I'm reading Daniel J. Flynn's Intellectual Morons: How ideology makes smart people fall for stupid ideas, and I came across this section at the conclusion of the chapter on Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. See if you can visualize an analogous situation currently.
Those who once reflexively shouted "witch-hunt" or "McCarthyism" at any accusation of Communism are today the first to dismiss the significance of the crimes committed by Cold War-era Communists after their guilt has been established. In grudgingly acknowledging what most have known for decades, these Hiss partisans still act as if the truth does not matter. One is left to wonder whether the anti-anticommunists ever thought accused Communists were innocent in the first place, or if they just argued their innocence because they believed the crimes of the accused were not crimes at all.
But they were crimes. "The American people, through the Constitution and under laws enacted by the Congress, invested in Presidents Roosevelt and Truman authority to share or not share the nation's secrets with our allies," scholars John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr note. "They did not invest that authority in Harry White, Theodore Hall, Alger Hiss or Lauchlin Currie. These men never went before American voters to ask for this authority or to account for their actions, but arrogated to themselves the right to give secrets to a foreign power. They betrayed the American people and the Constitution. Moreover, not one of them had the courage to admit what he had done and accept the consequences. Why admire and apologize for them." (from Haynes and Klehr, In Denial, p. 218)
My emphasis added. Here's a hint. Substitute "Bush" for "Roosevelt and Truman" and "Washington Post and NY Times" for "foreign power" and you're on the right track.
4/29/06 1130: Linked to Wizbang's COTT LXI.
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