Kazam!

Mocking conservatives is not my bag. More or less, I agree with Gilbert and Sullivan that "every boy and every girl that's born alive is a little Liberal or else a little Conservative": whether you're a right-wing person or a left-wing person is a pretty basic disposition of personality, and they'll always be liberals and conservatives no matter how
persuasive the other side's arguments get, so mocking conservatives for being conservative is like mocking the weather. The point, for progressives, is instead to win—to implement our program to make a better world even if reluctant conservatives have to be dragged into said better world kicking and screaming.

What's more, mocking conservatives is terrible politics—it makes it harder for us to win a better world. No one likes a sanctimonious ass. And liberals have an unlovely history of presuming conservatives to be stupid, condescending to them—and then getting their posteriors handed to them by those same conservatives in elections. Great example: when Ronald Reagan first came on the electoral scene, running for California governor in 1966. Reagan punditry soon fixated on whether his appearances in Knute Rockne, All-American and Bedtime for Bonzo on the late show violated equal time provisions. An editorial cartoon depicted Barry Goldwater directing him from a prompter's box ("...Perfect, Ronald...enter stage right..."). Picket signs materialized reading "Elizabeth Taylor for Superintendent of Public Instruction." A Washington Star columnist recorded "the air of furtive jubilation down at Lassie for Governor headquarters." Esquire graciously allowed that the "Republican Party isn't bankrupt, or isn't that bankrupt that it has to turn to Liberace for leadership." The Christian Century, unchristianly, called him "Borax Boy," after the sponsor of his last TV show.

Ronald Reagan had been underestimated, not for the last time. He learned to count on it, cherish it, revel in it: it was his political capital. So don't mock conservatives.

But there's an exception to every rule. Mark your calendars. I'm about to mock the shizzy out of them.

M. Stanton Evans, the conservative propagandist and journalism "educator" last seen on this blog nobly proclaiming, "I didn't like Nixon until Watergate," has a new book out, Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America's Enemies.

I haven't read the book. And considering that even National Review gave it a pan ("weakened by a lack of balance, and his desire to write an unabashed tribute that seeks to exonerate McCarthy on virtually every count"; read Accuracy in Media's outraged pushback here and Ann Coulter's—she calls Evans' "the greatest book since the Bible"—here) I'm probably not going to.

I have, however, read the Amazon reviews and they're hilllllllllarious!!!!

One "Howard Butler, MD" (apparently they don't care in medical school if you don't know how to make subjects and verbs agree) effuses:

I have long been a student of McCarthy, long before the famed Venona papers were released in 95. I never bought Woody Allen's "The Front" or the other anti-McCarthy propaganda (such as the "poor" McCarthy victim named Kazam who was so extolled by the New York Times and other "progressive" publications) so many have so willingly embraced-while all of McCarthy's prescient beliefs are now biting this country in the form of "progressive" reality. It seems that McCarthy is having the last laugh as his "attacks" have proved correct.

Kazam!!

The good doctor goes on:

The book spells out the facts-PERIOD. It is funny how those revisionists who love to rewrite "other" history for political reasons, will never allow the true McCarthy to be revised and accepted for what he was.

The conservatives of this country should be ashamed as they have allowed this man's legacy to be compromised for political expediency. They literally traded away this man's dignity and sacrificed him. New Deal politics are exposed for what it was and we are paying for it today in the form of a National Debt that will ultimately bankrupt our country-and McCarthy's enemies will get their ultimate revenge and victory when that happens.... Will America wake up? I doubt it, no matter how much this man is vindicated by books like this.

At least Dr. Butler knows what a period is. "Mark Edwards Roberts" ends his essay with a comma:

I was just a lad when most of this was happening, and it made me wonder why everyone was down on Joe. My impressions were good even then I never believed what the press was saying was the end of the discussion and now after all of these years it's making sense,

And now for my next trick I will "undermind" one "John R. Clark," by merely quoting him:

It has many many references to sources which underminds the liberal smears and cover ups over the years.

There are dozens more; read them yourself and pick your own favorite. Here's mine, from "J. Ames," a Rip Van Bircher who literally believes Bolsheviks ("impervious to facts") are still our gravest threat:

This should demolish the Bolshevik Left's drum beat of 'McCarthyism' once and for all.

But it won't.

The Bolsheviks amongst us are impervious to facts, impervious to thought, and seek to destroy the old America by any means necessary.

To the devil with those who cry 'McCarthyism!' We could use a few men of his courage and selflessness today. All McCarthy needed as a good PR flak to run interference on the coordinated, COMINTERN spnosored campaign to destroy him--and with him, the horrible truth.

God bless 'Tailgunner' Joe and all who sacrified with him. And my [sic] Lord God Almighty Show his mercy on the United States of America.

My Lord God Almighty indeed. "Tailgunner" Joe indeed needs better flaks working for him—ones that know, for instance, unlike this Mr. Ames, that the nickname "Taingunner" was meant to mock the man who invented his war record out of whole cloth, claiming as a war wound from a fiery crash an injury he actually sustained during a hazing ceremony.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future