Fraters Libertas

Another One For The Shelf

Add Mona Charen's Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First to the voluminous collection at the recently expanded Fraters Library.

Useful Idiots is a devastating and biting indictment on the left's moral relativism in the Cold War. You'll recognize a lot a familiar faces as Charen liberally (no pun intended) sprinkles damning quotes from well known lefties throughout the work. She also covers the continuing post-Cold War anti-Americanism that infuses much of the left with sections on the Elian Gonzalez fiasco and the war on terrorism. The recent actions of the left before, during, and after the war with Iraq perfectly fit the "If America's For It, We're Again It" leftist template that Charen exposes in this book.

One of my favorite passages concerns the media's reaction to some of their members showing their patriotism after 9/11:

It isn't objectivity or neutrality that journalists like Westin guard so jealously. They do not hesitate to condemn their country when they think censure is justified (namely constantly). No, what shames them among their peers is to be caught sympathizing with their country, or indulging patriotic feelings. Still, those feelings did surface after September 11-if only briefly. (After all, if the French were momentarily pro-American, it isn't altogether surprising that liberals were as well.)

The only bone I have to pick with Charen's writing is admittedly a minor one. The word tendentious has a nice ring to it and is an apt choice when describing many of the statements made by prominent leftists in this book but to use it SEVEN times in 263 pages seems a little bit over the top. Instead of ruminating on the outrageous claptrap uttered by some windbag lefty you instead can't help but ask yourself, "Didn't she just use that word ten pages ago?". Again a minor distraction in what is otherwise an excellent recollection of the disgraceful role that much of the left played in the Cold War.