Whittaker Chambers Quotes
It is in fact no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder that will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come.
Chambers, Whittaker. Odyssey of a Friend: Whittaker Chambers' Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr. 1954-1961. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1969.
Even the President was not spared during the McCarthy era. The red scare was so pervasive, that a lunatic fringe ultra right wing organization could call the President a “communist dupe” and be taken seriously be much of the media who were themselves intimidated and might be accused of being communists at any moment. It was a very low point in America’s history.
Chambers was prescient and to the regret of the right wing, did not listen to him. The reality was that McCarthy, unscrupulous, mentally unstable and an alcoholic intimidated even his own party members and this one sick and flawed individual intimidated and threatened to entire American political establishment. Although Chambers called for the Republican Conservatives to act, it was the liberals of both parties who finally took him on, exposed him and brought him down.
The organization thought that Franklin D. Roosevelt was surrounded by and influenced by communists, and was destroying America for capitalism, when in reality it was Roosevelt who saved capitalism in America by leading the country out of the Great Depression without any revolution or insurgency and maintaining the basic structure of capitalism. They were so fearful of communism that most Americans thought paranoid and unrealistic. When Roosevelt trounced Alf Landon in the 1936 Presidential election, the Liberty League collapsed.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had more influence and visibility than any other first lady, before or since. She was First Lady for 3+ terms—longer than any other, and in addition to her official duties, she wrote a very popular daily newspaper column. As FDR was handicapped and could not travel much, she traveled all over the nation and the world. She was also very outspoken and no one ever knew whether or not she was speaking with the President’s concurrence or was on her own. She tended to be very liberal—especially in terms of the evils of racial segregation—then legal, and the problems of workers. Her broad influence was very damaging to Southern Segregationist groups and arch Conservative economic groups, who realized that her influence in the change of public opinion was much more effective at changing America than were the socialists and communists who were calling for revolution and were so unappealing that they could easily be attacked. Mrs. Roosevelt was for them more dangerous than Communism.
The Red Scare had already reached most conservatives and Truman and most others had not yet been affected by the fear of Communism that so many people had through the 1970s.
McCarthy was in many ways like Donald Trump. One was taht the press loved to cover his statements and accusations that were so absurd and sensational that they sold a lot of nespapers, magazines and obtained many TV / Radio viewers/listeners. As a result he got much more media coverage that he warranted in teh view of many, President Dwight Eisenhower, who generally would not even mention McCarthy's name was percieved by Adlai Stephenson and many others as weak and fearful of McCarthy, Tannenhous and some other historians believed that fear had nothing to do with it, but that Eisenhower not only chose this as a deliberate strategy, but one that was quite effective.
Seeger had been a member of the Communist Party and had left it in 1950. See {635866}. He was later called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and asked to reveal the names of others who had been members. In those days of the red scare and McCarthyism, most people asked to name names and not wanting to do so “took the 5th Amendment” and could not be legally forced to reveal the names. Seeger as a matter of principle refused to plead the 5th Amendment because he was not afraid of incriminating himself and had done nothing criminal anyway. So he, a war veteran of WWII, instead refused to answer {635867} citing his First Amendment right of freedom of association. There was no legal precedent for this, and he was indicted and convicted for Contempt of Congress. However, his conviction was overturned as unconstitutional by the U. S. Federal Appeals court. Seeger had prevailed legally. But in retaliation Seeger was blacklisted and none of the radio of TV networks or Hollywood Studios would allow him (and other blacklisted artists) to appear. Today most Americans view what McCarthy, The Congressional Committee, the networks, and Hollywood studios had done as contemptible.
Whittaker Chambers was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.
