Customer Reviews

While You Slept

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While not perhaps as memorable or timeless a work as his "As We Go Marching" or the invaluable "The Roosevelt Myth," this 1951 book by John T. Flynn is nevertheless an important one. It's also strangely timely: some of the issues and personalities surrounding the question of "Who lost China?" were raised more recently in Ann Coulter's "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism." Coulter readers interested in exploring the question more fully could do far worse than to track down a copy of this title.

Flynn was a tireless slayer of sacred cows, and one of the central figures of the anti-New Deal coalition now remembered as the Old Right. This book deals largely with the question of Communist domination of Asia, in particular China and Korea. But most of the attention is focused in the U.S., and particularly upon the men -- some dupes, some Comsymps (ah, for the good old days of Red-baiting language), and a few dedicated Soviet agents -- in Washington and elsewhere who made that domination possible.

A key part of Flynn's thesis is that the print, film, and radio media were deliberately employed to soften Americans' natural opposition to Communist totalitarianism. The idea was to prepare us for the idea of Soviet "partnership" (and thus accept the legitimacy of the Soviet system) in the post-World War II era. A large section of the book is filled with examples of pro-Communist propaganda in all three media, and the silencing -- contra the "McCarthyism" myth -- of critics of the Russian or Chinese Communists. In partnership with the pro-Communist agitprop were the missteps and blunders committed by political leaders, particularly FDR, Marshall, and Acheson. Truman, too, receives his fair share of blame. But as Flynn notes, most of the seeds of "our tragedy in Asia" were planted during the FDR years.

Does any of this matter any more? Flynn's lessons about the propagandistic power of the media are certainly still relevant and worthy of deep study. And though the guns are silent, China and Korea are certainly still in the headlines. Unraveling the mythology of the rise of Communism in Asia is essential for grappling with the situation there today. Perhaps most important of all is taking the time yet again to knock the pins out from under the vastly inflated reputations of FDR and Truman. Few men have ever performed that valuable service better than John T. Flynn. He deserves to be remembered, and read, with our thanks.

This is an excellent, brief discussion of the various issues concerning the loss of China to communism in the 40's and '50's which was accomplished with the help of soviet agent Lattimore and a communist influenced U.S state department. Flynn, the author of "The Roosevelt Myth" and other classic texts of the "Old Right", writes simply, but says it all.