Historians on the Hot Seat
Featurestags: plagiarism
Related Links | 2002: Year of the Scandal |
Plagiarism | |
Books About History Scandals |
Historian | Affiliation | Alleged Offense | Outcome |
Stephen Ambrose | Independent scholar, deceased | Accused in 2002 of plagiarizing passages from a dozen books published from 1970s to 1990s; accused of sloppy scholarship. In 2010 it was revealed that Ambrose exaggerated his relationship with President Eisenhower. | Conceded he borrowed passages from others without using quote marks, but usually included footnotes; admitted he sometimes made mistakes and promised to correct them, though his critics claimed he rarely did. |
Herbert Aptheker | Accused by his daughter Bettina, a historian, of having sexually abused her as a child. | The charge was made in a memoir published several years after his death. | |
Michael Bellesiles | Emory University | Accused in Feb. 2002 of fraudulently manipulating data and facts related to guns in his 2001 book Arming America. | Resigned Nov. 20, 2002 from Emory following the release of a report that found him guilty of misrepresenting data and unprofessional conduct. In Dec. 2002 Columbia University rescinded the Bancroft Prize for the book. |
Richard Berthold | University of New Mexico | On Sept. 11, 2001 told a class: "Anybody who blows up the Pentagon gets my vote." | Reprimanded by the administration in 2002. Took early retirement after fall 2002 because of harassment from his department. . |
Conrad Black | Independent Scholar | Defrauded his company in 2000, 2002. | Indicted in Nov. 2005 |
Paul Buhle | Brown University | Accused in June 2002 of manufacturing evidence in the Encyclopedia of the American Left. | Declines to answer critics on accusation. |
Dino Cinel | CUNY | Accused in 1991 of sexual abuse and pornography. | Defrocked and Fired. |
Donald Cuccioletta | Universite du Quebec & State University of New York at Plattsburgh | Accused of plagiarism in 2002, the article that was plagiarized was published in 2001. | Universite du Quebec refused to allow him to continue as a part-time lecturer. Removed as interim director of Plattsburgh's new Institute on Quebec Studies |
Philip Foner | Deceased; author of more than forty books on the history of American labor. | On May 23, 2003 Melvyn Dubofsky accused Foner of plagiarizing his dissertation and other unpublished dissertations on the H-Net discussion network. | |
Nicholas De Genova | Columbia University | At a teach-in at Columbia University in March 2003 told 3,000 students and faculty members that he hoped Iraq would defeat the United States. He also wished for"a million Mogadishus." | Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., urged his U.S. House colleagues to demand De Genova's removal. There have been many calls for his removal, but he still is teaching at Columbia. |
Joseph Ellis | Mount Holyoke College | In a 2000 interview with the Boston Globe, Ellis claimed to have served in Vietnam and been involved with the civil rights movement, a story that he told frequently to his classes but were in fact fabricated. | Suspended from Mount Holyoke without pay for a year. |
Orlando Figes | Birkbeck College, University of London | Accused in 2010 of writing anonymous critical reviews of colleagues' books on Amazon. | Claimed that his wife was the author of the reviews, but said that he was unaware of her actions. Later admitted that he was the author of the reviews. |
David Garrow | Emory University | Gloria Mann, the Law School's director of operations, accused Garrow of battery in September 2002. | Suspended from Emory for 6 months starting from October 15, 2002. |
Doris Kearns Goodwin | Independent scholar; Harvard University overseer | In January 2002 Goodwin was accused of plagiarism in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, she also"lied about whether it was plagiarism (and, incidentally, paid hush money to one of the people she plagiarized)." | Admitted copying passages, but insisted it was unintentional; dropped by PBS'"The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" as media historian; Goodwin was"pulled out of the Pulitzer panel";"her membership on various boards questioned, her speaking invitations withdrawn"; remained as NBC media historian. |
Leonard F. Guttridge | Accused in January 2004 of co-authoring a history of the Lincoln assassination that allegedly relies on phony documents. | Guttridge"wrote a lengthy piece taking his critics to task for their unwillingness to countenance a fresh thesis that undermines the"perpetuated story of the Lincoln murder case."" | |
KC Johnson | Brooklyn College | Accused in November 2002 by Brooklyn College president Christoph M. Kimmich of "uncollegiality"; denied tenure. | After a student protest and a petition signed by 23 prominent historians, Mr. Johnson was given a one-year extension on his contract. Subsequently, the board of trustees decided to award him tenure over the objections of the chairman of the history department. |
Peter Kirstein | Saint Xavier University | Replied to a cadet's October 2002 letter with an email condemning the Air Force Academy's"aggressive baby killing tactics of collateral damage." | Suspended in November 2002 from teaching and officially reprimanded. In Sepember 2003, as a result of the Kirstein controversy, the local chapter of AAUP affiliated with St. Xavier University issued stringent new guidelines to protect faculty speech. |
Stanley I. Kutler | University of Wisconsin | Accused in the NYT of deliberately publishing flawed Watergate tape transcripts in his book, Abuse of Power. | A subsequent investigation by the NYT ombudsman concluded that the Times blew the story "out of proportion." Kutler admitted the transcripts may be flawed. He disputed that the flaws were deliberate. There was no evidence that they were. |
Ann Lane | University of Virginia | In 1971 her dissertation was discovered to include borrowed passages after she received her degree; Lane borrowed thousands of words from other scholars in her dissertation; most prominently journal articles by Seth Scheiner and Emma Lou Thornbrough. | Her quest for tenure at Rutgers University where she was teaching at the time, was derailed. HNN published a story about her case in 2002. |
Bryan Le Beau | University of Missouri, Kansas City | "Le Beau's Commencement Address at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in December 2003 substantially plagiarized from Cornel West's Commencement Address at Wesleyan University on 30 May 1993. | "Le Beau acknowledges the similarities between the two texts, but denies ever having seen a copy of West's speech. He rightly claims that the standards for public speech are not the same as in scholarly research." |
David McCullough | Independent scholar; PBS | (1) Accused in July 2001 of misattributing a quote to Thomas Jefferson about John Adams, where Jefferson calls Adams"a colossus of independence." (2) Accused in 2003 of failing to correctly attribute a memo he misquoted, and failing to properly list army casualty numbers relating to Hiroshima in his Truman book. | (1) Acknowledged his error and corrected his text. (2) Admited he misread a document;"it has never been corrected in Truman, which is still available in bookstores"; the inaccuracies are widely quoted as fact, because it has never been corrected. |
Jacques Pluss | Fairleigh Dickinson | Dismissed from the university following several unexplained absences. At the same time it was revealed that he claimed to be a Neo-Nazi. | After his dismissal Pluss said he was giving up academia to help advance the cause of the White Aryan Race. In January 2006, 10 months after his dismissal, Pluss explained in an article on HNN that he had orchestrated his own firing. He explained that he is not a Neo-Nazi. He pretended to be one in order to infiltrate the National Socialist Movement in connection with research for a book. In 2007, HNN reported that Pluss subsequently admitted he was a Nazi. |
S. Walter Poulshock | Rutgers University | Accused in 1966 of fabricating hundreds of quotations and statements, including correspondence, in the text and footnotes of his dissertation (1962) and later his book; The Two Parties and the Tariff in the 1880s (1965). | Poulshock admitted the sources were fabricated but, the thesis was correct. He resigned from Rutgers University. The University of Pennsylvania did not rescind his 1962 doctorate. Syracuse University Press sent urgent notices to return book copies immediately. |
Louis Roberts | SUNY, Albany | Accused in December 2000 of plagiarizing"more than 50 pages (even footnotes are taken verbatim) from two old sources." | Stepped down in February 2002 from his position as chairman of the classics department at SUNY, Albany. |
R. Fred Ruhlman | University of Tennessee at Chattanooga | Accused in 2006 of plagiarizing passages from a historian's book about Andersonville. Ruhlman received his Ph.D. from a distance-learning school in England and was named an adjunct at UT. | University of Tennessee Press withdraws Ruhlman's book. |
Marc Susser | State Department Office of the Historian | Accused of mismanaging the Office, putting in jeopardy the future publication of FRUS series | As of March 2009 Susser remains in charge of the Office. |
Don Heinrich Tolzmann | University of Cincinnati | Accused in 2003 of plagiarizing much of the first half of a book by Theodore Huebener, The Germans in America | Found guilty of plagiarism by an internal investigating committee in summer 2006. Tolzmann vowed to resist calls for his removal. |
Benson Tong | Gallaudet University | In 2002 Judy Tzu-Chun Wu accused Tong of plagiarizing her dissertation in a chapter he wrote on Margaret Chung. Tong condensed the dissertation and copied many passages verbatim. | AHA investigation concluded he was guilty, but the results were not publicized to the academic community; he left his job at Wichita State University in 2003, a year after his bid for tenure was turned down, he then got a job at Gallaudet, where his plagiarism was unknown. |
Brian VanDeMark | United States Naval Academy | Accused of plagiarism on May 31, 2003 by NYT." According to the Times more than 30 passages in VanDeMark's new book, Pandora's Keepers (Little Brown), are "identical, or nearly identical" to those found in four other books written by Richard Rhodes, William Lanouette, Greg Herken, and Robert Norris." | On June 3, 2003 Little, Brown withdrew VanDeMark's book. He lost tenure, his pay was cut, he was reduced in rank from Associate Professor to entry-level Assistant Professor, and was put on probation for three after which he could reapply for tenure. In April 2013 Mr. VanDeMark asked that we take down this page, noting that an article by Yale University historian Daniel Kevles in theNew York Review of Books exonerated him in 2003 from the charge of plagiarism. In the article, VanDeMark noted, that Kevles wrote that " 'something like half' of the allegations were reasonable paraphrases and the remaining ones were 'not important.' " We agreed to draw attention to Kevles's piece. |
Matthew Moten | West Point | Accused of sexually harrassing women in his chain of command. | Reprimanded and removed. |
Hugo Schwyzer | Pasadena City College | Accused by a former student of having sex with her in his office while she was an enrolled student. | Schwyzer, who taught a class on porn, admitted to sexual relations with the student and said he suffers from multiple addictions. |
Matthew Whitaker | Arizona State University | Accused for a second time of plagiarism | Cleared after the first accusation. |
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More Comments:
Raul A Garcia - 6/22/2008
These academics should practice what they preach- hopefully that is sound and genuine research. I praise those who actually admit that they erred. As middle school history teacher, there are far too many examples of authority figures breaking the law. These university level teachers represent a privileged class and are sadly eroding the public trust.
c jay vreeland - 2/28/2007
I am neither an academic nor an author., but an occasional speaker on matters of concern to me and my audience. In pursuit of information on such matters, I frequently print relevant articles or paragraphs or well-phrased sentences from the internet and put them in a holding file. My holding file also includes all my own spontaneous thoughts and soon there is a jumble of stuff out of which I try to make a coherent speech which conveys my thoughts, attitudes, arguments and conclusions. I do not feel it necessary to credit Sir Isaac Newton every time I mention the law of gravity, nor Darwin for evolution, nor Euclid for geometry etc. An idea is an idea and no idea came out of the blue. We all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. (No, it wasn’t Newton who said it first. It was Bernard of Chartres in the early twelfth century and he probably stole it from a Greek philosopher and so on with an infinite regression to some grunts from one caveman to another which conveyed the same message. )
In short , I don’t know if or when I might be guilty of “plagiarism.” I will grant that those writing history have a special duty to get it right but I think Ambrose and Kerns and others are getting a bum rap.
Jim Williams - 1/4/2006
Nonsense; while responsible faculty will not catch all cases of invented evidence, they will (and do) catch many. By the time students have BAs from my college, they recognize both the ethical requirements of historical writing and the consequences for failing to meet those requirements. I firmly believe this is true of most programs across our country.
What astounds me is that the Bancroft Prize Committee did not engage in even a cursory perusal of Bellesisles' notes.
Incidentally, I am moderately in favor of gun control, but since my ancestors were farmers, I teach at a rural college, and my family has several heirloom weapons dating from the period Bellesile wrote about, I thought Bellesile's thesis improbable on the face of it, as did our department's expert on the early United States (also no gun nut). Farmers had and have guns - for "varmint" control and for hunting, for protection as well back in the Colonial era. His unlikely thesis made it almost certain that researchers who were experts in that era would check out his documentation.
David R. Hershey - 6/30/2005
Allchin's January, 2005, American Biology Teacher article is another example of autoplagiarism. Allchin (2005) made the same arguments on William Harvey and capillaries made in the refereed journals Science Education (Allchin 2003) and Science & Education (Alchin 2004). Allchin (2005) also appears to have violated the copyright transfer agreements that require that Science Education and Science & Education authors give credit to the journals if the same material is published again.
In addition to autoplagiarism, Allchin (2005) is hypocritical because it provided the same kind of "truncated" and "idealized" presentation that it complained about. Allchin (2005) did not reveal the fact that Lawson (2003, 2004) rebutted Allchin's argument that Harvey did not predict capillaries.
References
Allchin, D. (2005). William Harvey & capillaries. American Biology Teacher, 67, 56-59.
Allchin, D. (2004). Pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Science & Education, 13, 179-195. Available online at: http://my.pclink.com/~allchin/papers/pseudo.pdf
Allchin, D. (2003). Scientific myth-conceptions. Science Education, 87, 329-351. Available online at:
http://my.pclink.com/~allchin/papers/myth.pdf
Lawson, A.E. (2004). A reply to Allchin's pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Science & Education, 13, 599-605.
Lawson, A.E. (2003). Allchin's shoehorn, or why science is hypothetico-deductive. Science & Education, 12, 331-337.
David R. Hershey - 6/30/2005
The April 2005 American Biology Teacher contained a fabrication by Douglas Allchin in a letter and several errors in his Sacred Bovines column. Neither contained a single reference! University of Minnesota undergraduates are required to cite sources for their term papers <http://writing.umn.edu/tww/plagiarism/definitions.htm>. Thus, it is shocking that a University of Minnesota faculty member like Allchin is not held to the same standard for articles in professional journals.
In his American Biology Teacher letter, Allchin (2005b) stated that Malpighi "accidentally" discovered capillaries but cited no source. Malpighi was deliberately examining tissues under a microscope to determine their structure. There was nothing accidental about his discovery of capillaries. In an accidental discovery, a scientist is inspired by a chance observation or event as in Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward's 1829 invention of the terrarium (Hershey 1996). Ward put a moth cocoon and some leaf mould in a clear glass bottle. While waiting for the adult moth to appear, Ward noticed that a fern sprouted inside the bottle, by chance, and grew nicely. That inspired Ward to invent the terrarium because he loved ferns and had repeatedly failed to keep ferns alive in his garden due to severe air pollution.
The January 2005 Sacred Bovines column (Allchin 2005a) complained that,
"classroom stories tend to attribute the separate discoveries to only one person."
Yet the April Sacred Bovines column (Allchin 2005c) stated,
"Forensic scientists have long relied on fingerprints and "mug shots," both introduced into criminology by Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton."
Allchin does exactly what he complained about in his January 2005 column by giving Galton all the credit. Allchin is also wrong. Both fingerprints and mug shots were used well before Galton advocated their use. Several people contributed to early fingerprint research. A Scottish physician and missionary to Japan, Henry Faulds (1880), seems to be have been first to suggest use of fingerprints in criminology, i.e. "When bloody finger-marks or impressions on clay, glass etc., exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals." Galton (1892) did not get into the field until the late 1880s and acknowledged William Herschel's twenty-plus years of fingerprint research. Taking photos of criminals occurred shortly after the invention of photography in the 1830s (Rosenthal 2000). Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) of the Paris Police probably did more than Galton to establish mug shots as a standard technique in criminology <http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/police/html/mug.html>.
Wheat scientific classifications vary but durum wheat is not Triticum dicoccoides as Allchin claimed. Wild emmer wheat is T. dicoccoides or T. turgidum ssp. dicoccoides. Durum wheat (T. durum or T. turgidum ssp. durum) is an tetraploid so is a hybrid of just two diploid species, not three as Allchin claimed. The hexaploid, bread wheat (T. aestivum or T. aestivum ssp. aestivum), is a hybrid of three diploid species (Armstrong and Jernstedt 2003). Archeological evidence indicates that a hexaploid wheat first originated before 7,000 B.C. (Smith 1995).
Except perhaps in some science fiction, Allchin is incorrect that "hybrids are typically cast as 'monsters' rather than playful inventions or fruits of nature's creative powers." People have long been fascinated by intergeneric hybrids such as liger, tigon, mule and botanical wonder (x Fatshedera lizei) in the latter sense of nature's creativeness. Hybrids are portrayed as superior to nonhybrids in seed and plant catalogs. Hybrid vigor is a basic concept in breeding. Biology textbooks highlight that Gregor Mendel's 1866 pea hybridization experiments were a great accomplishment. The many successes of Luther Burbank (1849-1926) in plant hybridization earned him international acclaim as "The Plant Wizard." Norman Borlaug's high-yielding hybrid wheats helped earned him the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize.
It is untrue as Allchin claimed that
"Concerns about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, likewise rarely focus on the modification itself."
Concerns about GMOs absolutely do focus on the type of modification. There is great concern about potential harm from the transfer of the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene into corn and other food crops because the gene codes for a persistent toxin (Altieri 2001). However, there was no similar concern for the transfer of a blue flower gene from one plant species (petunia) to another (carnation). Few people would object to GMOs if the only GMOs were flowers with new colors.
References
Allchin, D. 2005a. William Harvey and capillaries. American Biology Teacher 67: 56-59.
Allchin, D. 2005b. Response to "William Harvey, predicting capillaries, and the nature of science - One more time." American Biology Teacher 67: 203-204.
Allchin, D. 2005c. "Genes are us" In what sense do genes determine identity? American Biology Teacher 67: 244-246.
Altieri, M. A. 2001. The ecological impacts of agricultural biotechnology.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/altieri.html
Armstrong, J. E. and Jernstedt, J. 2003. Botanical Society of America's Statement on Evolution.
http://www.botany.org/newsite/announcements/evolution.php
Faulds, H. 1880. On the skin furrows of the hand. Nature, 22, 605. [October 28].
http://www.mugu.com/galton/fingerprints/faulds-1880-nature-furrows.pdf
Galton, F. 1892. Finger Prints. New York: Macmillan.
http://www.mugu.com/galton/books/finger-prints/galton-1892-fingerprints-1up-lowres.pdf
Hershey, D.R. 1996. Doctor Ward's accidental terrarium. American Biology Teacher, 58, 276-281.
Rosenthal, R.T. 2000. An Introduction To Mug Shot Photography
http://www.vernacularphotography.com/VPM/V1N1/mugshot.htm
Smith, C.W. 1995. Crop Production: Evolution, History, and Technology. New York: Wiley.
Eleanor Doumato - 6/20/2005
The anonymous historian tips her hand when she claims, and falsely so, that Professor Khalidi denies the right of Israel to exist, and then asks rhetorically whether it is malicious for someone [such as herself] to “prefer to see an opponent of the existence of Israel take a fall.” The answer is yes, it is. To pursue harm to another individual because one doesn’t like that person’s ideas is malicious. The way to respond to ideas one doesn’t like is to engage in informed argument with those ideas, not to try to defame the character of the person with whom one disagrees.
By her own admission, the anonymous accuser shows herself to be the poster-girl for the maliciously-motivated accusation that Columbia Faculty rules are designed to avert, and so I second the anonymous accuser’s plea, “Will somebody please tell Dean Quigley?”
Hagbard Celine - 6/4/2005
...Anybody?
Hmm...
Mike McConnell - 3/31/2005
I did a blog piece on Benson Tong. From a reliable source I was told that he resigned because of my blogpiece. I'm currently verifying this piece of information.
( see for more info - http://kokonutpundits.blogspot.com/2005/03/benson-tongresigned.html )
Arnold Shcherban - 7/8/2004
The prelude to the Mr. Horowitz’s critique of Ann Coulter's "Treason..." book where he poures his admiration of her satiric talent and "bravery" into
the claret of conservative spirit looks largely redundant.
Anyone who knows the creative "genius" of these venomous opponents of true democracy from their daily work, their continious attepmts to demonize everyone who makes even a minute step off their Pan Amerikana and "Enemies-everywhere-around-us" doctrine is well aware of their ideological solidarity and mutual deep feelings.
The author of "EXPOSE THE ENEMY WITHIN" petition(the enemy being the American peace movement) cannot be in any considerable motivational disagreement with the creator of "Treason..." since both of these
epistolarian erzartzs have the same target in mind. This target is actually much wider than what they or the contents of their works claim to be: it is not just peace movement or liberals(especially whom they attest as 'liberals'), it is the democratic process, in its
original meaning.
In his article " The Trouble with Treason" Horowitz refers to McCarthy and McCarthyism on several occasions. I find these references particularly ironic in at least one aspect.
Indeed, Ms. Coulter committed one deadly, from the point of view of US mainstream ideological system, sin: she raised her psychopathic voice against some of the Chief Managers of that system, Republican and Democrats alike. When their power and economic interests are touched, expect The Real Trouble for whoever's done it. This is beyond ideology and politics - this is the matter of Reality, the real disposition of Power and Money.
And that is what really drives the political and ideological system, not the bypartisan schema, which is nothing more than an artificial aberration, the fact that has been undeniably proved not by just
the REAL liberals and democrats, but by the history of this country itself.
Horowitz as a good student of life knows it too well. As much as he likes Ann's ideological pirouettes, he cannot take the abstaining stance on that issue. That is why he, while generally and sincerely greeting Ms. Coulter's book, criticizes her for violation of some of the major
rules of the blaming Republican-Democrat Game: stick to the Power limits and never ever forget your REAL enemies.
And who those real enemies are? Liberal Democrats or just Democrats?
Nope; they are all those who actively oppose(in any form) the economical, financial, and political oligarchic power imposed on American people by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Unfortunately for Horowitz, as I mentioned above, fascist zealot senator McCarthy was at his time relieved of his 'evil'(borrowing the term from the popular vocabulary of the US political elite) public powers exactly on the reason Horowitz criticizes Coulter: he crossed the Rubicon of Power by accusing some very influential people in the government and the business of
leftist views.
And that is where I see the ironic parallel - Horowitz criticizes Coulter not for being factually and conceptually wrong, not for outright lies on some occasions and deliberate distortions on the others, but for targeting wrong folks, for repeating the mistake that ended Mr. McCarthy's socio-political career.
From the latest interviews she had, one can see that Ms. Coulter has already drawn the right conclusions from that misstep and won't hurt herself in the eyes of the political elite again.
There is another irony in his article, perhaps, not being noticed by horowitzs, which is much more damaging to them, albeit not directly related to Coulter's book. It is his actual addmission that there is really no significant differences between Republican
and Democratic or Liberal politics and ideology, although demonstrated by the article's author only in regard to their anti-communist(read 'anti-populist') practice. This is also the fact emphasized in many
of the articles and works of the TRUE democrats and liberals.
Mr. Horowitz, following the well-exposed ideological tradition, that became the part of conservative and liberal intellectual culture alike, solemnly exonerates Truman, Kennedy, Humphrey and some others of the 'traitor' status on one and only reason: their strict adherence to anti-communism. Apparently, it automatically makes one the true patriot of this country.
He further elaborates: in particular - their stance over Vietnam War.
Now, for the overwhelming majority in the world that war was a war of US imperialistic agression in Indochina, the war of terrible crimes against humanity and of outright violations(actually trampling) of international
laws, murdering of, at the least, 1.5 million of
foreign citizens, communists and not, and devastation of the entire region, the wide-scale use of napalm and poisonous chemicals against civilians and military and the natural environment.
But horowitzs don't care about such realistic trifles, in pursuing their noblest of goals "to slay the Red beast", though occasionally grieving on behalf of 55 thousands Americans killed in that war.
Liberals whose "treacherous" record horowitzs and coulters expose to the public have never pronounced the true verdict on this case either.
The ideological preambula of the Vietnam war was to stop the evil Communist march around the world, which had allegedly put this country under the real and imminent danger(hello, Iraq) of communist invasion.
The communists won and Americans had to retrieve. However, in the aftermath, "commies" never try to attack South Korea or Thailand, which were the only worthwhile non-communist countries left in the region, not mentioning the other US allies, or the US itself.
No communist country in the world, the Soviet Union("Evil Empire") included, never commited the similar act of agression against any sovereign state located thousands of miles away of its borders, mercilessly bombing their populated cities and villages, and
widely employing chemical weapons.
But the greatest "defender of freedom" in the world did all that, and on numerous occasions, throughout its last 50-60 years of history.
No communist state has ever used WMD against anyone, but US did, both - in defense and in offense(the justification of its use against Japan up to these days seriously questioned by many military historians).
No communist country in the world sponsored and supported so many terror states with murderous goverments as the US.
No communist country in the world employed Nazi war criminals and terrorists to "deter" its officially declared enemies, but US did.
No communist country in the world had such a terrible record of signing and ratifying international treaties and agreements as this noblest of the countries.
No communist country in the world has vetoed so many UN Security Council peace, disarmament and aggression-condemning resolutions as this greatest world's 'peacekeeper'.
These are the hard facts of history, and either their denial, or any mitigating interpretations cannot change their factual and moral accusative power.
But horowitzs and coulters place themselves beyond the facts and history.
They are on the mission to protect their native land against ... real democracy and anyone who's nearing the historical truth.
Everyone who merely doubts the nobility of the state masters' intentions, especially from the managerial rank, is a 'traitor' by conservative definition.
It would present the fruitless task to verify all accusations against all people Coulter and Horowitz labeled as "traitors", or communist agents, since both “authors” have been caught on the lies,
before, but never conceded. If the 20th century political history of the most powerful empire in the world can be seriously and largely attributed to the wide-spread communist subversion of the American political and business institutions, as it clearly implied by Coulter and Horowitz, the following
reasoning on the other side seems not only quite explanatory, but readily justifies the pertaining actions.
The repressive measures of Stalin against his own 'comrades' and especially the atmosphere of secrecy and security concerns maintained by Stalin's successors in Soviet society had, perhaps, nothing to do with the abolishing of freedom of speech, dissent, political
gatherings and other attributes of democracy, but were just measures of national security of the state that suffered two major foreign invasions in the course of its short history, which almost annihilated the entire nation, plus continuous subversive intelligence, political and economical operations on the part
of the West.
Somehow, I feel the latter explanation won't be warmly received by the community of Horowitz supporters.
As any historian knows, the great damage to the security of this country, at least in the sense of military and intelligence security, was delivered by individuals - real traitors, who had no affiliation whatsoever with any left parties. On the contrary many of them were of Republican or Democratic partisanship.
They all did it, more or less, for MONEY, which is also the decisive motivating force behind the writings of their compatriots Coulter and Horowitz, since the anti-communism and anti-liberalism are unfortunately always the bestsellers in this country.
They are, to name just a few:
US Army Colonel George Trofimoff, a retired US Army intelligence analyst David Sheldon Boone, FBI officer Earl Pitts, the veteran CIA officer Harold Nicholson, also CIA employee Aldrich Ames, former employee of the US National Security Agency Ronald W. Pelton, Walker family spy ring, former CIA agent David
H. Barnet.
Yes, Fuchs and Rosenberg’s were Communists and traitors to the countries of their citizenship(as were the numerous American and other Western countries' spies in the communist states), but the first one(not American citizen) became the Russian spy voluntarily and on a
pretty noble reason: to level the strategic field, i.e. to get atomic arms balance between the two powers, which consequently (whether thanks to him or not) did prevent nuclear catastrophe, historically proving to be the best possible solution for both sides;
Rosenbergs as it became known from the opening of Russian intelligence archives never sold any ATOMIC secrets to the Russians, since they worked in completely different area(and in inferior positions at that) and had no access to those secrets whatsoever!
Though they were spying for Soviet Russia, their execution was just the consequence of the anti-communist and anti-semitic witch-hunt raised
by the right wingers and their refusal(to the very end) to name others: either involved in their spy ring, or just suspected to be communists by FBI.
Yet, accompanying Coulter Horowitz praises some American political leaders for risking nuclear Armageddon on several occasions for the sake of deterring communist 'expansion', with the latter common axiom always being based, at best, on flimsy evidence and never being proved by anyone up to this day(moreover, many of the formerly staunch supporters of that axiom have lately conceded that this "threat" was, at the least, "exaggerated".)
I guess exposing dozens of millions of American and other countries' citizens to nuclear annihilation was worth the hegemonic ambitions of US managers.
This is the Paramount of Treachery towards the main principle of human civilization - To Preserve A Human Life. This is a Paramount of Treachery towards the very existence of millions of Americans, comparing to which any ideological argument of coulters and horowitzs is just a sick joke.
This is Paramount of Treachery even towards the allegedly so deeply beloved and believed in by all horowitzs and coulters GOD himself/itself, whose First Commandment is "Shall not kill".
Coincidentally, this issue comprises the core of conservative and "liberal" treachery - their contempt for the lives and wellbeing of American populus (not mentioning the other nations) in reaching
the strategic objectives of the powerful minority, the objectives being remote, if not opposite to the needs and welfare of average Americans.
Briefly, on the terrorism issue.
No conservative or "liberal" made any remarks on one curious circumstance.
After the collapse of communist states, which by Western intellectual thought definition were the main source and sponsors of international terrorism, the number and the scale of terrorist attacks on the West, and on the US, in particular, has greatly increased.
A big mystery, if one remains within the realms of the mentioned intellectual paradigm, isn't it?
The circumstance very easily accounted for, however, by abandoning the mass of fabrications and lies traditional to the American mainstream propaganda in its attempts to justify any questionable or criminal actions of US government abroad, and its own support of terror states, as long as they serve the goals of the US state managers.
One more characteristic and very telling feature of all
Horowitz's and Coulter's epistolary erzatzs is the total
absense of even short remarks on the dangers from the Right.
From their poisonous opuses one can easily draw that surely the most gross terrorist acts, murders and political assasinations in US 20th century history were committed by 'Commies' of 'Lefties'.
The facts, however, is quite opposite: most of those horrible crimes were commited by Ku-Klux-Klan, American Nazis, their sympathizers and religious fanatics.
But, in view of horowitzs and coulters, those crimes (together with the open anti-governmental propaganda) is such a trifle, comparing to the liberal propaganda, that they don't deserve a slightest attention from the commentator, so seriously concerned with the security of American citizens and anti-American activity, as they pretend to be.
Summary: in their writings Coulter and Horowitz, elevated by the neo-conservative wave of type 'US-US-uber-alles' and fed by zoological hatred to everything that constitutes the real democracy - power of the people, for the people - committed all deadly sins attributive to political gansters, like so-hated by them Stalin, short of personally slaying the
enemy, but then again - Stalin didn't execute "the enemies of the people" with his own hands either.
Following the ideological and social principles of coulters and horowitzs the American people are to fight communist-type totalitarism with fascist-type totalitarism in Pan-Americana designing style.
This is coulters' and horowitzs’ Dream, this is their Religion.
James Jones - 1/20/2004
"How many students now see how they can do this, and not get caught."
All of them.
O Leo Lehy - 1/10/2004
I don't think so. Bellesies has very obviously earned the distinction that sets him apart from the scrupulously honest writer and academicion.
This guy tried to affect the Constitutional thinking, of much of the country, by fabricating and obfuscating and constructing facts and making up information to his own end...to mislead so as to confuse the issue and convert the undecided to his tainted, miopic viewpoint. Makes me sick.
I wish I had the authority to check back on who he stole from to get his degrees.
How many students now see how they can do this, and not get caught.
ThinkTank - 1/7/2004
he has answered his critics and should be immediately allowed to reclaim his life from the gun nuts that have robbed him of it.
Clarence L. Peacock - 10/13/2003
Have noticed comments by Dominic W.Moreo in the Historic New Network. Mr Moreo from my experience at subject place and time, has always been an American first and above all. A great number of my beliefs were developed through discussions over many months. His comments follow much of my own thinking. Would enjoy contact by email with him again. I remember his comments of "mind over matter" in stormy ocean in January 1954. If you could post my email to him, I would appreciate it.
william harning - 5/18/2003
If thats all there is they should quit, and move on to something else.
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