Soft On Communism?

ON THE RIGHT

The other day Senator Goldwater charged that the Johnson Administration was “soft on Communism,” and the exasperation was worldwide. Ogawd-here-we-go-again, they a 11 said, summoning the memory of the early fifties when Joe McCarthy and Dwight Eisen hower were charging the same kind of thing about Harry Truman and Dean Acheson and Adlai Stevenson, and great political battles were fought over the Buckley question, Had the Government indeed been soft on Communism? That era produced some especially interesting phenomena, of which we are conspicuously not reminded by Mr. Goldwater’s critics. It was in 1954 that Hubert Humphrey, running for re-election and seeking to establish that nobody but nobody was a bigger or better witch hunter than he, piloted through Congress a bill to outlaw Communism so drastic in its conformist fundamentalism that even Senator Pat McCarran and Joe McCarthy voted against it. (It squats on the statute books, unenforceable, as the Communist Control Act of 1954.) But all that seems ages away, and it is unlikely that Senator Humphrey will be reminded of his venture in political atavism of ten years ago: indeed, it was he who most impatiently rebuked Senator Goldwater last week for bringing up so ancient, so discredited, so divisive a slogan. Soft on Communism indeed!

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

ON THE RIGHT

The other day Senator Goldwater charged that the Johnson Administration was “soft on Communism,” and the exasperation was worldwide. Ogawd-here-we-go-again, they a 11 said, summoning the memory of the early fifties when Joe McCarthy and Dwight Eisen hower were charging the same kind of thing about Harry Truman and Dean Acheson and Adlai Stevenson, and great political battles were fought over the Buckley question, Had the Government indeed been soft on Communism? That era produced some especially interesting phenomena, of which we are conspicuously not reminded by Mr. Goldwater’s critics. It was in 1954 that Hubert Humphrey, running for re-election and seeking to establish that nobody but nobody was a bigger or better witch hunter than he, piloted through Congress a bill to outlaw Communism so drastic in its conformist fundamentalism that even Senator Pat McCarran and Joe McCarthy voted against it. (It squats on the statute books, unenforceable, as the Communist Control Act of 1954.) But all that seems ages away, and it is unlikely that Senator Humphrey will be reminded of his venture in political atavism of ten years ago: indeed, it was he who most impatiently rebuked Senator Goldwater last week for bringing up so ancient, so discredited, so divisive a slogan. Soft on Communism indeed!