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America's severe problems, Bendiner stressed, did not have their origins
in democracy, nor were they created by the Joe McCarthys and Pat
McCarrans of the world. It was "Russian-fomented conflict" that
allowed "a McCarthy to exploit the very real fears and resentments of a
people who only want to be left in peace." To Bendiner, McCarthyism
was a reflection "of the international position that has been forced upon
us by Soviet aggression." The implication was clear: Had liberals done
their part in dealing with Stalinism, nothing would have been left for
demagogues to exploit. There was, as Bendiner argued, a very real threat
from abroad. And to deal with that threat, it was the responsibility of lib–
erals not only to jettison the Popular Front, but also to join with conser–
vatives with whom they differed to isolate the pro-Communist Left, "no
matter how much aid and comfort that might give the McCarthys of the
country." One could not simply cry "hysteria" every time a Communist
was exposed, "on the ground that his political beliefs are private." Civil
liberties were the cry of fellow travelers who sought to hide their true
agenda behind the facade of repression.
Irving Kristol, however, developed what was the sharpest and most
controversial of the positions on McCarthy taken by any liberal anti–
Communist. Assessing the damage done by Joe McCarthy for
Com–
mentary,
Kristol agreed that McCarthy was nothing but a "vulgar
demagogue." But for all his faults, Kristol wrote, he had one important
positive virtue: "For there is one thing that the American people know
about Senator McCarthy; he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Commu–
nist. About the spokesman for American liberalism, they feel they know
no such thing, and with some justification." Kristol's emphasis was not
on McCarthy, whom he correctly assumed all his compatriots were
opposed. Rather, it was on the inability of many liberals to reflect accu–
rately about the danger of domestic Communism.
Thus Kristol counted on his list of weak-minded liberals such famous
personalities as the journalist Alan Barth of the
Washington Post,
the
historian Henry Steele Commager, the legal scholar Zechariah Chafee,
the writer Howard Mumford Jones, Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas, and FDR's former Attorney General, Frances Biddle. These
men, part of a generation of "earnest reformers who helped give this
country a New Deal," Kristol explained, were all "stained with the guilt
of having lent aid and comfort to Stalinist tyranny." When men like
these stooped to defending an Owen Lattimore and his pro-Communist
record, they played McCarthy's game, "but on the losing side." Simi–
larly, Kristol pointed out that when Commager attacked McCarthy or
the House Committee on Un-American Activities for investigating the
