Glancingly, Mona Charen has mentioned her 2003 book Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First. Let me mention it less glancingly. It is a superb book — as I said in my review for NR. You can find it here, although the formatting is a little funky. A quick excerpt:
Mona Charen has given us something invaluable. . . . We will be mining Useful Idiots for years, to set memory right. To score points, yes — but to uphold history, too. Charen writes with energy, indignation, and heart. . . . She should be grouped with Peter Collier, David Horowitz, and Ronald Radosh as a writer who put the Left — including flighty, mainstream liberalism — on record.
Forget me. Do you know what WFB said about this book? “I prayed that such a book would be written but doubted anything so wonderfully readable and instructive at the same time would come along. But here is Mona Charen’s great explication of the central conflict of our times.”
Just so.
Um, speaking of books — in a few weeks, my history of the Nobel Peace Prize will be on the shelves (or wherever books are now). The 1934 laureate was Arthur Henderson, a British Labourite. According to Richard Pipes, the great historian of Russia (and father of Daniel, whom you read here on NRO), there is no record of Lenin’s ever having said “useful idiot.” But he came closest when sending a note to his foreign-affairs commissar, Chicherin.
Wrote Lenin, “The fool Henderson and Co. will help us a lot if we cleverly prod them.”
Oh, yes.
>there is no record of Lenin’s ever having said “useful idiot.”
The actual phrase in Russian should be translated as "servile idiot" (not quite the same thing). Whether anyone in Lenin's circle (including Lenin himself) used the phrase, I do not know.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShe may have written a good book but as the commander of the Republican Circular Firing Squad, the only thing I can really remember Mona for is reading (or attempting to read) conservatives out of the conservative movement - recently Palin, then Santorum... I fully expect her to kick into high gear against Rubio if it looks like our own John Major - Mitt - is going to get the nod and pick Rubio for Veep. With friends like these...
You would think a putative conservative who wrote a book on useful idiots would feel self-conscious about helping to publicly massacre the political careers of prominent conservatives. You would be wrong.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCan we add Ron Paul to the list as he seems to think America is the cause of the world's problems? His followers certainly sound a lot like the "Blame America First" crowd of the 70's.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Wise words in mouths of fools do oft themselves belie."
-Peter Cook and Dudley Moore from "Beyond the Fringe"
It's not meant to mean anything personal, Mr. Nordlinger et al. These actors were making fun of Shakespeare's language. "Beyond the Fringe" is a real 20th Century classic compilation of witty skits. I highly recommend listening to it.
Miss Charen's article today is fascinating. If you want to know a story about Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald, go to my comment there, which is very relevant to her article.
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