The
Hanssen Shocker
Liberals
are rather pleased that Robert Hanssen, the latest accused Soviet/Russian
agent, was to all outward appearances a strict, orthodox Catholic.
The liberals fail to see that, far from impugning Catholicism, the
Hanssen case vindicates McCarthyism.
Hanssen
is baffling, because he forces us to ask: "How could a man
be so devout a Catholic and a Soviet agent at the same time?"
After all, he had six children, sent them to expensive Catholic
schools, went out of his way to attend daily Mass, and was an active
opponent of abortion. This goes far beyond the need to establish
a credible disguise. At the same time, it didn’ t help him when
he was caught in illegal activities.
Put
otherwise, Hanssen is an enigma precisely because orthodox Catholicism
is the most unlikely camouflage for pro-Soviet activities. It requires
a life of strenuous contradictions.
On
the other hand, nobody was really shocked when a liberal turned
out to be a Communist. The case of Alger Hiss, Franklin Roosevelt’s
advisor and architect of the United Nations, shocked us because
an active Soviet agent had gotten so close to the president (though,
as it turns out, Hiss wasn’t the only one). But even Hiss’s defenders
weren’t really puzzled by the possibility that Hiss was secretly
working for Joseph Stalin; nobody asked, "How on earth can
you be a liberal and a Communist at the same time?"
Why?
Because liberalism was the most hospitable camouflage for Communism.
You could advance the Soviet cause merely by pursuing a liberal
agenda. The simplest proof is that William Z. Foster, head of the
U.S. Communist Party, also sat on the national board of the liberal
American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU saw no contradiction in
his working for "civil liberties," as it defined them,
and working for Soviet goals, for the simple reason that there was
no contradiction.
Communism had been approvingly described as "liberalism in
a hurry," and liberals like Roosevelt affectionately dubbed
Stalin "Uncle Joe." Even today, few liberals blame Roosevelt
for his abject truckling to Stalin. The wartime alliance between
the United States and the Soviet Union ended with ten Christian
countries falling to Communist tyranny, with persecution on a scale
Nero would have blanched at a persecution liberals didn’t, and
still don’t, care to talk about. Today’s liberals also like to forget
that Roosevelt extended admiration and aid to Stalin long before
World War II. He knew a kindred spirit when he saw one.
After
all, "liberalism in a hurry" sought the same sort of social
order American liberalism seeks a secularist, materialist society
in which power is centralized and the state controls economic life.
When Americans finally awoke to the evil of Communism, liberals
had harsher words for Joe McCarthy, who cost a few people their
government jobs, than for Joe Stalin, who cost tens of millions
of people their lives.
Liberals
were eventually forced to repudiate Stalin (and an honorable few
did so before they had to). But they found other Red heroes to replace
him:
Mao
Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara. In each case, violations
of freedom and outright atrocities were ignored, while the "achievements"
of Communist regimes were lauded: we heard endlessly about the provision
of free medical care and universal literacy (never mind that the
regimes decided what the people could read, banning classic authors
and jailing or killing living voices of dissent).
The
theme of liberal press agentry for post-Stalin Communists was that
each represented a "new" Communism, untainted by the "excesses"
of Stalinism. Other regimes were judged by their records; Communist
regimes were judged by their promises. In 1958 the New York Times
even reported that Castro wasn’t couldn’t be a Communist,
just as it had a generation earlier reported, with equal veracity,
that Stalin wasn’t starving Ukrainians.
If
Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in
slow motion. Where Communism smashed, liberalism erodes. The end
result is the same: a soulless society in which liberty perishes
and tradition is forgotten.
There
is ample testimony that liberalism and Communism are essentially
interchangeable, and much of that testimony comes from liberals
themselves. Hence their relief at discovering a Catholic traitor
for a change.
April
5, 2001
Joe
Sobran is a nationally syndicated columnist. He also writes "Washington
Watch" for The
Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, and edits SOBRAN'S,
a monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.
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