“You have done a good job in your reporting the U.S.S.R.”–Josef Stalin, to New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, Christmas Day 1933

…[A]ny writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic to the USSR – sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be – does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues.”–George Orwell

YOU’RE THE EXPERTS

Usually I defer to the New York Times when it comes to detecting Communists. They can suss them out, hire them and support them for office better than any other news organization out there. But they’re losing their touch:

The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York

First we were fascists. And then we were Taliban. This summer we were Nazis. And now we’re Stalinists.

Like Joe McCarthy, Frank Rich holds in his hand a list of Stalinists who have infiltrated America, and it turns out it’s every Republican except Dede ScozzaRosenberg and Colin Powell, aka “Republicans who vote for Democrats”.

I don’t have the need to fisk this drivel–it’s Frank Rich, after all. But it was interesting that he cited Richard Hofstadter, famous for his 1964 book “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Hofstadter was deeply concerned about John Birchers, even though Wm. F. Buckley purged them from respectable conservatism.

But liberals then and now were still deeply concerned about those crazy right-wing nuts; you know, like the ones who killed JFK. Oops–that was a Castro-ite Communist. But still.

In fact, Hofstadter himself was a Communist in the ’30’s. In other words: a Stalinist! When you’re calling people “Stalinists”, Frank, you may not want to quote one approvingly.

And then there are those Stalinists on the Times staff:

“These delicacies were served at the end of a meal of a tasty salad of tomatoes, pickles and onions, roast duck and fluffy potato souffle, much better prepared than in Moscow hotels, washed down with the Ukrainian national drink, slivyanka, a liquor made from plums, tasting non-alcoholic though with a mule’s kick in every swallow.”

“The hunt for famine in Russia,” Denny concluded borrowing a line from Duranty, “was like chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. It was always somewhere further on.”

The New American:

New York Times reporter Walter Duranty served as the primary American press cover for a holocaust in the Ukraine that cost some 7-10 million lives. Called “holodomor” in Ukrainian (“death by hunger”), the 1932-33 famine was caused when Joseph Stalin ordered all the grain in the nation of Ukraine confiscated for the Soviet Union to export. [...] For his lies on behalf of Stalin, Duranty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and remained a New York Times correspondent until 1940.

New York Times Reporter Herbert Matthews helped cover for the communist side of the Spanish Civil War in Spain during the 1930s. Matthews ignored massacres of thousands of Catholic priests and nuns by the so-called “Republican” forces that were backed by Stalin.

After the Second World War, the New York Times stationed Matthews in Cuba, where Matthews assisted Fidel Castro’s rise to power by glorifying the future dictator. Matthews told New York Times readers on February 24, 1957 that Castro “has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice.” The following day he reported that “there is no communism to speak of in Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement.”

The New York Times actively aided and abetted Stalin. Also Mao. And Castro. Ho. Mugabe. And many other communists, lo, even unto this very day. For instance, they wouldn’t report on Van Jones’ Communism until they were absolutely forced to do so.

And now they’ve helped Obama into office, a guy whose Czars can’t make a speech without quoting Mao. His pastor of twenty years came out as a full-fledged communist just today. And his partner and pal Bill Ayers is still an unrepentant Communist. And a cop-killer to boot. That photo of Ayers standing on an American flag? Published along with a glowing profile on Sept. 11, 2001. By the New York Times.

But according to Mr. Frank Rich of the New York Times, you and I are the “Stalinist” extremists because we believe in limited government or traditional marriage or defending America, not in defending terrorists.

There’s a deep philosophical lesson here for conservatives:

Frank Rich is a half-flatulent pantload with delusions of mediocrity.

And also this:

…[T]he Frank Rich hissy fit is a perfect example of the real story of the election. The story is not that the GOP is self-destructing, it is that the conventional wisdom is being shown to be ludicrous. For some time now Frank Rich, Sam Tanenhaus, and countless others (including David Frum) have been arguing that the GOP is a rump party and the only way for it to survive is for it to embrace me-too Republicanism of one flavor or another. The story of all three major races (Va., N.J., and NY-23) is that this conventional wisdom was incandescently wrong and ill-advised. Hoffman and McDonnell owe their success to the support of independents (the independents all of these people said wanted moderate, Democrat-lite policies) and to Republicans determined to stay true to conservative principles. Not only was the conventional wisdom wrong, the idea that there’s a “civil war” within the GOP revolving around this argument is nonsense. The GOP is an unapologetically conservative party, providing a choice not an echo, and — horror of horrors — it’s working.

I know I’m not a Stalinist, Frank; otherwise, I’d have a Pulitzer Prize, a column at the Times and the office next door.