Governor Mick Huckabee, now a TV and radio talk-show host, seems to be a nice guy. He is kind to everyone and seemingly wants everyone to like him. Unlike other media hosts, he regularly features as guests those with whom conservatives disagree. When The Iron Lady came out in 2011, Huckabee invited on actress Meryl Streep to discuss her performance of Margaret Thatcher. I recall her nervousness as she clearly feared being the guest of a well-known social conservative with whom she had profound disagreements. The Governor quickly put her at ease, and showed that he truly wanted to make her welcome.
Sometimes this works. But yesterday, Huckabee revealed the dangers of such a stance. He had as guests on his radio program none other than Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, there to give their TV series, The Untold History of the United States, more publicity and attention. Listen to the interview, and you will find one of the most disgraceful interviews by a conservative that you will ever hear.
One might expect that Huckabee or his staff would have done some homework, and if he chose to have these two advocates of what Roger L. Simon rightfully calls “Stalin porn” on his program, ask them challenging questions. You will be waiting a long, long time. Instead of asking them any tough questions at all, Huckabee allows them to use their assigned time to spout leftist propaganda without any objection or disagreement. Indeed, at one point, historian Kuznick praises Joseph Stalin and chastises the United States during World War II for not doing Stalin’s bidding, arguing that the U.S. could have come to their aid earlier and not refused a second front in Europe when Stalin wanted it. After all, Kuznick said, Stalin was “anti-fascist” when no other powers were.
Clearly, Kuznick does not realize that in fact Stalin was preparing his alliance with the Nazis during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact way before it was announced, and the nature of his anti-fascism was spurious to the core. Indeed, as Foreign Minister Molotov had said in a famous statement, “fascism is a matter of taste.” The NKVD gave advice and aid to the Gestapo, among other things, and the two totalitarian leaders easily accommodated their ideological differences to work together against the West.
Did Huckabee challenge this statement? Not once. Nor did he object when the two repeated their argument about the unnecessary A-bombs dropped on Japan and the United States true purpose as a permanent militaristic power based on hegemonic domination of the world on behalf of American corporations.
Indeed, Huckabee went on to agree with them when he argued that Republicans were captives of Wall Street interests, and praised the two for revealing the evils of the American system to viewers of the series. I happen to agree with those who argue that conservatives have foolishly ignored the concerns of the middle-class and working-class and have failed to address their fears with alternative programs that address their just concerns. But making this point is quite a different one than that the Governor made, as you can hear for yourself.
Huckabee ended the program by asking the two what is the main thing they want viewers to get out of their series. The answer, as you might predict, was that the true picture of the United States as the world’s villain become plain and comprehensible. In passing, Huckabee did mention Michael Moynihan’s take-down of their series on The Daily Beast, but he did not let listeners hear anything of what he wrote, nor ask them to defend themselves against Moynihan’s specific examples of deceit on the part of Stone and Kuznick. His only point was to say that there was one negative review. (Clearly, the Governor does not read The Weekly Standard, where he would have found my comprehensive critique.)
So I must ask: Why does a well-known conservative and former presidential candidate, who supposedly knows something about foreign policy, give over his air-time to two far leftist propagandists, and never argue with them? Why does he, in fact, seem to praise the two for their efforts, and indeed go on to agree with them for being anti-capitalist?
With conservatives active in the culture using their position to further pollute the culture and allow those who would destroy our country the time to reach a wide audience, who needs MSNBC when some of us can do their job on our outlets? Would PJ Media, for example, ask Stone and Kuznick to write a major piece for us? Of course not, they have already done this on Huffington Post, where one would expect to find them.
Recently, I argued that before anything else, we have to change the culture, and make inroads that will help the public have an alternative outlook other than what they get from NPR, The New York Times, The Nation magazine, and the mainstream media as a whole. All of these outlets can be counted on to engage in hype for Stone’s TV series. So why oh why is Mike Huckabee joining them?
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