Second, were the FDR-Truman administrations shot through with traitors? Yes, even more deeply than we knew. Alger Hiss and Lawrence Duggan of the State Department were not only communists but Soviet spies, as was White House aide Lauchlin Currie; Treasury's No. 2 Harry Dexter White, father of the IMF; Judith Coplin, who headed up a spy ring at Justice; and William Remington at Commerce. The atom bomb project was saturated with Stalin's spies, like the Rosenbergs.
Third, was America gripped by a McCarthy-induced "hysteria" in the 1950s? Total nonsense. In Gallup polls of the era, not 1 percent of Americans ever considered "anti-communist hysteria" or McCarthyism to be great concerns. Those afraid of Joe were those who had reason to be afraid, for what they had done or failed to do.
The great failing of conservatives, Whittaker Chambers wrote, is that they do not retrieve their wounded. Ann Coulter is not that kind of conservative. Her gutsy decision to argue the case for the most hated enemy of the American Establishment shows true grit and an instinctive sense that the Right cannot, must not, cede the writing of history to its adversaries.
On Joe, Coulter is right. McCarthy was more sinned against than sinning, a better patriot and man than those who brought him down, or deserted him in his hour of need, or those who turn their backs on him today, because the social price of saying a kind word over his grave would be too high.
No other American did more to rouse the nation to fury over the Left's failure to confront, and battle, the 20th century's greatest enemy of freedom. No man did more to horsewhip out of town the New Deal-Fair Deal Democrats who had frittered away the fruits of victory. In 1952, Republicans swept the House, Senate and White House, and it was Joe McCarthy who led the bayonet charge.
That is why Joe is hated. Not for what he did wrong, but for what he did right. America's young should ask themselves: If Joe McCarthy was such a monster, why did Joe Kennedy back him, the Kennedy girls date him, Robert Kennedy work for him and JFK defend him as a "great patriot" in his year of censure? And why was McCarthy asked to be the godfather to Bobby Kennedy's firstborn?
The postwar era in America was indeed Scoundrel Time, but the scoundrels were the ones Joe was after. And Ann Coulter is a public defender who believes that if the verdict of history is a lie, she will appeal it till hell freezes over. And conservatives should be filing amicus briefs, not hiding in the tall grass.