Would Katha also be shocked, shocked, to learn that an occasional red in the 1950s might indeed have sought to overthrow the United States government, despite having pleaded innocent to such charges during the Smith Act show trials?
The purpose of those trials, and the Rosenberg prosecution, were to criminalize radical political thought and action. The people who defended those cases, despite differences among themselves (read Al Richmond, Arthur Kinoy, and Morton Sobell; talk to them too), were fighting that battle, honorably and sensibly.
By Katha's standards, communists should have fallen on their swords in order to save latter-day liberals some discomfort. This is odd when you consider that not even the most venal of the redbaiting historians today claims that the Rosenbergs' trial was "fair."
Ken Lawrence