INTELLECTUALS AND WRITERS THEN AND NOW
539
communist threat, which was the way some liberals were fighting
McCarthy, were playing into his hands. There was indeed a communist
threat, and the reason McCarthy was gaining so much ground was that
there was so much denial of the rea lity of the threat. Even Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. was on that side in those days. People forget that Amer–
icans for Democratic Action was founded as an anti-communist organi–
zation . It later turned a lmost
180
degrees, but it was founded to fight
against the Wallace, so-called progressive, element in the Democratic
Party. In fact, among ADA's founders was the great liberal hero, Hubert
Humphrey, who incidentally introduced a bill into the Senate to outlaw
the Communist Party. So the story is more comp licated than people
remember. I was in my early twenties then and was just being intro–
duced into this world. But it was tota ll y taken for granted that
McCarthy was a buffoon; there was very little argument about that. The
only argument was whether there was a serious threat from communism
domestically, not internationally. Some people thought there wasn't;
others thought there was.
Edith Kurzweil:
I'd like to add just two points. William Phillips and
Philip Rahv had experience with the Communist Party, with the John
Reed Club . They started the magazine there, and soon realized that the
orders to the Party were coming from Moscow. There are all kinds of
stories William has to ld about this in his book,
A Partisan View.
As to
McCarthyism, Phillips and Rahv were called in by the House of
UnAmerican Actitivies, each one separately. I gather that when they
came out, one said to the other, "What did you tell them?" "Nothing."
"No, I didn't say anything, either." They could have told plenty, but
they didn't. As Norman has said, they were against McCarthy, but they
were also against communism.
Jules Olitski:
I was taken by what that gentlema n with the lovely British
accent, Mr. Anderson, was talking about: the loss of hierarchy. I won–
dered if the panel might comment on that, because it's not very dra–
matic, but I think that what's happened is insidious, in schools and in
the general public. It may have a lot to do with political correctness:
we're all the same, homogenized, there's no high, there's no low. To
question that, to even suggest that there's excellence and there's low, is
to be looked upon as a fascist. My wife says, "These people who say
we're all alike and nothing is higher, when they need a brain surgeon,
look in the Yellow Pages."
