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Politics : POLITICAL LIES -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (141)	7/6/2004 5:57:51 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1026

Many unions, including the Screen Actors Guild, were involved in leaderships fights for control of the unions with Communist factions. Not all anti- Communist activity can be dismissed as McCarthyism: Communist influence in labor unions came under increasing attack. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 denied the facilities of the National Labor Relations Board to unions that failed to file affidavits avowing that their officers were not Communists, and in 1949—50 the CIO expelled unions that were still Communist-dominated. In Mar., 1947, President Truman barred Communists or Communist sympathizers from employment in the executive branch of the federal government. The sensational confessions of former Communists, such as Whittaker Chambers, and increasing evidence of Communist espionage led to highly publicized investigations by Congress (especially by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and federal grand juries. In Oct., 1949, 11 top Communist leaders were convicted on charges of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government. In June, 1951, the Supreme Court found the Smith Act of 1940, under which the convictions had been obtained, constitutional, and the government proceeded to bring many lesser Communist officials to trial. In 1950 the McCarran Internal Security Act required that all Communist and Communist-dominated organizations register with the federal government the names of all members and contributors, and the Communist Control Act of 1954 further strengthened the provisions of the McCarran Act by providing severe penalties for Communists who failed to register, denying collective bargaining power to Communist-dominated unions, and taking away the "rights, privileges and immunities" of the Communist party as a legal organization. At the same time many states passed "little Smith Acts," with such provisions as the requirement of loyalty oaths from state employees and the denial of a place on the ballot to Communist parties. This was also the period of Senator Joseph McCarthy's hysterical search for Communists in all branches of government. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's excesses, along with the Russian suppression of the Hungarian revolt in that same year, created new schisms in the U.S. Communist party, which lost thousands of members. The Supreme Court has upheld many of the provisions of the Smith and McCarran acts as they apply to the leadership of the Communist party, but several decisions of the 1960s substantially voided sanctions against the rank and file except where some active conspiracy against U.S. security is proved. As a result the party resumed open activities in 1966 and ran candidates in presidential elections, but the contemporary party is a very minor political force. In the late 1980s, party leader Gus Hall criticized the Gorbachev reforms in the USSR, but as Communism collapsed in the USSR, it was claimed that Hall had received $2 million from the Soviet party. Subsequent declassification (1995—96) of intercepted Soviet cables confirmed that party members had indeed spied for the Soviet Union before and during the cold war, although some scholars questioned the extent to which the cables could trusted. yahooligans.yahoo.com Do you think that Harry Truman was McCarthy's right hand man? Or that Gus Hall had the interests of the Soviet people at heart? Or that the Communist Party was not a conspiratorial orgnization supported financially, and dictated to, by Moscow?

To: American Spirit who wrote (141)	7/6/2004 6:04:20 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1026

I would suggest that your use of the term "commie-baiter" is more than a bit pejorative. I didn't read all of Reagan's testimony, but the following exchange jumped out at me. Pretty powerful stuff given the temper of those complex and difficult times. Why not take off your ideological blinders for a few minutes? Mr. STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, what is your feeling about what steps should be taken to rid the motion-picture industry of any Communist influences, if they are there? Mr. REAGAN: Well, sir . . . 99 percent of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think within the bounds of our democratic rights, and never once stepping over the rights given us by democracy, we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people’s activities curtailed. After all, we must recognize them at present as a political party. On that basis we have exposed their lies when we came across them, we have opposed their propaganda, and I can certainly testify that in the case of the Screen Actors Guild we have been eminently successful in preventing them from, with their usual tactics, trying to run a majority of an organization with a well organized minority. So that fundamentally I would say in opposing those people that the best thing to do is to make democracy work. In the Screen Actors Guild we make it work by insuring everyone a vote and by keeping everyone informed. I believe that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake. Whether the party should be outlawed, I agree with the gentlemen that preceded me that that is a matter for the Government to decide. As a citizen I would hesitate, or not like, to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology. However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of a power, a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party, and I think the Government is capable of proving that, if the proof is there, then that is another matter. . . . I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work; I happen to be very proud of the way in which we conducted the fight. I do not believe the Communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion-picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology. . . .