‘The Public Enemy’

The Strange Tactics of Extremism, by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet. Norton, $4.50 Danger on the Right, by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein. Random House, $4.95 When the noble general Stilicho tried by various stratagems to retrieve the Roman nation from collapse, he was vilified, betrayed and murdered. His protégé and successor Honorius denounced him as “the public enemy,” then proceeded to deliver Rome as rapidly as possible into the hands of the rampaging Goths. As Rome struggled in its death agony, it turned with unerring instinct against the one man capable of preserving it and destroyed him. Whether the United States has a Stilicho in its midst today, it is certainly blessed with more than one Honorius. It has, indeed, a whole class of people, loosely identified as Liberal intellectuals, who have made it their business to seek out and brand as “the public enemy” anyone who offers a proper assessment of the perils which beset us.

When Rome destroyed Stilicho, it was apparent the empire longed to die and would strike those who sought to prevent the suicide. We have improved upon that performance by establishing a whole machinery of suppression for stopping would-be Stilichos before they can get started. The forces of American Liberalism have constructed, over the years, a kind of interlocking smearbund, comprising scholars, journalists, governmental spokesmen, labor leaders and others, whose task it is to identify potential dissidents and smother them in their cradles. From this activity have emerged the pioneering Authoritarian Personality, a dozen other books about the menace of the American Right, full-blown propaganda war by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, governmental efforts to extinguish conservative comment in the public media, a host of TV programs “exposing” the Right, yards of newspaper and magazine copy, and the tireless labors of a blacklisting outfit called “Group Research, Inc.,” whose findings, in the words of COPE, are to be used to “head off” and “dry up” conservative spokesmen.

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M. Stanton Evans

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The Strange Tactics of Extremism, by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet. Norton, $4.50 Danger on the Right, by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein. Random House, $4.95 When the noble general Stilicho tried by various stratagems to retrieve the Roman nation from collapse, he was vilified, betrayed and murdered. His protégé and successor Honorius denounced him as “the public enemy,” then proceeded to deliver Rome as rapidly as possible into the hands of the rampaging Goths. As Rome struggled in its death agony, it turned with unerring instinct against the one man capable of preserving it and destroyed him. Whether the United States has a Stilicho in its midst today, it is certainly blessed with more than one Honorius. It has, indeed, a whole class of people, loosely identified as Liberal intellectuals, who have made it their business to seek out and brand as “the public enemy” anyone who offers a proper assessment of the perils which beset us.

When Rome destroyed Stilicho, it was apparent the empire longed to die and would strike those who sought to prevent the suicide. We have improved upon that performance by establishing a whole machinery of suppression for stopping would-be Stilichos before they can get started. The forces of American Liberalism have constructed, over the years, a kind of interlocking smearbund, comprising scholars, journalists, governmental spokesmen, labor leaders and others, whose task it is to identify potential dissidents and smother them in their cradles. From this activity have emerged the pioneering Authoritarian Personality, a dozen other books about the menace of the American Right, full-blown propaganda war by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, governmental efforts to extinguish conservative comment in the public media, a host of TV programs “exposing” the Right, yards of newspaper and magazine copy, and the tireless labors of a blacklisting outfit called “Group Research, Inc.,” whose findings, in the words of COPE, are to be used to “head off” and “dry up” conservative spokesmen.