It took the Catholic Church centuries to admit that
it had been wrong to persecute Galileo. He had said
that the earth was not the center of the universe
so the Church shut him up. Within a century every
Catholic university was teaching Galileo's doctrine,
but the Church refused to admit that it was wrong
to persecute him until the 1800s.
Exactly the same thing is true of today's established
religion, Political Correctness (PC). Its official
doctrine has been that the McCarhtyite era was a
"witch hunt." It was called a witch hunt because
witches don't exist.
The official PC doctrine was that none of the people
McCarthy went after were actually Communists.
But, when the Soviet Union failed, the KGB files
were opened and guess who fell out?
Now that we are finding the KGB dossiers of one
after another of these people, liberals have begun
to admit, very softly, that they actually were Communists.
They don't use the term "witch hunt" as much today,
because somebody might remember that they used it
when they said the Alger Hisses were NOT Communists.
They needn't worry about that. Respectable conservatives
are paid not to have a memory.
What leaps out at me in the Quindlen column quoted
above is a giant change in the PC line. A few years
ago if she had described McCarthy's victims as "aligned
or merely flirting with the Communist Party" she
would have been denounced as a McCarthyite herself.
With the help of respectable conservatives, liberals
have a media in which nobody but me even notices
this enormous switch. No PC will ever have to admit
that his side was just plain wrong.
So destroying Bessinger for rightist heresy is
good, hurting anybody who actively supports a foreign
enemy is evil. And all respectable conservatives
agree. You will not see this fact pointed to anywhere
but here.
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