understand his attitudes regarding his parents' activities and membership in the Communist party which he put them on the spot about. He doesn't make things too clear. I felt he was too aware of making an impression with his writing abilities.