Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Liberals￯﾿ﾽ loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for rational discussion?￯﾿ﾽIn a stunning follow-up to her number one bestseller Slander, leading conservative pundit Ann Coulter contends that liberals have been wrong on every foreign policy issue, from the fight against Communism at home and abroad, the Nixon and the Clinton presidencies, and the struggle with the Soviet empire right up to today￯﾿ﾽs war on terrorism. ￯﾿ﾽLiberals have a preternatural gift for always striking a position on the side of treason,￯﾿ﾽ says Coulter. ￯﾿ﾽEveryone says liberals love America, too. No, they don￯﾿ﾽt.￯﾿ﾽ From Truman to Kennedy to Carter to Clinton, America has contained, appeased, and retreated, often sacrificing America￯﾿ﾽs best interests and security. With the fate of the world in the balance, liberals should leave the defense of the nation to conservatives.Reexamining the sixty-year history of the Cold War and beyond-including the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Whittaker Chambers-Alger Hiss affair, Ronald Reagan￯﾿ﾽs challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to ￯﾿ﾽtear down this wall,￯﾿ﾽ the Gulf War, and our present war on terrorism-Coulter reveals how liberals have been horribly wrong in all their political analyses and policy prescriptions. McCarthy, exonerated by the Venona Papers if not before, was basically right about Soviet agents working for the U.S. government. Hiss turned out to be a high-ranking Soviet spy (who consulted Roosevelt at Yalta). Reagan, ridiculed throughout his presidency, ended up winning the Cold War. And George W. Bush, also an object of ridicule, has performed exceptionally in responding to America￯﾿ﾽs newest threats at home and abroad.Coulter, who in Slander exposed a liberal bias in today￯﾿ﾽs media, also examines how history, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, has been written by liberals and, therefore, distorted by their perspective. Far from being irrelevant today, her clearheaded and piercing view of what we￯﾿ﾽve been through informs us perfectly for challenges today and in the future.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

Coulter's thesis has the force of simplicity: liberals detest America and prefer to side with the "Third World savages" who attack it. In her view, American critics of the War on Terror are the intellectual progeny of the Soviet sympathizers rooted out by Senator McCarthy and HUAC. Joe Stalin may have given way to Osama Bin Laden, but the fellow-traveling habit is unchanged. The result is a strangely lopsided book, which spends a lot of time going over ground -- the Venona transcripts, Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs -- that has been well covered in recent years and asserting, for the umpteenth time, the guilt of people whom few liberals today would try to defend. Coulter does better when sending up the post-colonial pieties of liberals and "their cheese-tasting friends," and probably owes her widespread popularity more to her skill as a social satirist than to any real acumen as a political commentator.

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