Lucianne Goldberg son, Jonah, thrashes Jacob Weisberg piece in last Sunday's N.Y. Times Magazine on McCarthyism.
Have to agree with one of his points. Victor Navasky et. al. will never face up the fact that a few of the hundreds of thousands that went through the orbit of the CPUSA were "spies" and passed info to the fSU. But as James Weinstein , who incidentally met Julius Rosenberg once under another name, noted at the time of the fracas over Radosh and Milton's book on the Rosenberg's, most CPUSA'ers in the Cold War era, if of a certain "skill set" and mentality would have taken the risks entailed in doing one's "proletarian internationalist" duty. Sorry about my churlishness, but if the New Left began the process of separation from Stalinism (oops, don't mean to forget the Old Left anti-Stalinists from Trotskyist, social democratic, anarchist, and left communist/council communist quarters) what are post-New lefties still doing denying the truth. I suspect that some of this has to do with the residuals of the reflex of always thinking the worst about the American Empire and it's former counter-hegemon, the fSU was given the benefit of the doubt. Now, post NATO bombing esp. I'm not going to defend U.S. foreign policy which still does not lack for examples which back up the imperialism thesis even in it's more whacky Workers World party Leninist version, I just wish that all of us,on the left, use facts and arguments, rather than knee-jerkism.
Michael Pugliese http://www.nationalreview.com/arguments/arguments120199.html