Frank Rich is what he is--no great surprise. Glenn Beck is a hoot! He is reality news TV--National Lampoon on steroids. Fun to watch.
Marxists in this administration? Heh. Like Britain, we're riddled with them, and worse yet, the philosophy rules the day in both parties.
Just playing out the string to "Endarkenment"--as the other Beck (Billy) puts it.
Heh, heh, nice posting. Stalin, the real "Georgia Cracker". The New York Times is a joke. Their news is like commentary by Zippy the Pinhead.
The US "left"overs, profess a false love for Mao to ingratiate themselves to China. (gravitation to childhood). All they get out of it is Trotsky's headache.
Every despotic regime first consolidates power, then uses half their loyal followers to kill the other half. More loot to divide among the survivors, who are left in terror of one-another.
"Progressive" is a contradiction in terms.
Drunkeness lowes inhibitions. Could be that a drunk was uninhibited and accidentally (if obnoxiously) right?
What McCarthy thought about the State Department was understatement, that bunch is a running joke.
Had Joe McCarthy stopped drinking he would have been better able to defend himself and made less slips.
However, considering the vast forces he was up against, they might well have got him anyway.
Glenn Beck's point is that at least McCarthy was a Senator (and a senior one). Beck is just a commentator - he has no power.
Of course this did not stop Valerie Jarrett saying that the Administation was "talking truth to power" in relation to Fox News.
The exact opposite of the truth - as it is the Administration that has the power, and all people like Glenn Beck has is the truth.
Also the situation is different:
Eisenhower was just trying to limit embarrassment for the government - his reasoning being that, yes, the government had been full of traitors but they have retired or resigned or reformed now so let us not talk about it any more.
Also McCarthy made the basic mistake of attacking military figures (namely General Marshall - over the China mess, and Marshall was personal friend of Eisenhower).
So Murrow got set on McCarthy (Edward R. was not some brave free spirit as Glenn Beck seems to think - he was an establishment man to the core), and things were leaked to various people.
For example, McCarthy chief assistant was a Jew and and Mr Cohn was also a homosexual.
And so it was easy to set anti semite gay bashers like Senator Flanders of Vermont (a Republican by the way) on McCarthy (you just had to imply that McCarthy was also a homosexual - which he was not).
The powers-that-be (including the New York Times) have spent a lot of time and effort trying to find dirt in order to discredit Glenn Beck.
No doubt if they can not find any they will INVENT it.
Final, and most important, point.
Eisenhower was no Socialist (and McCarthy never said he was) and Obama IS.
That is the vast difference between then and now - and it why now is vastly worse than then.
Nor is Obama isolated - since the 1960's the movement has made vast progress in virtually every institution of American life.
The United States is like a great tree - it looks impressive from a distance, but when one looks close it is full of disease. Soon to die?
Glenn Beck still has hope that America will not die - we will know soon if his hopes have foundation.
"whereas (sadly) Mr Beck gets his version of events from his memory of the CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow"
i think mr. beck admires mr. murrow for what special advisor to the president refers to recently in the administrations battle with fox news "speaking truth to power"
I think that Rich is an unregenerate Trotskyite! now that Stalinism has had its' day, let's try other dictatorships for size! I am sure that Trotsky would have been every bit as bad as Stalin, but nobody gave him a chance!
Well he's got some bloody nerve talking about others Stalinism I must say!
This is the same Frank Rich, is it not, who as theatre and film critic could close a Broadway show single handedly with one bad review.
It's like us Brits taking seriously the political mouthings of Johnathan Ross!
So the piece starts with Frank Rich's complaints on Stalinism and then inevitably to Obama as a Marxist. Okay, I see the connection.
Stalin was a Marxist - people (like the New York Times) who support Marxists (such as Barack Obama) should not accuse antiMarxists of being "Stalinists".
And, by the way, the New York Times supported Stalin anyway and actively covered up his murder of tens of millions of people. Just as the present publisher of the New York Times supported the Communists in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia - where they murdered millions of people.
I hope that clears things up for you owinok.