Ann Coulter’s Treason: The New McCarthyism
Ann Coulter has carved out a niche for herself as the Joseph McCarthy of our era, even surpassing him in
the process. Rather than denounce specific individuals and particular groups for treason, as McCarthy
did, Coulter declares the entirety of liberalism treasonous.
Coulter has out-McCarthyd McCarthy.
Joseph McCarthy – My Hero
Coulter’s instant best-seller, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror, has
been kept under wraps until now. Just released portions presage an upcoming media blitz. In her first
“exclusive extract,” Coulter praises Joseph McCarthy, hailing him an American hero.
It is worth quoting this extract in its entirety due to its significance. We should not over
look the public’s first look at this book:

“IT IS AN interesting fact that this country does not have anything resembling a
European style left wing. In fact, we can barely sustain a functioning Democratic party. It
didn’t have to be this way. As FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said, in March 1947 there
were only about one million Americans registered to vote with the Communist Party but
that was more than there were in Russia in 1917. What held the Communist left to the
madrassahs of the Ivy League was Joe McCarthy. Sneering at McCarthy today because
the only people who call themselves Communists are harmless cranks is like sneering at
the Sabin vaccine because, really, almost no one gets polio anymore. The big argument
against McCarthy was that the whole notion of Communist subversion was a joke. It was
not a joke. It was real. And the Democrats didn’t care.
“In the twentieth century, nearly 100 million people were murdered in the name of
Communism. Stalin held his monstrous Soviet show trials, committed genocide against
the kulaks, and created a forced famine for the Ukrainians when they resisted
collectivization. There was Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” murdering tens of millions of
people. There was the Khmer Rouge’s massacre of one quarter of the entire Cambodian
population. Communist mass murder not only predated the Nazi variety but far surpassed
it. Wherever there was Communism, there was repression, torture, and mass murder.
“It is a fact that hundreds of agents of this blood-soaked ideology became top advisors to
Democratic presidents, worked on the Manhattan Project, infiltrated every segment of the
United States government. Stalin’s agents held top positions in the White House, the
State Department, the Treasury Department, the Army, and the OSS. Because of
Democrat incompetence and moral infirmity, all Americans lived under the threat of
nuclear annihilation for half a century. As Soviet spies passed nuclear technology to
Stalin, President Truman gave strict orders that the OSS engage in no espionage against
the country ruled by his pal, Uncle Joe.
“When it could have been stopped, when, days after the Hitler-Stalin Pact was signed, an
ex-Communist came to the United States government and informed on Hiss, as well as
dozens of other Soviet spies in the government, President Roosevelt had laughed.
McCarthy punched back so hard, liberals are still reeling.”Treason is being explicitly marketed as

“an explosive defense of Joe McCarthy,” with Coulter asserting:
“The myth of ‘McCarthyism’ is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. … Liberals are
fanatical liars, then as now. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie.”

Notice Coulter’s trademark hyperbole: “greatest Orwellian fraud … fanatical liars … hegemonic lie.”
(My prediction: the Right will regard “controversialist Ann Coulter’s” hyperbolic content as an accurate
reflection of reality.)
Many exclusive excerpts provided on the Drudge Report eulogize Joseph McCarthy as an “indispensable”
American hero – a white knight who saved America from treasonous Communists, just as Coulter herself
is now saving America from treasonous liberals.
Treason on the Left

In her very first chapter, titled “Fifty Years of Treason,” Coulter asserts, “liberals are always against
America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the
difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down.”
Even before 9/11, Coulter contended that liberals are traitors. Just being liberal is treasonous in her eyes.
Coulter has concocted her own Axis of Evil: liberalism, terrorism and treason. In Coulter’s contorted,
conspiratorial mind, they are virtually synonymous: liberalism = terrorism = treason.
Indeed, the preponderance of Coulter’s work these last few years comes to life in this sound bite summary
of Treason:
“Liberals have a preternatural gift for always striking a position on the side of treason.”
And why are liberals traitors?
“You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American
position. …Everyone says liberals love America, too. No they don’t. Whenever the
nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their
essence.”
The essence of liberalism is treason predicated on hatred of America!
Coulter’s grand conspiracy claims McCarthyism was a “hegemonic lie” propounded by the Left to hide
its own fifty-plus years of treason, just as last year’s Slander perpetuated the myth of liberal hegemonic
“control of mainstream national media.”
In Slander, Coulter condemned liberals for virtually every national problem – “It’s all liberals’ fault” –
and concluded that liberals are “savagely cruel bigots who hate ordinary Americans and lie for sport.” In
Treason, Coulter concludes that liberal loathing of America is intrinsic to being liberal and is the reason
for their treason.ഊConservative Crossroads
Strangely, conservative leaders laud Coulter, applaud her views, and are awed by this “exemplar of the
conservative movement.” This despite the inherent nonsensical flaws of her analysis and her work.
Coulter has cried “Treason!” for years, using criteria at once elastic and evanescent. Treason, per Coulter,
consists of rejecting any portion of the Republican Party’s agenda. Moreover, mere failure to applaud
appropriately is treasonous in her eyes.
Treasonable offenses, per Coulter, include (this is a partial list to save space):
ï Opposition to tax cuts
ï Opposition to ANWR oil drilling
ï Opposition to the new “Star Wars” defense system
ï Opposition to racial profiling
ï Opposition to invasion of Iraq
ï Being a moderate Republican
ï Being a Democrat
ï Being a liberal
While the Left and the Right are philosophically predisposed to disagree over Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s
ideological conclusions, we should all be able to agree that McCarthy’s tactics were unacceptable for a
free and open society such as ours. It augurs ill for the future that Coulter emulates and expands upon
those tactics, and that conservatives reward her for doing so.
Ann Coulter is the Joseph McCarthy of the 21 st century. McCarthy tarnished Conservatism for literally
generations. Coulter’s elevation within the Conservative Movement as its standard-bearer poses the same
danger. The evisceration of Conservatism is upon us.
Moreover, Coulter and her champions are further fracturing contemporary political discourse, turning the
public square into an arena of hostile enemy camps instead of a national town hall inhabited by
neighborly citizens.
Hate-mongers – like Ann Coulter on the Right and her counterparts on the Left – threaten to ruin the great
American Experiment. “Evil thrives when good men do nothing.” Will you do nothing?
Daniel Borchers, a lifelong conservative, is Founder and President of Citizens for Principled
Conservatism (CPC). An analysis of Ann Coulter’s work can be found at http://www.CoulterWatch.com
. He can be reached at principledconservative@yahoo.com.