Your last sentance is, of course, one of the very principals upon which this nation was founded. I have no idea why so many people seem to forget this...

Dean,

There are no "folks" at Maybe I Think Too Much, just me.

As far as free speech is concerned, I'm not advocating censorship. Censorship is when a government controls the media and prevents individuals from speaking their minds. What I am advocating is a boycott.

I am weary of being insulted by the same people whose huge salaries I pay when I buy a ticket at the box office or watch the advertisements during their show's breaks. When they lambast our religious faith, our President, our military, certain regions of the country, and a host of other criteria too numerous to detail here, and do so without any concern for their audience or any consequences, then I say it's time to get their attention by squeezing their pocketbooks.

If you know of another way of reviving true discourse while ending the hateful, hurtful, insulting, partisan rhetoric, then by all means, I'm listening.

I think that "blacklist" is an unfortunate, and inaccurate, choice of word for what Thinks Too Much is proposing.

Dean, you say "The solution to speech that's vile is always the same: more free speech," and that's true enough.

But free speech does not mean that everyone has the right to a microphone, or a receptive, paying audience.

If Celebrity X wants to advocate views and policies that I find repugnant, insulting, what-have-you, that's their right. But (1) I have every right not to give money to them, and (2) I have every right to refuse to contribute towards the very celebrity that makes their political views "newsworthy", and (3) I have every right to encourage others who agree with me to do likewise.

It's not censorship, and it's not denying Celebrity X employment - it's just that I don't want to buy what they're selling.

I will defend Susan Sarandon's right to say anything she wants to say; I will not contribute towards her wealth and her popularity so that she can more effectively say it, and I think that's exactly what Thinks Too Much is proposing, too.

Reagan was a hero. You are right about Communist propaganda in the movies. Ayn Rand wrote an excellent "Screen Guide for Americans" on how you can identify Communist and collectivist themes in movies. Her guide was disseminated by the Motion Picture Alliance for the preservation of American Ideals. It's more relevant today than it was then. Today, there are more Communists and more Communist and collectivist propaganda in movies than ever before.

Like Dean Esmay, like Ronald Reagan, like Ayn Rand, I am absolutely opposed to any form of censorship by the government in any form or degree whatsoever. But I will also exercise my own right to freedom of speech by identifying collectivism when I see it and speaking out against it.

The Hollywood crowd are _not_ elitists. They pander to the lowest tastes of the masses and denigrate any higher values. They attack the true elites. Exhibit A is that lovers of classical music are almost invariably portrayed as villains. I plan to write about that on my own blog as soon as I'm able to do so.

Elitists, i.e., individualists, any one who dares to stand apart from, to rise above, the herd, are hated by the egalitarian, collectivist, Communist mentality which permeates Hollywood and the mass media.

What's the difference between a blacklist and boycotting, if any? Blacklisting sounds pretty damn bad. But isn't spending money "speech"? It's certainly one way of expressing an opinion, a very tangible way! :)

If I "boycott" Annie Actress because I think she's a lousy actress, is that ok?

If I boycott her because off-screen she is an immoral person (by my standards), is that ok?

If I boycott her because she engages in loud public America-bashing is that ok?

If I boycott her because I regard her public actions to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy, is that ok?

I'm genuinely interested in where people would draw the line, and why.

If an individual does any of the above, and it's "speech", what if an organization does the same? Is it still "speech"?

Whoa, Steven, after reading that last comment I feel a little like Larry 'Pinto' Kroger in Animal House when he's sharing a joint with his professor and comes to the realization that his entire world may just exist under the fingernail of some much larger being. :)

Okay! Okay! I shouldn't have called it a blacklist. I was taking a little poetic license. Sue me!

In my memory, I recall that the best way to expose fools and charlatans is to let them talk on and on and on.

Joe McCarthy, whose name we associate most closely with the blacklists of the early cold war, was correct only in one thing, that there were in fact some highly placed communist-oriented traitors in the US government in before, during and after World War II. But their numbers were relatively small, and our counter-espionage agencies knew about nearly all of them and were weeding them out without the help of congressional crusaders. In the end, McCarthy destroyed himself in the eyes of most Americans, in the middle of some televised congressional hearings, serving as a permanent example of what I wrote above.

I think that in the end, all charlatans destroy themselves with no need for blacklists. We are dealing with an increasingly well-informed public, no small part of which includes the vast numbers of people who instantly research facts on public issues by themselves, using a myriad of websites (admittedly of lesser as well as greater usefulness).

Is there "hateful, hurtful, insulting partisan rhetoric"? Lots of it. But that too, in the end, has its own limitations. Get too hateful/hurtful and nobody reads your stuff anymore.

All told, censorship of competing ideas is a bad idea. So resist the temptation to enforce even a worthwhile orthodoxy.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I have no desire for the return of the blacklist. However, if the public reacts with revulsion with some of the things these dimwitted lefty actors/writers/producers are saying and sticks their studios with a series of box office flops as they vote with their ticket dollars--that's free speech too. I'll further exercise *my* free speech by saying that I'd derive a great deal of joy if Michael "Lord Pork-Pork" Moore had to sell the blood in his bloated body to survive. I just wouldn't advocate a blacklist to enforce that enjoyable situation.

Actually, Senator McCarthy was not involved in the Hollywood blacklists or boycotts. Those took place in the late 1940s, and, to the degree that Congress was involved, it was the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), a.k.a., House Un-American Activities (HUAC), which carried out that investigation of Hollywood, including the "Hollywood Ten", Stalinists who were made into martyrs of free speech by the Left. There is no free speech or artistic freedom of any kind under Communism. The irony is lost on today's "liberals".

Senator McCarthy appeared on the scene shortly after and focused his own, Senate, investigations on Communists in government and academia who were shaping, or mis-shaping, our foreign policy to serve Communist ends. He exposed those intellectuals such as Owen Lattimore who had been most instrumental in handing China over to the Communists.

Lattimore was an admirer of Mao and of Stalin. He openly preferred their system to our American and Western way of freedom, and yet the State Department regarded him as a wise intellectual whose opinions could be relied upon. Lattimore even visited one of Stalin's death camps, and, in order to aid Stalin, deliberately covered up the atrocities and horrible conditions he saw there.

The Communists hated Senator McCarthy for daring to speak out against Communists like Lattimore. They launched a massive campaign to smear him, and thereby to smear all anti-Communists. They wanted to make an example out of the Senator, and it worked. Today, few dare to speak out against Communism for fear of suffering the same fate as Senator McCarthy.

True, many non-Communists and even anti-Communists of that time were turned off for some reason or other by Senator McCarthy's "methods" or his style. Even Whittaker Chambers argued that McCarthy was hurting the anti-Communist cause. President Truman took a strong stand against the spread of Communism abroad and even instituted a loyalty program to screen employees in the executive branch of the federal government.

But, today's McCarthy-haters make no such subtle distinctions. They damn _all_ anti-Communism as "McCarthyism". A Communist wrote a book blaming President Truman for "McCarthyism". They hate Chambers as much as they hate McCarthy. They hate Whittaker Chambers. They hate Ayn Rand. They hate E. Merrill Root. They hate even liberal Democrats like President Truman, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, or Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson. Anybody at all who takes a stand to the Right (i.e., away from Communism) of Henry "Bubblehead" Wallace is damned as a "McCarthyite" today. I am proud to be called a McCarthite by the Communists.

By the way, I've said this many, many times before and I must say it again:

Homosexuals are not Communists and have nothing whatsoever to do with Communists or Communism. Homosexuality is an attraction to individual men or women of one's own sex. Communism is a totalitarian ideology that totally denies the individual. Communism denies all that is Divine. Communism uses conspiracy, lies, robbery, torture, rape, murder, genocide in order to enslave the world. Many homosexuals see this and totally oppose Communism. Tragically, others do not.

Tragically also, homosexuals were viciously persecuted during the 1950s. Since Communism is atheistic, and since homosexuality is seen as a sin by many religions, many assumed that there was somehow some connection between the two. Even Senator McCarthy fell into that error. Laws against homosexuality, "sodomy" laws, were enforced, and also, since homosexuality was also considered a mental sickness, many homosexuals were put in mental hospitals to "cure" them. This was and is despicable, and I, for one, totally oppose that.

I must note, however, that homosexuals have also been persecuted in exactly the same way, and even more viciously, in all Communist regimes. A central Communist goal is the eradication of homosexuality. Communists don't like to mention that fact these days.

This ideological confusion, error, and monstrosity is perpetuated today.

Many on the Left argue: "Homosexuals were persecuted in the 1950s. Communists were persecuted in the 1950s. Therefore, _both_ are persecuted minorities, martyrs, and Communism is an alternative lifestyle like homosexuality."

Many on the Right argue: "Communists were persecuted in the 1950s. Homosexuals were persecuted in the 1950s. Therefore, homosexuality is as evil and destructive as Communism."

Both equations are absolutely false. I absolutely oppose this Big Lie of the Communists.

Steven, you wrote:

"Today, there are more Communists and more Communist and collectivist propaganda in movies than ever before."

Am I missing something? What movies are advocating the subtle or radical overthrow of our current system? And advocating more social and economic justice doesn't count as a communist plot or ideology.

You have to admit that the abuses of capitalism hurt society in the long and short run, it's just not as dangerous as communism. What has made our nation so great is that we have a strong labor AND strong management, and the corporations that positively influence and improve our country (and the world) tend to rise to the top and prosper. But if you look at what has taken place in the last 20 years, you find that the average salary of American CEOs has risen much higher than the average worker. BTW, workers' real wages and purchasing power has not increased that much - so I guess the pendelum needs to swing back toward labor.

I agree with most everything Arnold and Steven say on the subject of McCarthy and Communism, except I take exception to Steven's notion that Communist ideology is "more prevalent" now. I consider that something of a stretch. As Tim the Soldier says, I don't see anyone advocating the subtle or radical overthrow of our whole system of government--although I don't agree with him that capitalism is inherently destructive either.

Hmm. I seem to have managed to agree and disagree with just about everybody. Perhaps I should be a politician!

In any case: Many of us who hate communism tend to have a rather visceral view of McCarthy mostly because his irresponsibility. It was especially when he want over the line and started suggesting that the Army itself was riddled with communist subversives at the highest level that he went completely off the deep end. This dealt a devastating body blow to the anti-Communist cause and made countless Americans who had a responsible opposition to Communism look and feel foolish.

I must say however that it is also true that overattacking McCarthy won't do. We know now--know for a fact--that Stalinist agents had in fact penetrated our government at very high levels, including operatives within the Roosevelt White House and quite high up in the State Department. But as Arnold said, they were in the middle of dealing with it all before the Senator started blowing his stack.

Still, people had every reason to be upset and fearful of Communism, for it was indeed an aggressive international movement of terror and repression bent on world domination by force which had overtaken countless countries by subversion--and continued to overtake t hem in the decades after.

The problem with McCarthy is that he had to go and make a jackass of himself. It was as bad as if some damnfool Senator in 1943 had started claiming that Nazi agents had infiltrated every level of government, including the high command of the U.S. Army and the State Department and half the damn country. All of a sudden everyone would start wondering if this Hitler fellow wasn't some sort of trumped-up threat. It damn well could have undermined support for the war at home--just as it damn near did undermine our efforts in Korea and elsewhere in the fight against the Communists.

Then again it's easier to say all this in retrospect. McCarthy started off right, but being a drunken arrogant sot (ah, like there are so few of THOSE in the Senate!) overplayed his hand. Well I think he more or less got what he deserved but in retrospect think history could be a LITTLE kinder to the fool. I always thought well of Jack Kennedy when I learned that he stayed friends with McCarthy even when no one else would associate with him. "You fucked up, Joe," I can imagine young Kennedy saying, and Joe probably ruefully agreeing as he tossed back another beer.

To change the subject, even to this day it astounds me that John F. Kennedy is held up as some sort of icon for the left wing of the Democratic Party. This seems to be entirely a case of transferring his younger brother Ted's politics onto the martyred President. For, whatever else may be said of his strengths or failings, he was a pro-business, tax-cutting hawk and probably the most adamannt, hard-nosed, unwavering, bareknuckle Commie-hater in the entire Democratic Party and, were it not for McCarthy, possibly the biggest Hawk in the entire United States Senate. He was certainly to the right even of Eisenhower and Nixon on such issues, and is the man who started the single biggest arms buildup in American history, far surpassing Reagan's, even as he slashed taxes on businesses and the wealthy.

Mind you, I don't view any of the above as attacks on the man, just an honest assessment of his record. He was the sort of Senator, and President, who would be excoriated as an embodiment of evil by many of the people who worship him today.

Dean - didn't RFK work for McCarthy for a while? And Joe Kennedy wasn't exactly hostile either.

Thinks Too Much,

Yeah, drop the "blacklist" moniker and lets just go with an "Enemies List"....I likes enemies list; got a long one of my own. Muhahahaha...

Anyways, the idea of boycott is excellent...much as I wanted to see Mystic River, I shan't because of the actions of two of the actors in the movie vis a vis the War on Terrorism.

I didn't intend to imply that capitalism is inherently destructive, but workers have been on the wrong side of economic exploitation 99.99% of the time (that's 99.99% of situations in which either labor or management is being exploited), but most often, things work out to a win-win-win situation - workers, owners, consumers except with the Ronco corporation where I think we have a lose-lose-lose situation.

I do, however, have the sneaky suspicion that those Tele-Tubbies may have strong socialist tendencies...that's why I must direct you to do this:

http://shibbyshack.com/swf/games/teletubbie.swf

Jack Valenti used to give a speech that I wish was recorded somewhere. He basically makes a strong case that the reason Hollywood has become some stridently, politically "Left" is the indirect result of the McCarthy inspired Blacklist. Basically it gave the "Right" such as bad name that it lost all respectability in Holllywood. The other thing that should be remembered is that there was a strong anti-semitic element to these witchhunts. Anti-Communisim was often used as a blind excuse for some to go after a particular group of people they didn't like without actually thinking of themselves as bigots, all under the guise of nationalism. We still play the same game today.

I did _NOT_ mean to imply that all atheists are Communists. Most certainly not! Dean Esmay is an atheist. Arnold Harris is an atheist. Ayn Rand was an atheist. Leonard Peikoff is an atheist. My father was an atheist. And, yes, there ARE atheists in the foxholes. My father fought the Nazis in World War II.

Communists are atheists, but they have infiltrated certain Christian churches, as was documented in the 1950s and early 1960s, and even more so today. The National Council of Churches is now completely Communist-controlled. They attacked the Mercator Map because it is not "politically correct". It exalts the West.

Movies put out by Hollywood continually attack and undermine our military forces. From "Fail-Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove" to "Crimson Tide" and "The General's Daughter", military men, especially high-ranking military men, and all "hawks" are portrayed as bloodthirsty, insane, corrupt, and evil, and the "peace" position as the right one. Anti-Communists in films are invariably portrayed as book-burning fascists. Many of these films are or have been cinematically very good, but I oppose what they advocate.

As I said, I oppose any and all censorship. But I have the right to exercise _my_ free speech, too, and to oppose their ideology.

Anti-Semitism on the Right? Yes, there was some of that in the 1950s. It goes back a long way. Identifying Jews with Communists (or, earlier, with Jacobins) is an old trope of anti-Semitism.

But Roy Cohn and Davin Schine, who worked with McCarthy were both Jews (as well as homosexuals, men's men). William F. Buckley went a long way toward reducing anti-Semitism on the Right. And, today, anti-Semitism is mainly on the Left: the anti-Israel movement. Pat Buchanan, the most prominent anti-Semite on today's Right (as well as anti-homosexual), has joined forces with the Left in attacking Israel and American "imperialism".

Mark Noonan wrote:
"Yeah, drop the "blacklist" moniker and lets just go with an "Enemies List"....I likes enemies list; got a long one of my own. Muhahahaha..."

Muhahahaha! I love the _style_ of that! Reminds me of President Nixon.

Which segues into what Dean wrote about JFK. Willmoore Kendall, another conservative of the "National Review" circle of the 1950s and early 1960s, wrote an extremely interesting essay on the McCarthy controversy in which he asked: "What was everybody so mad about?" He gave 4 possible answers:

1) The personal _style_ of Senator McCarthy irritated a lot of people, including some who otherwise liked what he was doing or trying to do with regard to getting Communists and their influence out of our government.

2) Conservatives and liberals disagreed over the question about in what way or to what degree was Communism a threat to our freedoms, and what was the best way to deal with that threat.

3) The Constitutional question of the balance of powers, legislative vs. executive. Liberals liked a strong executive branch, they liked strong Presidents like FDR and Truman and saw Congress as nothing but a bunch of reactionary obstructionists. Conservatives in those days distrusted the executive branch and guarded legislative prerogatives quite jealously.

4) Willmoore Kendall concluded that none of those answers was satisfactory and saw the underlying issue as that between the liberal ideal of an "open society" in which all questions are open questions and dissent is warmly encouraged vs. the conservative ideal of a "closed society" in which certain questions are closed, certain ideas or ideals are held as dogma, and questioning of them is severely discouraged. He sided with the latter.

Most interesting about it all! My thoughts on those:

1) Though that seems like the shallowest of the answers, and seemed that wat to me when I read it, I have to say that personal _style_ goes a long way toward explaining much of the visceral response to Senator McCarthy as well as many subsequent controversies. McCarthy looked and acted like a Hollywood villain, as did Nixon. I have seen clips of McCarthy on TV -- he had a really wicked, evil laugh. I love that and often love to imitate him! JFK and, even more, his brother Bobby both died young and left good-looking corpses. They could not be other than dashing heroes on the screen no matter what they did.

Nixon did everything the Left could want: wage and price controls, a proposed guaranteed annual income, affirmative action, recognition of Communist China -- and yet, because he had sided with Whittaker Chambers against Alger Hiss, and because his _style_ was so very "square" and _hard and tight_, the Left hated his guts.

Conversely, Clinton did an number of things the Left should have hated him for: cutting welfare, balancing the budget, capital punishment -- and yet, because his _style_ was "hippie" and _soft and loose_, the Left forgave him everything while the Right hated his guts.

2) Obviously, the question of what Communism wss and how, or whether, we should fight it was a major issue in the McCarthy controversy. "Communist threat? What Communist threat? You're paranoid!" Communism clearly was a threat to our freedoms, both externally and internally.

3) At the time I read Kendall's essay I wasn't as aware of the Constitutional issue, but increasingly I've come to see that the conservatives were right.

4) "Open society" vs. "closed society" or relativism vs. absolutes. Well, here indeed seems to be the philosophical crux of the whole matter. I'm both a Liberal in defending Individual Freedom and a Conservative in defending Divine Order. The tension between the two. But I must come down on the Liberal side on this question in that, while I side with absolute values against relativism, I must have the freedom to uphold _my_ values absolutely, and therefore must oppose any sort of "closed society". I must oppose censorship even of Communist ideas.

That, however, does not mean that Communists or any other subversives should be allowed to have any influence in our government, and that seems to me to be what the McCarthy controversy was all about. That's what everybody was so mad about. And, as Willmoore Kendall concluded, next time around, people are going to get a whole lot madder.

Steven Malcolm,

Maybe Dean Esmay, Ayn Rand and the others are atheists. But I'm actually an apatheist.

Which means that I don't know and I don't really give a damn if there is or isn't a supreme being, who may or may not have created the universe. Who may or may not be part of a pantheon of other supreme beings. Who may or may not have come to earth, fucked some peasant woman in Judea who gave birth to a quasi supreme being and who got himself crucified for his efforts, etc, etc, etc.

According to H L Mencken, "theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing".

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I do find it interesting that we sided with the communists in WWII and probably would have had a much more difficult time and lost many more lives had those poor Russian people not sacrificed so greatly. Of course I realize that most of them didn't have much choice in the matter under Stalin, but I can't help but be saddened by such a horrific sacrifice that certainly played a significant part in the Allies defeating the Nazis. For every American war death, I believe the Russians lost 59. One to 59! Truly we cannot repay that debt, hopefully we can forge a future economic and political alliance with Russia, but I'm not optimistic given the trend of curbing liberty in Russia.

As much as many of us from the west admired Gorbachev, he always was a communist, but he was strongly against soviet communism and certainly against the restriction in personal liberties that were associated with soviet communism - a stark contrast with modern China.

Here's a review of the stunning blockbuster anti-Communist film Total Eclipse.

Steven,

Personalities matter...and I like a recent observation from Peggy Noonan...in politics, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. McCarthy had this way of making enemies in large numbers - his fundamental problem was that a Congressional committee was not the place to conduct a counter-intelligence operation (though Congressional committees are often strictly counter to intelligence).

I'll disagree with you here - in the United States, it should be an absolute requirement that you are loyal to the constitution of the United States...while it is the right of the people to alter or abolish their system of government, revolutionaries have to takes their chances...

Mark Noonan:

Good to see you here again! Funny, I was under the impression that you might have wanted to express disagreement with something or other that Arnold Harris wrote in his last comment here.

I, for one, am absolutely loyal to the Constitution of the United States of America, including every jot and tittle of the entire Bill of Rights, and I want to _conserve_ our form of government exactly as it is.

I take it that you agree with Willmoore Kendall. Here's a little story he once told along those lines, a conversation he had with the Negro janitor who was cleaning his room:
"Professah, is it true -- is it true dat -- dat dere's people who want to destroy de guvamint of de United States?"
"Yes, Oliver, that is true."
"Den -- den why don't we jus' -- lock 'em up?"
Willmoore Kendall observed that there was more wisdom in that Negro janitor than in all the civil libertarians and political science professors with whom Kendall had been arguing.

The _style_ of that! Reminds me of a book that was written in the 1950s: "Communism vs. the Negro". That is absolutely true. Which reminds me of holy Dawn and her holy Negro wife Norma, and their filmstrip and booklet: "The Two Isms: Lesbianism vs. Communism"

The _style_ of that! And that is absolutely true.

The "Enemies of Thinks Too Much" List.

I kinda like that sound of that.