falsely accused cold war liberalism reassessed.Image.Marked文档.pdfVIP

PDFlib PLOP: PDF Linearization, Optimization, Protection Page inserted by evaluation version – sales@ FALSELY A C CUSED : COLD W AR LIBERALISM REASSESSED N ICHOLAS W ISSEMAN During the crucial years of the Great Fear the most influential . . . faction of the American intelligentsia . . . abandoned the critical function that all intellectuals in all countries ought to sustain toward government agencies and government actions. . . . [T]heir malaise . . . insensitivity . . . [and] will- ingness to defend democracy by means of anti-democratic methods . . . manured the soil from which the prickly cactus called McCarthy suddenly and awkwardly shot up.1 —David Caute, historian and author of The Great Fear IN THE FALL OF 1946, newly appointed University of Illinois President George D. Stoddard, a “Cold War liberal,” approved the formation of an on-campus Security Office, which numbered among its many charter duties the task of keeping all students and staff under constant surveillance for any signs of “subversiveness.” Though Stoddard continued to publicly profess his abhor- rence of red-baiting and witch-hunting, he used the office’s reports as justification for firing professors on more than one occasion during his seven-year tenure. Shorn of context, President Stoddard’s actions would seem to substantiate David Caute’s claim that United States liberals failed in their role as the guardians of civil liberties during the infamous McCarthy era. By instituting a department designed in part to root out persons with Communist sympathies and leanings, the University of Illinois president can easily be seen as having