RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/frontpages-spitballs-strike-diana-west

There is a firestorm occurring on FrontPage over a purported review of Diana West’s American Betrayal: The Assault on Our Nation’s Character, written by Ronald Radosh. Radosh penned a “review” which questioned the reasoning and scholarship of West’s contention that Franklin D. Roosevelt consciously, or by subtle policy, boosted the fortunes of Stalin’s Soviet régime to profit from the course of WWII, aided in large part by Soviet agents working within and without the U.S. government, and by Harry Hopkins, FDR’s chief advisor and aide for so many years.

The title of Radosh’s review telegraphs his hostility towards West and her book, “McCarthy on Steroids,” and what he plans to say about the book. It is interesting to note that some time has passed since the first reviews of West’s book appeared, one on FrontPage itself, written by Mark Tapson in July, whom Radosh does not consider an authority on the subject of Soviet espionage and FDR’s complicity in furthering the interests of Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Significantly, FrontPage’s editors purged, or removed, Tapson’s objective, short, and informative review of the West book. It’s too late for that, because, speaking for myself, I already have a hard copy of the review, together with its now defunct URL. The text of it can be found here, on West’s own blog site. Printed out, it comes to two and a fraction pages. How many reader comments it generated is now unknown.

Printed out, Radosh’s comes to nearly ten pages. Radosh may as well have written a book. It has generated, to date, 182 reader comments, a good many of them criticizing Radosh for conducting a smear campaign against West or otherwise advising him that he is talking through his former “Red Diaper Baby” hat. Radosh continually accuses West of weaving a “conspiracy theory,” when she painstakingly documents every claim, assertion, and conclusion in American Betrayal.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/355429/print According to Team Obama’s “phony scandal” narrative, when the IRS processed 501(c)(3) tax-exemption applications, it equally tormented liberals and conservatives. No big deal, the argument goes. The IRS suffers from even-handed inefficiency rather than an un-American habit of slamming critics of the president of the United States. Unfortunately for the Obamites, actual facts annihilate […]

“I haven’t read West (I do intend to), but from the scuttlebutt and reviews circulating the internet, it is fairly apparent that she is a reckless historian of the McCarthy school of history. This, Ron Radosh is not. Unlike the conspiratorial school, populated on the left by Oliver Stone, and onthe right by West, Radosh dares to take a complex view of history. He is grown up enough to realize that both Hiss was guilty and McCarthy was a reckless demagogue; that the blacklist was wrong and that the Hollywood Ten were selective civil libertarians.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/the_beginning_of_wisdom.html

When I was a naive graduate student at CUNY, I was surprised to learn that Camelot merchant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was conservative. When I dared to question this, the professor would respond with a dismissive, “Oh, he’s a Reaganite.” They would then overtly let me know that was the end of the debate if I wanted a passing grade (never mind that Schlesinger hated Reagan and begged the equally liberal John Patrick Diggins who was writing a surprisingly laudatory book about the late president to “not make him look too good”).

That moment was the beginning of my becoming wised up about what passes for liberalism on the East Coast. The political spectrum there has moved so far left that the vital center — that collection of New Deal and Great Society enthusiasts — is considered “on the right.” My mind still reels over the claim that the likes of Bill Moyers and Chris Matthews are in the William F. Buckley/Ronald Reagan camp. But in the minds of the New York Left what qualifies them for entry is their anti-communism. That alone is the deciding factor for their definition of “conservative.”

‘YET” IS THE OPERATIVE WORD HERE….AND THEN JOHNSON GOES ON TO GIVE EGREGIOUS EXAMPLES OF CRUDE ANTI-SEMITISM…JEWS CANNOT AFFORT TO WAIT FOR “YET”….RSK

http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/08/grounds-for-hope/?mode=print
Yes, Europe routinely turns a blind eye to the revival of anti-Semitism. But the outlook is not so bad—yet. By Daniel Johnson

As an Englishman, I smiled at the title of Michel Gurfinkiel’s brilliant essay. “You Only Live Twice” alludes, of course, to the 1964 James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, whose books (unlike the better-known films made from them) are peppered with stereotypical Jewish villains. It is well to be reminded that Fleming’s unabashed anti-Semitism was still common among right-wing Britons of his class and generation—the same generation that had fought and defeated Nazi Germany.

Gurfinkiel paints a somber, even apocalyptic vision of the long-term future for Jews in Europe. I share his concerns and to some extent also his pessimism. One estimate (by Andre Kaspi of the Sorbonne) is that by 2080 Europe will have only 600,000 Jews. But I believe there are still grounds for hope that Europeans could yet avert the hideous prospect of a posthumous triumph for Hitler and his latter-day avatars.

Gurfinkiel is right to observe that the majority of European Jews, unlike most of their American counterparts, have recent family memories of persecution, demonization, and expulsion. Increasingly often, they may also have personal experience of anti-Semitism, even in countries that were not involved in the Holocaust. One young German-Jewish student of my acquaintance, whose family came from Kiev via Frankfurt, is an enthusiastic Anglophile. “I always wanted to live in England,” she says. But her own first personal encounter with anti-Semitism came not in Germany or Ukraine but at the London School of Economics, where she found herself confronted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting: “Throw the Jews into the sea!”

Nor are such public displays limited to the fringes. David Ward, a member of Parliament for Bradford East, belongs to the Liberal Democrats, now part of Britain’s coalition government. Earlier this year, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Ward wrote: “I am saddened that the Jews . . . could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new state of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.” Last month he returned to the subject, tweeting: “At long last the Zionists are losing the battle—how long can the apartheid state of Israel last?” His party responded by suspending him for two months in the summer—when Parliament does not convene. This token rebuke reflects the grim fact that nationally some 37 per cent of Liberal Democrats agree with the views held in Ward’s own, largely Muslim constituency.

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3926/egypt-democracy Both the good and bad about democracy are inseparable from what people think about it, or their experience with it, their cultural predisposition when they go about demanding it be given to them, or how they practice it. The recent spate of commentary in media about the troubles in Egypt illustrates how widespread is […]

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/just-another-day-in-the-expanding-north-korean-nuclear-program/?print=1 Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, one of the big what-ifs focused on the al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, which for years had been cranking out operatives while the U.S. — apart from the missiles of 1998 — pretty much watched and let it happen. What if those training camps had […]

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/11/state-spox-psaki-denounces-enemies-of-islam/ A series of horrific car bombings in Baghdad yesterday have reportedly left more than 80 dead and many more injured. The attacks appeared to target festivities marking the end of Ramadan in Shi’ite neighborhoods, which prompted comment from State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who said in an official statement: The United States condemns in […]

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/08/04/israel-leper-or-light-unto-the-nations-part-1-the-whole-world-against-us/?singlepage=true One of the most arresting passages in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) occurs in the 23rd chapter of the Book of Numbers. In Numbers 23:9, referring to the people of Israel both in the singular and the plural, Balaam pronounces: For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from […]

DIANA WEST’S REBUTTAL IS IN THE WORKS…..NOTICE HIS SHIFTINESS….WEST REBUTTED STATEMENTS WITH ACTUAL PAGES THAT RADOSH QUOTED THAT WERE NOT IN THE BOOK….SO RADOSH DISMISSES THAT AND GOES ON TO DISCUSS GENERAL CLARK…… ALSO WHY WAS HE GIVEN AN ADVANCE COPY OF WEST’S REBUTTAL BY AT….THIS IS SO UNSCRUPULOUS…

“Now let me turn to some of Diana West’s key assertions regarding World War II, which she argues in the new piece she is writing for this site I do not really effectively challenge.” SHAME ON AMERICAN THINKER….RSK

Writing on this website, Bernie Reeves attempts an evaluation of both Diana West’s book and my own critique of it. Their method, particularly that engaged in by Diana West, is one that my colleagues John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr write is that of intellectual “‘true believers,’ ideological zealots who are mentally incapable of accepting or processing information that undermines their historical worldview… it is as if they wear special glasses that can only see what conforms to their worldview. Information that contradicts their fiercely held view is denied, explained-away, or, most often, simply ignored.”

Reeves argues that while he respects and knows my work and that of Haynes and Klehr, I was “nitpicking” her facts, by pointing to “contradictory facts.” Reeves writes that we are all “excellent researchers and writers,” yet somehow we “are all restricted by their profession not to dramatize their findings,” connect the dots, and “come to conclusions.” This is more than ridiculous. If you read any of the scores of articles I have written in the past few years about Howard Zinn, Oliver Stone, or the Rosenbergs, that becomes more than clear. I have never shied away from clearly stating the implication and meaning of the evidence I have uncovered. What Reeves actually means is that I do not endorse West’s analysis, methodology, or findings — which is something other than what he accuses me and Klehr and Haynes of.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323477604579002791217570508.html Have you ever noticed that you can change one letter of “Puffington Host” and make it read “Puffington Hoot”? That name would not be unfitting, because sometimes the site can be a real hoot. What prompts this observation is a Puffington Host post by the (as we shall see) delightfully named Lynn Parramore. She […]