Kesher Talk

Are you now or have you ever been . . . Kevin Drum makes a very good point, and one that it was in the back of my mind to make sometime, but he says it better than I would have anyway: What is up with the attempt to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy? This is for conservatives like leftists saying nice things about Stalin. Don't go there. You have to twist history into a pretzel to do it and the benefits are temporary and illusory. I am telling you this for your own good. Stalin was a bad dude, and McCarthy would have leveraged himself into a homegrown version of Stalin if he could have. He couldn't because Americans - officials elected by Americans - finally said "enough." (As one commenter points out, McCarthy's censure was a bi-partisan vote.)

The only thing that stands between liberty and tyranny is enough people saying "enough."

(Apparently Kevin's example of this attempted whitewash is coming from Ann Coulter, the Camille Paglia of the Beltway set, but I think we should take it seriously anyway. I've seen it bandied about in the blogosphere lately, trying to become a viable meme, and it should be thoroughly squashed before it spreads.)

posted by Judith @ 6/29/2003 06:09:04 PM