A Liberal-Hunting Terminator

Ann Coulter is like T-X, the female Terminator in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new movie. The author of “Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism” is so obsessed with her search-and- destroy mission that she is blind to everything -- nuance, context, even, at times, the facts.

The result is that the truth -- that traitors have existed in our midst -- is obscured by the collateral damage she inflicts. Not only does she fail to bring the truth to light, but, in fact, she brings discredit to the cause she purports to champion.

Just as it’s hard to stay clean in mud wrestling, it’s hard to have a rational debate with someone who asserts, as Coulter does, that Democrats suffer from a “pusillanimous psychosis,” that the left is always “against America” and that “liberals root for anarchy and against civilization.”

But let’s look at just two examples of Coulter’s mad method, as a way of illustrating her overall approach. In the first, she distorts the present to make her case about the past; in the second, she simply distorts the past.

In a perverse exercise in conservative victimology, Coulter argues that Whittaker Chambers, the ex-Communist journalist who identified his party colleague Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy in 1948, continues to be dismissed, when not despised. “Chambers is not hated to this day only on a technicality,” Coulter writes. “The MTV generation doesn’t know who he is.”

To be sure, Chambers was reviled at the time by many on the left for accusing Hiss, who was a respected former State Department official, of espionage. But such hostility didn’t stop Chambers from writing a bestselling book, “Witness,” which was published in 1952 by Random House, the pluperfect Eastern establishment publisher.

In fact, Chambers, who died in 1961, is hardly forgotten today. The book is still in print, so some in the MTV generation must, in fact, be snapping up copies. In 1984, he was awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan, and his star continues to rise; he was the subject of an admiring and much-admired biography in 1997 -- written by Sam Tanenhaus, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, undeniably a bastion of trendy Manhattanite liberalism. The book was even blurbed by liberal icon John Kenneth Galbraith.

Chambers’ reputation rides high for one simple reason: He was right. Alger Hiss was guilty, as historian Allen Weinstein proved in his 1978 book, “Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case.” The truth matters.

But because the truth matters, Coulter’s effort to rehabilitate Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) is destined to backfire. Coulter praises the man who came to embody an “ism” as a hero who was “indispensable,” “erudite” and “beloved by workers.” So what’s not to like? His only flaw, according to Coulter, was that he did not deport himself according to Marquis of Queensbury rules. That’s her story.

Now let’s look at the facts.

On Feb. 9, 1950, McCarthy gave a speech claiming that 57 known communists were harbored in the State Department. Subsequently, at various times, he raised the number to 81, 205 or “a lot.” At no point did he offer any evidence for his charge -- let alone put names next to those numbers.

In fact, there may well have been subversives in the State Department, but McCarthy’s allegation was about as helpful as proclaiming that there are criminals in Los Angeles. Yet in her eagerness to invert history, Coulter praises her champion for his responsible reticence, insisting that he “doggedly resisted releasing anyone’s name to the public.”

That’s like praising O.J. Simpson for respecting the privacy of the “real killers.” The point is that McCarthy made the legitimate job of opposing communism harder, not easier.

While the Wisconsinite was tilting at windmills, slandering even the Army and World War II hero George C. Marshall, Democrat Harry Truman and then Republican Dwight Eisenhower were building the successful architecture of anti-communist containment. No wonder both presidents disdained McCarthy.

Finally, in 1954, the Republican-controlled Senate voted 65 to 22 to censure one of its own for bringing “dishonor and disrepute” to the legislative chamber. Among those voting to condemn McCarthy was Sen. Prescott Bush (R-Conn.), grandfather of the current president.

Anti-communism -- meaning not just opposition to totalitarianism in the Soviet Union but also to its advocates and accomplices in the U.S. and around the world -- was and is a legitimate, even noble, cause. But praising McCarthy for being an anti-communist is like praising Ayatollah Khomeini for being an upholder of traditional values; one should look for better exemplars.

Perhaps Coulter takes up the McCarthyite banner as a deliberate provocation, to help push her book up the bestseller lists. If so, she’s succeeded. But it’s more likely that she really believes, in an all-smashing Terminatrix-like way, what she writes.

Either way -- if she’s sincere or if she’s just acting -- she will fail in her kill-the-liberals mission because fair-minded people of all ideologies will reject her outrageous overstatements and outright absurdities. But failure never stops a Terminator. No matter what, they keep going and going and going, no matter how much damage they do.

James P. Pinkerton is a fellow at the New America Foundation.