George McGovern: R.I.P.
As the Cold War developed, McGovern became a typical anti-war fellow traveler of the American Communists. Left out of most of the obituaries is the fact that McGovern was a delegate to the Henry A. Wallace Progressive Party convention in 1948 that nominated Wallace for a presidential run in a party created and dominated by the American Communist Party. A small faction of delegates from Vermont sought to pass a resolution calling for the party to have an independent foreign policy. The Communists took that as an effort of some members to not support the Soviet Union. The resolution was defeated, as delegates including McGovern voted to reject it.
Later, he would take positions akin to those Wallace took in 1948, arguing that the Cold War was being waged because the United States refused to accommodate serious Soviet concerns for their own security. In one sense, his own massive defeat in 1972 — losing the Electoral College vote in every state except Massachusetts, including his own South Dakota — showed that McGovern proved as unpopular to the American people as Wallace was in 1948.
With the McGovern rules created by a commission he chaired, the Democratic Party was transformed into an institution beholden to special interest groups of the Left that easily used those rules to pick McGovern himself as their candidate. His effort began the slow takeover of the once mainstream party by forces of the far Left.
McGovern himself never had a real chance. I recall watching him on the main convention night, postponing his acceptance speech until 1:00 a.m. — way after most viewers were asleep — to meet outside the convention with left-wing protesters from the Maoist Progressive Labor Party. Any major party candidate who would do such a thing was clearly more than out of touch with the reality of American politics.
Years later, I heard McGovern at the PEN International Writers Conference in New York City, where he spoke on a panel with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Bruno Kreisky, the former chancellor of Austria who was virulently anti-Israel. At that meeting, McGovern said that had he been elected president, the first thing he would have done to deal with the Middle East would have been to go to ask Kreisky for advice. Kreisky, with McGovern’s support at the panel, also called for recognition by the West of Communist East Germany, and rejected any policy that would have sought to isolate the regime. It was clear then, listening to McGovern at that event, what a disaster he would have been for his country had he been elected.
If his policies were misguided was that because anyone can reach the same conclusion or was it because he loved people but disliked the US? Kind of the inverse of what normally is said of leftists: they love humanity but dislike people.
My own belief was that George McGovern never really understood the forces that gathered around him in 1972. He certainly would never have called himself a socialist. I always saw McGovern as one of the last representatives of the Crolyite tradition that led from the Progressive Party (large “P”) of the early 1900′s thorugh the New Deal and which was finally outflanked and crushed by the New Left during the late 1960′s. (An “isolationist New Dealer” would have been a good description of McGovern.)
Good and brave man that he was, I don’t believe that McGovern fully grasped the absolutist and totalitarian impulses that lay just beneath the surface of the New Left. He either would not or could not recognize the ruthlessness with which the New Left were determined to seize power and the extremism of it’s members. As such he was a “respectable front man” much in the same way that Henry Wallace had been a front man for hard-line leftists in the 1940′s.
McGovern would have been a disaster for the United States post-Vietnam. There is no way that the Soviets would not have pushed him to the limit on nuclear concessions and removal of American forces from Europe. I don’t believe he could have stood the pressure that Brezhnev and Co. would have put on him.
Also – I believe that the New Left had no more use for McGovern than they had for Eugene McCarthy. He was simply a means to an end – the takeover of the Democratic Party. (They would have preferred Robert Kennedy.) In his own way George McGovern was s dupe – Whether he knew it or not is open to question.
I concur with much of what ‘chambers’ says.
I recall the election of ’72. It is not enough to talk about Vietnam nor could McGovern limit public understanding of the Democratic trajectory to that spin.
In a desperate but sly bid to literally create out of whole cloth new demographics to create a new electoral coalition to replace the New Deal electoral coalition shatterd in the 1960s, the Democrats had named themeselves “the Party of Women” (LBJ had already committed them to a largely under-examined course of government-imposed racial preferences half a decade before). In so naming themselves, the Democrats signalled clearly that they would be setting themselves up in support of whatever whackery was coming along in those early days of Identity Politics and Political Correctness.
Thus the Democrats forced anyone with doubts about the sociocultural and sociopolitical trajectory of the country to either flee to the Republicans ‘faute de mieux’ or else convince themselves that whatever dodgy political strategies the Party was embracing wouldn’t get out of hand and would eventually self-correct.
But radical feminism – among all the newly-created Identities – was slick enough to immerse itself in the culturally-assaultive and culturally-corrosive strategems of Antonio Gramsci and other, later, Eurocommunists. Gramcsi, early 20th century Italian Communist leader, tried to develop a strategy for communist corrosion of the established democracies of the West (presuming that the simply armed revolution effected in Russia wouldn’t work in well-functioning democratic polities). His were the terms ‘dominance’, ‘hegemony’ and ‘marginalization’ that were quietly taken (without attribution) by radical feminism over here.
Under Jesse Jacksons’ repellently imbecilic ‘Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Western Civ has got to go’ the radical feminists deployed an established ideological content and method (Lenin’s and Gramsci’s) and thereby made their Long March through the institutions, aided and abetted by a Democratic Party – and then a Beltway – eagerly looking to make demographic-electoral hay.
McGovern was present at the creation of that decision by the Party. But – as ‘chambers’ says, and I think rightly so – McGovern was a hapless Sorcerer’s Apprentice who really had no idea of what fresh hell the Democrats had enabled. An Old Left activist with decent labor sensitivities, he saw the 1960s as the finally-arrived unfolding of the dreams of the American labor Left’s 1930s, when actually the 1960s were the beginning of a Leninist-Gramscian phase (courtesy of the ideologues of radical feminism) that would bond with all the latent authoritarianism of American Progressivism from Wilson on. (Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”, published in 2007, is a nifty recap of Progressivism in this regard.)
Mr. Radosh – One nit-pick with your excellent column: You term Elinor Clift, a liberal. She most definitely is not liberal. She is a Leftist. I notice that the in remainder of your column you use the term Leftist, which is the appopriate term. A pet peeve of mine is that the Left has stolen words to describe itself that disguise its true aims. We should not abet them in their nefarious ways.
Thanks for this post. McGovern was an honorable man.
As are you, Brutus. So are you all, all honorable men.
Good Lord, that is too perfect. Was it a setup?
Ehh, I say kudos to him for his honorable military service. But there is no virtue in “kindly and decently” wishing to tear apart the fabric of our nation and the Constitution.
RIP?
How about good riddance?
He fought for America against the Germans, and played pussy-foot with Commies who slaughtered more living souls than Hitler?
“A war hero, he did not ever mention his war record”
Maybe because HIS PARTY was then calling everyone in Uniform a “baby killer” and spitting on them in airports?
His “likeability” has another name.
The Banality of Evil.
Or the stupidity of a useful (commie) Idiot.
Agreed.
Case in point:
If you read Gary Taube’s “Why We Get Fat” you will learn that Sen. McGovern had a not insignificant role in the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes 2. No one doubts McGovern’s sincerity in wishing to improve the American diet. In 1977 he chaired a Senate Commission that — despite much contrary testimony — overturned the then-common knowledge that carbohydrates like pasta, potato and bread make you fat. Sen. McGovern decided dietary carbs were actually good. (Therefore it must be dietary fats that are bad.)
In accordance, government grants pushed academics to flesh out the new approach. The first Food Pyramid was published, followed by new menus for school lunches, new pamphlets, ads and articles planted in the mainstream media all promoting the “carbs are good” theme. Studies have since shown that this campaign had a great effect on the American diet, with carb consumption rising significantly in the following 30 years. (Obesity and diabete 2 rates began their parallel climb about a decade later.)
Countries that followed the US lead, after a lag, began showing the same health effects, after a lag.
As evidence has accumulated that high carb diets drive insulin resistance, the Food Pyramid has had to be revised repeatedly. Studies are piling on that for at least a large portion of the population the high-carb approach is disastrous. (See USA Today’s report last Friday on a just-released Mayo Clinic research project that tied high-carb diets with cognitive decline in the elderly.)
All of this is easily verified. But it shows how an honorable and good man can hold beliefs that prove disastrous. McGovern sincerely believed it was government’s role to do something (anything!) about hunger and poor nutrition (now!) despite sketchy data. And the unintended results are obvious everywhere — just take a look at shoppers waddling through the nearest mall (a sight that no one could imagine in 1977 when McGovern felt impelled to act.)
For me, this is a very compelling example of the point Ron Radosh makes in this essay.
But his intentions were good! He meant well! At least he cared, unlike (insert current Republican bogeyman here)!
Isn’t it pathetic how progressives always gloss over the catastrophic failures of their policies by loudly protesting their compassion and caring?
In other words, he checked his brain at the door, and in so doing, became a useful idiot in the employ of those who hate America.
“Later, McGovern would say his own experience of raining death and destruction on civilians hit by the bombs he dropped turned him into a fierce opponent of all military action.”
So he would have preferred to let the war drag on and on resulting in more American deaths? Yep, sounds like a patriot to me.
He was not a “decent” man.
Not to mention the many additional deaths in the gaz chambers.
About his remarks on bombing the railroads to Auschwiz: Auschwitz was in Poland, well beyond the range of fighters even the Mustangs. American raids beyond the rage of fighters had suffered 25% losses. That figure is for the planes but it is higher of you accoun for dead and wounded crewemen in the bombers who came back. In other words 4 missions and you no longer have an airforce thus makinng the war longer and giving the Nazis more time for the killing.
Finally while the USAAF did kill lots of civilians McGovern knew first hand USAAF was centered on precision bmbing of objetives of military value not on undiscriminate attacks on cities. That is why they bombed at daylihht. It was the British who bombed cities because their bombers were unable to operate at daylight and at night only 1 in four was dropping her bombs in a 5 mile circle of the objective. In other words with his remarks about bombing civilians Mr McFovern indulged in the same kind of dishonesty than John Kerry with Wintersoldier.
Hmm.
Did we even know about Auschwitz at the time? I’ll have to go back and double check, but I thought we didn’t know about the death camps until our troops liberated them???
If my memory is correct (and I’m not certain), then McGovern was flat out lying.
Oh. That would really be a surprise, wouldn’t it? [rolling eyes]
By end 1942 we probably knew. But what could we do about it? The raids over Schwinfurth that is a target who required two or three times less unescorted flying over German controlles skies had suffered enormous casualties: a aparticular squadron had lost 80%, yes eighty percent, of its planes in a single mission. It was only early 1944 that with the arrival of the Merlin-engined Mustang and of the phased escort the USAAF was able to provide escorts for the whole trip and it was not before end Febrary 1944 before it could acquire air superiority over Germany. There were only four short months left for preparing D-Day. Like we al know D-Day came very close of being a failure. How many more people would have died if the Allies had bombed the Auswitz railroads (let’s remember that in 1941 the Germans had killed hundreds of thousands of Jews by field execution, gas chambers were merely a convenience) and a few months later the landings had failed?
Also even in case he never had lied for polirtical advantage a hing I dispute have the meftist ever paid hommage when a right wing figure died? Tell me what they say at the death of Reagan. Tell me what you think they will say what the people at the death of George W Bush. Just tell me. Also do you know why yopungs votre for the left? Partly because at the death of a political figure they know little about they are told he was an admirable man when he was a Democrat and bag of sh.. if he was a Republican.
I remember going door-to-door for him. (I was under the strong influence of Leftists in my circle of family and friends.) This column and the comments are shedding some light on this, to me, mysterious creature. I have tried to learn more about him but never could score any info, and you have supplied it.
Happily I have “seen the conservative light” and now would no more work for him than fly to the moon. He was, indeed, a far left nutcase who I am glad was never even close to the presidency.
However, I did learn that the Leftist contingent are big on incrementalism, and the point made by one of you that Barry was now able to run and win by a less radical-sounding approach is so true.
The withdrawal from Vietnam adocated by McGovern was put into effect by Nixon.
True, but then the Democrats in Congress, following the McGovern philosophy, betrayed our treaty obligations to South Vietnam and refused the supplies that could have enabled them to stand of Ho Chi Minh’s blitzkreig.
George McGovern was a collectivist enabler.
He gave credibility to the Bolsheviks and Nihilists at a time that our country badly needed its young to ignore them.
We’re living in the social horror that resulted.
RIP? Yes. Let him rest for God’s sake! And give us peace from his likes.
George McGovern was a collectivist enabler.
He gave credibility to the Bolsheviks and Nihilists at a time that our country badly needed its young to ignore them.
We’re living in the social horror that resulted.
RIP? Yes. Let him rest for God’s sake! And give us peace from his like.
Milton Friedman – School Choice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-6FCKhh00&feature=relmfu
His PhD dissertation is excellent. A scholar and a gentleman, whether you agree with his politics or not. Personal attacks from “conservatives” are so unseemly.
Right. What’s your take on death threats to Black conservatives, and rape threats to female ones? Unseemly?
Clean your own house first, concern troll.