Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
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Philbrick used to hold cell meetings in my hometown, in Weston, Massachusetts. When the Germans attacked the Soviet Union he’s at a peace movement meeting, and someone stands up and says, ‘We must all be in favour of the United States entering this war.’ And he gets up and says, ‘What are you talking about? This is a peace movement!’ And he was the only guy in the room that didn’t get the joke because they were all Communists. He became an informant for the FBI.
Are Chambers and your next book, Philbrick’s I Led Three Lives, relevant to conservatism today?
Yes, in the following sense. Philbrick used to hold cell meetings in my hometown, in Weston, Massachusetts, so that made it more interesting. I lived on Red Hill in Weston. It was called that because there were a lot of leftist people in the 50s and 60s who lived there. The idea that there were people in the United States who actually hated the country is something you find in both Chambers and I Led Three Lives by Philbrick. He thought he was joining the peace movement and discovered he was joining the Soviet Front. And so the idea that there were people who lived in this country and wanted us to fail, who actually wanted the Soviet Union to win the Cold War is in both of those books, and it is something we have to come to terms with. I remember Peggy Noonan talking about a dinner party where the former chief of staff to Tip O’Neill…he now has this TV programme, Hardball…
Chris Matthews.
Chris Mathews commented there were a dozen Democratic members of Congress – this is many years ago – who actually wanted us to lose the Cold War, who were actively on the other side.
So, the relevance here isn’t specific to Communism at the time, it’s that there are people who are not on the level – you can’t take good faith as a given?
It’s not all about nationalism. Just being born in the United States does not make you in favour of freedom. The United States isn’t just a race or religion or an ethnic group or a tribe. We are a people of the Book, of the Constitution. And yet, there are people born in the country who aren’t with the programme.
It’s about the vision, the philosophy of freedom.
Yes. I would argue that that’s what America is. In a sense, being an American doesn’t mean you were born here.
Chambers opens lots of people’s eyes and he is a movement touchstone, but Philbrick is much more obscure. Could you give us a couple of sentences for our readers who may not know who Philbrick is? He’s a guy who lives three lives by infiltrating Communist cells in the US, is that right?
Yes. His three lives were: his outward life, being an underground Communist and being an FBI informant. He had joined the peace movement in the United States, which was heavily influenced – at least the one he was involved with – by the Communists, but he didn’t know that. And when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union he’s at the peace movement meeting and someone stands up and says, ‘We must all be in favour of the United States entering this war.’ And he gets up and says, ‘What are you talking about? This is a peace movement!’ And he was the only guy in the room that didn’t get the joke because they were all Communists. They were against the US being militarised or strong until the Soviet Union needed help and then they wanted us to arm and fight. So he realises what is going on and then makes a snap decision and goes, ‘OK’. He apologises for his position and switches back. And realising that he’s in the middle of a Communist operation he goes to the FBI and asks, ‘Do you guys know what’s going on here?’ He became an informant for them and testified against the Soviet agents who were members of the Communist Party and working for Moscow. They were not some indigenous group of liberals but active agents of a foreign government who were actually trying to overthrow the US government and constitution and hated the country.
Was this book an eye-opener in its day?
Oh, yes. It was very popular; it was a big exposé. The lesson of both books, maybe Witness more so, is that the establishment can and will lie to protect their own. The liberals had to have known that [Alger] Hiss was a Communist and yet they sat around and insisted he wasn’t. Supposedly Truman was livid in private at Hiss, but in public said the whole thing was a red herring. So here you have a modern Democratic Party that did not deal with serious threats to the Republic, with serious enemies of liberty. They treated the whole thing as a joke and attacked people who pointed out things that they knew to be true.
Do you see echoes of that today?
Not particularly since the Soviet Union failed. The echoes of that that you get today are the environmentalists. People know that the data on global warming is fudged, that the calculations or software that proves the hockey stick graph was fudged and they don’t care and they just keep insisting.
Perhaps the common element is a sense of allegiance to a higher good.
Yes, a counterfactual allegiance – in the sense that the other team is willing to lie to promote what they want, and betray the interest of the country. They don’t see the country as the repository of freedom and the modern world. I do.
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Grover Norquist is founder and head of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group, and author of Leave Us Alone. He is also a leading conservative strategist. Since 1993 he has convened and run the Wednesday Meeting, a weekly gathering of conservative activists, politicians, and group leaders.
