By Andrew L. Jaffee
How does a civilized society deal with someone like Ann Coulter who steps out of the bounds of decent political discourse? Remember that she called John Edwards a “faggot” last week, and characterized Muslims as &#8220…

I am as devout an anti-communist as they come. I am aware of the venona files and have read the work of Haynes and Klehr who did the research on them and other matters that Ann uses in her book. As I said, and exlpain in detail in the Carnival of Fisking post after this one, she has lots of true facts. However, she uses them selectively, and at times pretty much make stuff up with a footnote which doesn’t support what she says, to paint a picture that is very incorrect. Very Greenwald like.

Rehabilitating McCarthy is one example of someone who may not be what many on the left wish to paint him as, but he was still a dangerous lying demagogue. It was conservatives who did him in, famously William F. Buckley, because they saw what he had become.

Most of the facts in her book are true as far as they go, but as a whole it is a misleading book. The men who did the research behind the Venona cables wouldn’t endorse her use of them either. Read Horowitz, or National Review or the Weekly Standard if you don’t trust reviews in places such as the New York Times. They all slammed the book.

In other words, McCarthy was a Govt whistleblower on major executive branch scandal.

Coulter has rhetorical excesses, kind of an anti-liberal Howard Stern, that take Democrat failures and bad associations (with dicators, communists, etc.) into the over-the-top charges and over-generalizations (“Democrats lose wars”). IMHO the outrage schtick ala shockjocks is to get attention. But many of the points (Ie how the Democract lost the Vietnam war) are a valid antidote to the liberal PC pablum that is far more distorted view of history.

Btw, someone asked about footnotes. They go from 293 to 339, of 46 pages.

“A half century later, when the only people who call themselves Communists are harmless cranks, it is difficult to grasp the importance of McCarthy’s crusade. But there’s a reason ‘Communist’ now sounds about as threatening as ‘monarchist’ — and it’s not because of intrepid New York Times editorials denouncing McCarthy and praising Harvard educated Soviet spies. McCarthy made it a disgrace to be a Communist. Domestic Communism could never recover.” — Ann Coulter, P. 33

“Among the most notorious Soviet spies in high-level positions in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations — now proved absolutely, beyond question by the Soviet cables — were Alger Hiss at the State Department; Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, later appointed to the International Monetary Fund by President Truman; Lauchlin Currie, personal assistant to President Roosevelt and White House liaison to the State Department under both Roosevelt and Truman; Laurence Duggan, head of the Latin American Desk at the State Department; Frank Coe, US representative on the International Monetary Fund; Solomon Adler, senior Treasury Department official; Klaus Fuchs, top atomic scientist; and Duncan Lee, senior aide to the head of the OSS.” — Ann Coulter, P. 44

“McCarthy was a popularizer, a brawler. Republican elitists abhor demagogic appeals to working-class Democrats. Fighting like a Democrat is a breach of etiquette worse than using the wrong fork. McCarthy is sniffed at for not playing by Marquis of Queensbury Rules — rules of engagement demanded only of Republicans. Well without McCarthy, Republicans might be congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior from the gulag right now.” — Ann Coulter, P. 70

“The idea of a bowed and terrified liberal minority during McCarthy’s ‘reign of terror’ is poppycock. Then as now, all elite opinion was against McCarthy.” — Ann Coulter, P. 92

“Contrary to today’s image of McCarthy as a despised Torquemada, McCarthy was given a rare state funeral with a private memorial service in the Senate chamber, his seat covered with flowers. St. Matthew’s Cathedral bestowed him with the highest honor the Catholic Church can confer, performing a Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass before one hundred priests and two thousand well-wishers. Seventy senators attended his funeral, as did J. Edgar Hoover. Thirty thousand Americans lined up outside the Washington funeral home where McCarthy lay to pay their final respects from early in the morning until late at night. Condolences poured in to McCarthy’s wife, amounting to more than seventy bags of mail.” — Ann Coulter, P. 123

yours/
peter.

This isn’t just me or other non-conservatives, conservative magazines such as National review and The Weekly Standard found the books sourcing and misrepresentations embarrassing. David Horowitz, a man who himself is quite willing to think the worst of liberals gave it a poor review on the same grounds.

Peter,

I understand where she was going, but she didn’t set up the joke at all, so the point was lost. Either way it was crude. As I said, not a big deal, but I think it is alright to complain about it. That it is being complained about so widely might be giving you the impression we are outraged more than we are, the complaint seems amplified from everybody.

I think the reason it is being so widely complained about is that people are tired of her, and when so many people are tired of her and everyone is complaining at the same time it gives the impression that each individual is more concerned with Ann’s stupid joke than we are.

MichaelW claims I have not read the book “Treason” — a “fact” of which he can have no knowledge.

No, just bad editing on my part. Only the first paragraph was meant for you.

If you’ll look at the blockquotes, I meant to address Greg, not you, with those comments.

In fact I finished reading it a week ago and have a copy at hand.

Michael, if you have read the book, here is a quick test: How many pages of references are there at the end of the book, and how does this compare with most scholarly works?

If you haven’t read the book and don’t know, just be honest and admit it, don’t make up an answer.

Given the tendency of many individuals to hide their homosexuality, including in marriage, it is one of those characteristics where others can be sure about the positive (when the person is “out”) but not the negative.

So John Davis’ assertion that Edwards is not, is something he cannot know and just another example of liberals believing that something is a fact just because they say it is.

I am, of course, assuming that when Davis says Edwards is not a faggot he is not using the alternative definitions of “a ball of chopped liver bound with herbs and bread” or “a bundle of sticks”. If by some chance Davis intended one of these definitions, then we might be able to agree Edwards is not a faggot — though the chopped liver bit has a certain resonance with Edwards persona.

Of course we all know what Ann is thinking— if she isn’t already laughing— and that’s how all of the sturm und drung over her use of the word “faggot” just proves her “rehab” point. We’re all just living up (down?) to her joke.

C’mon, Peter. She made a cheap joke intended to get a certain reaction. Making fun of PC culture is one thing. Calling a political opponent a “faggot” is just stupid and juvenile. I’d think that you’d expect better from her.

Look around a bit here at ASHC and I think you’ll understand what we’re on about. I won’t say that we’re above taking a good rhetorical swipe at a political or ideological opponent, but using grade-school epithets to degrade someone is looked down upon here, no matter who does it. When you think about it, there were far funnier, much less juvenile and much more informative ways of making fun of Edwards. Coulter should have chosen one of them.

Really? You don’t think those two things are, say, similiar?

Obviously I don’t. If you do, make your point. Silly questions are rather pointless, don’t you think?

“Wry observations”? Bit of a euphemism for calling millions of Americans traitors, no?

If you had actually read Treason you’d understand how insipid your comment is. That you’d make such a comment, only underscores the fact that you haven’t read it.

yours/
peter.

Coulter didn’t just call liberals traitors, in her book “Treason” she meticulously documented the treachery, from Roosevelt, with his highlevel harbouring of Soviet spies and agents of influence despite numerous warnings about many of those individuals, onwards through successive decades to the present.

The lady is great. She has said nothing comparable to the slander that is thrown at conservatives and Republicans all the time by liberals.

She’s prepared to go bare knuckle where most of you guys aren’t. From Australia it looks like a lot of you supposed conservatives need to grow a spine. Until you’ve got the balls to match Ann Coulter, and stand up for yourselves, you’ll be going nowhere.

Some became Republicans, some did not. I have seen no evidence that racism is a Republican phenomenon as opposed to a human phenomenon. In fact, I see little difference in the amount of antipathy towards gays between the people in the parties, though I do see a difference in how they play the issue politically.

As books are published equating liberals with terrorism, that liberals are somehow godless and evil. you have more and more people in the conservative movement who begin believing the people who are ‘liberals’ are evil, are godless, are no better than the dirty terrorists.

I’ve given up on the Republicans at this point. Maybe it’s a bit of a ‘baby with the bathwater’, but I cannot support a party that is so totally controlled by closed minded people who are full of hate.

If you want me back, change your party, ’cause I haven’t left the party, the party left me.

- Mark