Ron Capshaw

Seventy one years ago, FDR bequeathed to presidency-hungry Republicans a campaign issue, courtesy of the Yalta conference. The conservative argument about this wartime meeting ranged from FDR being sick and taken advantage of by a robust, manipulative Stalin; or that FDR’s secession of Eastern Europe to the Soviet dictator was further proof of the president’s

Throughout his life, George Orwell was labeled a fascist by the Communist Left. Reviewing 1984, Harry Politt, head of the British Communist Party, characterized Winston Smith as a Nazi, based on his willingness when asked by O’Brian, who was masquerading as a rebel against Big Brother, if he would murder a child for the revolution.

In a scene the Left loves to replay as one of its heroic and clarifying moments, witness Dashiell Hammett replied to interrogator Joe McCarthy’s question over the matter of whether banning communist authors from overseas military libraries would be an effective way to fight communism: “If I were fighting communism, I wouldn’t allow people to

Once upon a time, Hollywood conservatives did not hide in the closet, recoiling at pro-Communist influence in Hollywood but keeping their criticisms private. Instead they organized and publicly proclaimed their allegiance to the Constitution. Their organization was called The Motion Picture Alliance for The Preservation of American Ideals, founded seventy years ago. The tide was

Charlie Chaplin is unique among Hollywood legends for being awarded both an honorary Oscar and the Communist International Peace Prize. The first award was given to him for being a pioneer of motion pictures, but he is no less the pioneer in his politics. His support for communist dictators while preaching free speech and tolerance

In the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen, a New York –actually Upper West Side–lover if there ever was one, complained of how the image of New York to the rest of the country was that of a “homosexual, left wing, communist” city. He followed up with, “even I live here and I sometimes think that.”

In a 1993 foreword to his classic, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963), Le Carree, who, in his role as an agent for the Secret Intelligence Service was stationed in Berlin when the Wall went up, declared it a symbol of “an ideology gone mad,” guarded by “brainwashed little thugs.” For those

When Richard Condon, a former publicist for Walt Disney, sought a theme to unsettle late 50s America, arguably the calmest period of the Cold War, he didn’t resort to nuclear war. Instead, he backtracked to the early 1950s, when every headline showed the exposure of one more Soviet Spy in the halls of power. This

Even in 1954, it took quite a bit of courage to write a book supporting Senator Joe McCarthy’s investigations into communist infiltration of the American government. Although the common people (later called the “silent majority”) supported him, the intellectual class did not. Dwight MacDonald called him “the most dangerous demogague” in the United States. Former

An oft-repeated phrase by liberal anticommunists about Joseph McCarthy, that he may as well have been a KGB agent for all the damage he did to the anticommunist cause, inspired Richard Condon to write his Cold War masterpiece, The Manchurian Candidate, a tale of a Soviet sleeper agent directing her brainless headline-grabbing senator husband to

When I was a graduate student at a New York university, Thomas Jefferson was detested by the faculty, while his bête noire Alexander Hamilton was not. Given their animus to anything Southern, and their heresy hunts for “racism,” I was not surprised. As expected, his slave-holding was a target. But what really rankled “conservative” professors

On a mid-80s visit to East Germany via West Germany, conservative humorist P.J O’Rourke was disappointed when he passed through the infamous Checkpoint Charlie for its lack of noir. What he got instead was bored frisking and robotic stares. Walking around East Berlin didn’t fulfill his expectations either. Instead of wind-swept newspapers, dark alleys (where

When Historian John Patrick Diggins informed his role model, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, that he was undertaking a book on Ronald Reagan, Schlesinger asked him not to make the President “look good.” This quote perfectly encapsulates why the Left and the Right have regarded Schlesinger Jr as a knee-jerk liberal (a “Kennedy suck-up”–more on this later–as

Anthony Burgess, Cambridge graduate, talks producer at the BBC, MI-6 agent, and a Soviet mole code-named Madchen, has always been considered the prat-falling member of the Cambridge 5 (composed of Diplomat Donald McLean, Head of the anti-Soviet division of British Intelligence Kim Philby, art advisor to the Queen Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross). Unlike the