Liberals and McCarthyism

Podhoretz attempts to refute the charge that the President and his communications director have engaged in redbaiting by presenting a false idea of what is wrong with McCarthyism.

The most sinister feature of an approach like that of the late senator from Wisconsin is not, as Podhoretz asserts, that “it sometimes slapped the communist label onto persons who were nothing of the kind,” although this happened as a consequence of McCarthyism’s major evil. The main thing wrong with McCarthyite redbaiting is the presumption that the communist label abrogates the need for critical thinking and reasoned debate. The word communist becomes an incantation to drive out logic and summon hysteria in its place.

Let’s say I am called a communist. Whether or not I am one--for those in the school of Reagan, Buchanan and Joe McCarthy--debate comes to an end. There is no longer any need to examine what I have said or done. I am a communist and that is that.

Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega is a communist. So what? Is it really true that all the Sandinistas have done since taking power is to burn down synagogues and cut the ears off of evangelical ministers? If that were so, it should not be necessary to fund armed gangs under the command of former underlings of the ousted dictator to bring down their regime.

Calling the Nicaraguan regime communist should not be a means of ending debate on what policy the United States should adopt toward it. Using it as such is redbaiting and McCarthyism.

LEE W. SMITH

Culver City