Customer Reviews

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

5 star:		(870)
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2 star:		(96)
1 star:		(873)

 

 

Back in the 1980's, while working on my degree in History in Silicon Valley, CA, I often found myself in heated arguments which fundamentally revolved around a single idea - McCarthy was right.

Years later, while teaching a History class at a High School, a new book was published about "Venona" - or decrypted soviet communications from before, during and after McCarthy's supposed reigh of terror. This evidence should have put to rest any questions regarding the accuracy and importance of McCarthy and his efforts.

I introduced this information since the history book provided by the district was clearly biased and inaccurate given the latest information. I was told to simply "teach the book" by administrators. I was not prevented from presenting the new information, but sticking to the book was the suggestion first offered.

Ms. Coulter, lays out all the facts in her latest work. Sprinkled with her usual witty jabs at those on the left, she takes the reader through a well documented and supported thesis.

However, its sad that works like this get couched in the usual left/right, democrat/republican hopper. Instead, you can simply read her claims and check for yourself. Its all there. All the sources are dutifully noted for the reader to fact check on their own.

The myth of who and what McCarthy is may never be corrected. A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth... particularly after half a century! Perhaps this will be a good way to discover how many years of facts it takes to restore the truth.

Interested in learning more? Simply do a search on Amazon for the word "Venona" in the book title. There are several works on the subject and they are astonishingly eye opening.

Finally, when reading books like this, always let the notations be your guide. If the bibliography does not have primary sources listed, its not likely to be worth your time - or its supposed "facts".

I was one of those brainwashed into thinking joe McCarthy was the problem instead of the solution and will now read the Evona Project and the other scholarly book recommended by Ann in this book. She is so clear and documents everything so well - unlike so many today who make up facts to support their premise. I don't always like her analogies - "... by Truman would be like appointing Bin Laden to secretary of state ..." type things - but her writing style is really fun. This particular book clarifies so many things that were confusing to me in my early years and I purchased copies for three friends. It is very important to see just what so many in America are doing today to undermine this great country. It is especially important for the liberals to read this book so that they can redirect their efforts so as to still accomplish their exalted aims without causing so much harm. This book really is a must read - especially by the media moguls who are causing so much harm with their "America is always wrong" reporting.

Critics of this book moan and whine about everything except the facts that she presents in her usual flawless, entertaining prose. This is a well-documented (pages of footnotes) look at some issues and some real history the Left would prefer we all forget or reinterpret. A classic.

I will not add my own diatribe here, the book speaks loud and clear for itself. It is unfair to call Ann Coulter a fanatic or attribute any other label that would infer that she is a zealot or out of her mind in any way. However she is angry, and she does argue her case convincingly.

It is true that this country is horribly at odds in political opinion. I don't care if it is over who has the intellectual or philosopical highground. For me what matters is that you are either for or against America and it's preservation.

I've always known that there can never be a true utopian society, this is common sense when one takes the time to consider the very nature of being human. Let's face it we all Hate, some times it even feels good to hate. But there are those whose hate are hellbent on self-destruction and they want to take my country down with them. And I stand with Ann Coulter and will not abide to this plan or attitude.

But where Ann Coulter really wins me over, is that she does her homework. Her books have an extensive bibliography that puts liberal authors like Al Franken and Michael Moore to shame. She reads and she researches rather extensively and as one of my History Professors' attested: If a non-fiction social commentary is without a bibliography - it is SUSPECT!

In this book Ann moves through the actual events and then compares them to the reporting of the events then and now. A very straight foreward read...

Ann Coulter is giving the left (both the malignant narcissists and those in denial) some of their own medicine. That explains the impotent howls of rage displayed in many of these reviews. As for the book, it is factual, well researched and engaging. It also rehabilitates McCarthy after all the slander visited upon this patriot over many decades. I enjoy the author's keen insight and her confrontational approach. Long may she expose the real agenda of those who only seek power. Books of related interest include In Defense Of Global Capitalism by Johan Norberg, Anti-Americanism by French author Jean Francois Revel, The Death Of Right And Wrong by Tammy Bruce, The Quest For Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell, Envy: A Theory Of Social Behavior by Helmut Schoeck and The New Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Chesler.

Our forefathers were so afraid the word treason would be misused, it is the only crime defined in the US Constitution (Article III, Section 3.) Their narrow definition was to prevent people like Ann Coulter from wielding the charge recklessly which she does anyway.

Unfortunatetly, Ms. Coulter distorts and omits facts and events, and misquotes her sources to pen fantastic conclusions that border on the irrational. It starts very early in the book.

She takes Walter Cronkite to task for calling comments made by Jerry Falwell, abominable. She claims that all Falwell said was that the abortionists and gays may not have pleased the Almighty. As reported, Cronkite reads like a bully and Falwell a victim.

Now let's look at what really transpired. Jerry Falwell appeared on Pat Robertson's 700 Club TV show two days after 9/11. Falwell said "... I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, the People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point a finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen.'" That's what Walter Cronkite called abominable. That's what Jerry Falwell apologized for a few days later.

That sounds a little different than Ann Coulter's version, doesn't it?

She claims the NY Times kept silent about the Venona Project when they actually ran a 1000-word article. She also claims the NY Times irreverently referred to President Reagan as a "cowboy ready to shoot at the drop of a hat." Actually, the NY Times was quoting a Reagan administration official who remarked, "I suppose our biggest minus from the operation is that there now is a resurgence of the caricature of Ronald Reagan, the cowboy, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat."

Again, it's different in the retelling.

Her biggest leap in prevarication is her high praise for Senator Joe McCarthy whose behavior she tries very hard to emulate. She claims falsely that liberals created the term, McCarthyism. Perhaps she never came across the book: "McCarthyism: The Fight for America" by Senator Joe McCarthy. She claimed that McCarthy was brought down by a liberal conspiracy when Republican senators, fed up with his reckless slanders voted for censure. One of the senators was Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush.

Her revisionistic views go into overdrive when she charges President Harry Truman and George C. Marshall as soft on communism. In spite of a Republican congress that drastically reduced the military's budget in 1947, both men intiated the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall Plan which helped a dozen European countries recover economically, and prevented them from going communist. American influence and prestige was never higher.

Is that soft on communism?

Many reviewers have claimed that this book was well-researched because of the quantity of footnotes Coulter has. But misquoting sources, and using sources that are articles of opinion do not qualify as "well-researched." One praising, reviewer-rube, wrote that she used primary sources, but couldn't explain what it meant.

And calling Americans with a different political viewpoint communists, traitors, flag haters, means the author does exactly what she claims only liberals do. And there is the irony. She accuses Democrats and liberals of making "personal, snippy complaints," while her text reads like, well, personal, snippy complaints.

There is one person she quotes accurately, a historian named Paul Johnson who said, "Those who treasure the meaning of words will treasure truth, and those who bend the words to their purposes are very likely in pursuit of anti-social ones."

That's the one part of this book worth remembering.

Just a wonderful book! Those like myself who actually read history and its nuances appreciate her insistance on being as historically factually accurate as possible. And rest assured this trait will not be found in her legion of detractors. As she averred in her prior book "Slander", they mostly just call names usually after they've just cited some trivial nugget of information which they then conclude collapses her entire argument; the fallacy of inductive logic writ large. Well, then she lets em have it again, with both barrels.

As Ann so accurately points out, the political Left has built all of their arguments re social, political and regulatory policy on a series of false premises. At the outset of the book she focuses on bringing some historical accuracy to the derivation of the phrase "McCarthyism", the bludgeon with which the Left has used to shout down any criticism that the Right might have of their socialist policies. All that most remember, who were alive at the time of the McCarthy hearings, is that the press was not friendly to tailgunner Joe, as they called him, and that he was made to appear a vile and disgusting human being. Well, Ann sets the record straight and pretty soon we find out that what really riled the Left was that McCarthy was right, there were hundreds of Communist agents who were taking their orders from Stalin in our government. But, have you noticed how many movies have been made by the loony leftists in Hollywood glorifying those who were questioned by the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) versus the number made about how many American lives were lost because their counterparts in government gave away our state secrets to a vicious Communist dictatorship? These movie moguls certainly use plenty of film to depict Hitler as a madman, but how many films have you seen on the evils of Communism and the stories of those killed and of those whose lives were ruined? The "Reds" around the globe killed many times more people than Hitler ever hoped to, but when will we see the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials for these thugs? Ann Coulter is essentially asking these questions hence the title of her book "Treason" is an apt one.

Do you ever read about the evils of Communism in the New York Times? On ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC? NPR? Or in the Washington Post, Boston Globe or the L.A. Times? Ever notice how until recently you couldn't get a conservative book published thru the major publishers? Ask yourself "why?" Ann does a good job of getting at these questions in this seminal work.

It's utterly fascinating watching her defend herself and the statements in her book on television talk shows and in her weekly column. She's just got too much intellectual fire-power for the timid men who usually get their way by badgering a man. But, they can't do that the same way with her. She cites chapter and verse about why the democratic party is the party of treason and she makes her case. She's got the facts on her side and the Left can no longer get away with their "the emporers got new clothes" routine. She calls them on it in this book, over and over and over. He doesn't have "any" clothes, he's naked. It's the bleating of the sheep and there's more to come.

In her final chapter, she cites the lack of faith in God of the political Left and particulrly lets the ACLU have it between the eyes. After the latest of their antics re the Boy Scouts, they deserve every bit of it. To give her needed exposure to the general public the Fox network has her on almost nightly, over and over and over again, with those of the Left who would disabuse her of her notions on the true casting of history, McCarthy and otherwise; and she blows them away night after night.

Read this book. Don't be put off by the naysayers. It's important if we're to get America back going in the right direction again.

Ann Coulter's book Treason, the most important political book in the past half-century, is now available. It should be required reading for every American. Yes, I'm perfectly serious.

Treason addresses the extraordinary contrast the Left's approach to national security makes with that of the Right. The first hundred twenty pages of the book are given to a shattering re-examination of the life and work of the most maligned figure in modern American politics: Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. As was Slander, it's meticulously footnoted -- and all the references appear to check out perfectly.

There are folks who dislike Coulter's take-no-prisoners style. "Of tastes there is nothing written," say the sages. There are folks who think no one would pay her any attention if she weren't a tall, beautiful blonde. Nearly all of these are her ideological adversaries. There are folks who think her willingness to say precisely what she thinks is somehow shameful, a detriment to the American political dialogue. These persons, who've dispensed a lot of slander at conservatives in their day, have a funny idea of the dictates of gentility.

Ann Coulter has been called virtually every vicious name in the book for her opinions and her unabashed presentations thereof. I don't agree with all of her positions, but I admire her tremendously for her courage. When one makes one's living by the written word, to express oneself as she's done requires quite a lot of courage. As has been pointed out by many observers of the punditry scene, including Coulter herself, it's not conservative authors who rake in the big bucks for their work -- despite their enormous differential popularity among persons who buy nonfiction books.

Name one person in public life these past fifty years who's had a kind word for Joe McCarthy. With the aid of the recently declassified Venona Project intercepts of Soviet cable transmissions, Coulter constructs an airtight case that McCarthy was dead accurate, which would make him the preeminent defender of the United States since the conclusion of World War II. She never flinches from this stance. She exposes a thousand libels and deliberate distortions of the record, perpetrated by the Democratic Party and its annex in the media, in the attempt to undermine McCarthy's case. She labels those who've rewritten history to defame the Senator in the years since his hearings as traitors -- a label they richly deserve.

With Communism essentially defeated, defending the foremost crusader against Communist infiltration of the United States government, dead for almost a half-century, might seem like an unnecessary undertaking. Unnecessary or not, it is simple justice -- and for seeing to it, Ann Coulter deserves far more credit for her forthrightness, her clarity, and her courage than she's likely to get.

Well-researched, exciting read. Commie sympathizers are still claiming Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocent - even after declassification of the Venona files, tell-all books by Ex-KGB officials, everything except a hand-wringing confession from the lying spies. Ann attacks the blind-faith, totalitarian zealotry of the closet commies and their Hollywood-commie defenders with fact after closet-commie-outing fact. If you think the commie phenomena is over .... hello Hillary!