McCarthyism at the Wall Street Journal

Posted on August 7, 2003 in Journalists & Pundits

The rise of the “Angry Left” has the politics as usual business community quaking so bad that some elements are beginning to accuse effective organizations such as MoveOn of being in cahoots with totalitarian elements in the Middle East and elsewhere. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto foamed:

“Gore will be speaking to a gathering of MoveOn.org — the far-left, pro-Saddam group whose online ‘primary’ gave Howard Dean a victory over second-place Dennis Kucinich — at New York University on Thursday.

Not since Joseph McCarthy have we seen such blanket attacks on the American left being made in the mainstream business press. Babbitry has revived and the gray soles of the financiers have been let free to stamp out the popular reaction.

That MoveOn is “far-left” is laughable because it began in the wake of the Clinton impeachment, in an effort to bring back frank discussion of the issues that mattered to people. As for the accusation that MoveOn is pro-Saddam, I shall allow MoveOn to defend itself as it did in the online email it sent explaining why Taranto was dead wrong:

Our call for UN inspections in Iraq was never based on sympathy for Saddam Hussein or his dictatorship. As one of our bulletins affirmed “Saddam Hussein is a fearsome and despotic leader.”

Rather, MoveOn members saw the inspections as a workable, humane, and
less costly means of eliminating weapons of mass destruction. We
recognized that war would mean inevitable civilian and military
casualties and that the loss of human lives could be prevented through
the rule of international law. And we opposed the doctrine of
unilateral, pre-emptive war as bad military policy.

The fact that no evidence of weapons of mass
destruction has been found upholds the effectiveness of the United
Nation’s approach and the soundness of MoveOn’s vision.

To protest, send email to the Wall Street Journal and to its spinoff publication the Opinion Journal. Both owe Moveon, its supporters, and your reading public a retraction. The statements made about MoveOn were blatantly and prejudicially wrong. A responsible news organ will strive to set the record straight and back down at this juncture.

After you have finished, visit the MoveOn homepage to see what President Al Gore had to say about the usurper’s foreign policy and skyrocketing deficits.