We can’t easily understand those accusations, contemporary conservative thought or the influence of the Tea Party without appreciating the enduring impact of the Hiss case.
I think that David Halberstam’s analysis of the conflict within the Republican Party between the urban establishment and small-town populists better captures the origins of the Tea Party. In his highly perceptive 1993 volume, The Fifties, Halberstam writes (p.4-5),
On one side were the lawyers and bankers of Wall Street and State Street, their colleagues through the great Eastern industrial cities, and those in the powerful national media, based in New York. They were internationalist by tradition and by instinct: They had fought against the New Deal in states where the power of labor was considerable but had eventually come to accept certain premises of the New Deal. By contrast, the Republicans of the heartland…were anxious to go back to the simple, comfortable world of the twenties…They had always controlled their political and economic destinies locally…Now they looked at Washington and saw the enemy…they seemed to have lost control of their own party…they were at war with the Eastern Republicans, who in their eyes, were traitors, tainted by cooperation with the New Deal.
The Tea Party of the 1950s spurned Nelson Rockefeller and nominated Barry Goldwater, with disastrous electoral results.
I would reiterate that midcentury politics revolves around socialism, Communism, and anti-Communism. Both sides have history that they would rather forget. The left would rather forget that many of its leading intellectuals saw Communism as equivalent to, or even superior to, capitalism. The right would rather forget its hostility to Civil Rights (the urban Republicans were crucial to passing Civil Rights legislation, overcoming Southern Democrats and heartland Republicans.)
Good post, but I also think that with the hindsight of 50+ years, we should be more, not less sympathetic to those on the right hostile to “Civil Rights”. Some of that hostility was motivated by straight-forward racism (meaning hatred toward Black folks), which was/is not good. But there was also a portion of that hostility that was always motivated by State’s rights and/or the danger to freedom of association associated with “Civil Rights”. We see that danger clearer now, especially when “Civil Rights” has morphed into “disparate impact” and has gone on to include “rights” for sodomites to get so-called marriages.
Now we have the spectacle of the government telling bakers they cannot operate their business according to basic standards of decency and truth and instead must pretend that two men who say they are “married” deserve a wedding cake.
Pathetic.
“The left would rather forget that many of its leading intellectuals saw Communism as equivalent to, or even superior to, capitalism.”
I think a lot of younger folks on the left never knew that to begin with. I didn’t when I was a progressive. The narrative that you get from the left is that the McCarthy Era was either cynical political theater or a paranoid witch hunt. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which makes this witch hunt comparison explicitly, is required reading in many a high school English class across this great land of ours. By contrast, how many high schoolers have even heard the name ‘Alger Hiss,’ much less the details of his espionage? 2%? Less? I think liberals have, in effect, successfully stashed this particular skeleton in the closet, which is too bad, both from a “he who controls the past…” standpoint, but also I would like to think that if contemporary liberals understood just how many of their forefathers took the wrong side in the biggest conflict of the 20th Century (maybe in history), they might be inclined to a bit more humility today. But that’s probably wishful thinking on my part.
To say that “heartland Republicans” opposed Civil Rights is, at best, a huge oversimplification. You make it sound as if no midwest Republicans supported Civil Rights. I think the opposite is closer to the truth.
Jeff R.,
Great points — the fact that Miller is read in high schools and Chambers is not, says everything we need to know about who “won” the historical narrative.
“Both sides have history that they would rather forget.”
Not only does the Left want to forget that a significant contingent of their midcentury forbears (Hiss, Hopkins, Rosenbergs, etc.) assisted the Soviet Union in the early Cold War, many of them contend that the Soviet Union was no worse than the US or apparently deny that there is anything inherently objectionable about communism as a system of government (see for example the presumptive next mayor of NYC, who was a cheerleader for the Sandanistas in the 80s and spent his honeymoon in Cuba).
With respect to “The left would rather forget that many of its leading intellectuals saw Communism as equivalent to, or even superior to, capitalism” consider that J.K. Galbraith praised Mao’s China in 1973 (in a trip along with Tobin and Leontieff, both of whom also seem to have had a positive impression). From JK Galbraith’s “A China Passage,”
“One studies the faces; everyone seems to be in excellent humor. No solemn social conclusions are justified. . . . I asked why the people seemed to be working so hard and was told that it was because of Chairman Mao and the feeling that the country now belongs to them. I inquired also as to what happened if a factory did badly. That has not yet happened. . . . Of late, under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s line, workers have gone all out for innovation. . . . From the factory we went to the canteen where lunch was in progress. If there is any shortage of food, it was not evident in that kitchen. . . .
“We passed into one by an especially massive statute of Chairman Mao . . . We went out again by Chairman Mao – he told Edgar Snow shortly before Snow’s death that he disapproved of these monuments but his message was not getting through . . . ”
” . . . The market can be ruthless as politicians cannot.”
“There can be no doubt that China is devising a highly effective economic system. . . . there is massive evidence of great continued movement – new housing, new industrial plants, new building at old plants, . . . Without question we were taken to see and were told about the best. But in all travel one sees much that one is not shown, and Potemkin, whatever his skill, would have had more difficulty dealing with decently experienced economists.”
“Things in China give the impression of meshing . . . Something depends on the easy, affable and sensitive manners of the Chinese. One transfers his reaction to this to the society. Dissidents are brought firmly into line in China but, one suspects, with great politeness. It is a firmly authoritarian society in which those in charge smile and say please. The leadership rebukes what is called “Commandism.” And there is also the obvious willingness of the Chinese, given the opportunity, to work. But for whatever reason, the Chinese economy appears to function very easily and well.
His final conclusion:
“Thus the Chinese economic system. Ever since Lincoln Steffens returned from Russia to proclaim (to Bernard Baruch), “I have been over to the future and it works, ” travelers to the Communist countries have been reluctant to risk hard conclusions. When things go wrong, the skeptics remembered and rejoiced. One should not be craven. The Chinese economy isn’t the American or European future. But it is the Chinese future. And let there be no doubt: For the Chinese it works.”
But what is far more shocking than Galbraith’s idiotic remarks about China in 1973 is the fact that his son, Jamie Galbraith, has the gall in 2013 to criticize Milton Friedman for one brief encounter with Pinochet about technical economic issues. Friedman never praised Pinochet. Jamie’s father effusive in his praise for Mao’s China shortly after the Cultural Revolution. Yet in the May 2013 issue of Econ Journal Watch Jamie has the nerve to write:
“We may surmise that Friedman’s affinity for first principles were behind his support for the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a man who granted freedom—and life itself—only to those who dared not oppose him. Here was a grisly contradiction between “economic freedom” and the real thing. My impression is that Friedman did his best to ignore Pinochet’s crimes, and then made up excuses when he had to. This is perhaps harsh. But it’s a more generous view than the alternative, which is to believe that he thought the socialists, communists, poets and musicians in the National Stadium got what they had coming.”
In any reasonable moral universe, even if this is what Jamie Galbraith believes, given his father’s fulsome praise for Mao’s China he would have been ashamed to make such remarks in a public academic forum in 2013. 40 million (estimated deaths due to Mao) is, after all, four orders of magnitude greater than four thousand (estimated deaths due to Pinochet). Even if his father was merely blinded by his ideological blinkers, we do not excuse intellectual apologists for the Nazis simply because of their ideological blinkers. The fact that on campuses across America Friedman is considered tainted whereas no one considers Galbraith tainted is a sad vignette of just how corrupt the climate of opinion is in academia today.
As an aside: One of the signatories of the U. of Chicago faculty letter protesting the proposed Milton Friedman Center a few years ago was the history department chairman, Bruce Cumings. Cumings is an open apologist for the North Korean regime,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/09/mother-of-all-mothers/303403/
He makes even Jamie Galbraith’s shamelessness jaw-dropping. The fact that no Chicago faculty member brought this fact up in the debates on the Milton Friedman Center is beyond sad.
I came across these old anti-communist films a while ago. They are a good insight into the thinking of the 1950s. Also, a marker to show how much ground has been lost.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVToq9uAQrQ A Look at Socialism
Uses Britain as an illustrative example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spajGTChfII A Look at Capitalism
This one has a nice rebuttal when a student quotes a clergyman on the profit motive. Although I think even this professor underplays capitalism by simplification.
There is another A Look at Communism but I can’t locate it in a search of youtube right now.
What an aberration. Do you mean those eastern high tariff Republicans allied with the heartland farm price support Republicans? Or the go along to get along Reagan Republicans against the just say no modern Republicans?