They Don’t Make Russians Like They Used to (for Democrats, at Least)

If only the Russians stuck to stealing American atomic secrets instead of spilling Hillary Clinton’s campaign secrets, they might still find favor with elements within the Democratic Party.

“We are no longer a sovereign nation,” Keith Olbermann claims in light of allegations of Russian hacking. “We are no longer a democracy. We are no longer a free people. We are the victims of a bloodless coup.” James Kirchick, a Never Trump Republican, dubbed Trump the “most pro-Kremlin president in modern times” on Fox on Tuesday. A Huffington Post headline screamed: “Russia Stole the Presidency. The Electoral College Can Take It Back.”

Not terribly long ago, Democrats, facing far more comprehensive evidence of Russian interference in the American political system, cried “witch hunt.”

Long before the decrypted Venona intercepts and the raw Russian files affirmed the espionage of Alger Hiss, a mountain of evidence convicted the former State Department official of perjury. “Until the day I die,” Hiss declared under oath, “I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter.” Prothonotary warblers, pumpkin papers, Bokhara rugs, a 1929 Ford Roadster, and much else pointed to his guilt. Nevertheless, the Left, suddenly outraged over the prospect of Russians taking an interest in the United States, maintained the spy’s innocence until the day he died in 1996.

Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Harold Glasser, Victor Perlo, and scores of other Communist agents infested the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, who allowed Soviet spies to flood the U.S. by recognizing the rogue nation in 1933, promoted security risks, such as Hiss, White, and Currie, to high positions, and commuted the passport fraud sentence of Communist Party USA head Earl Browder. The spies provided the USSR the formula for printing U.S. currency in occupied Germany, oversaw the founding of the United Nations, and made off with secrets that hastened the Soviet development of the atomic bomb. They did so by infiltrating the government during the administrations of the most beloved Democratic president in history and his successor.

Yet Donald Trump, without even taking the oath of office, becomes the “most pro-Kremlin president in modern times”?

Rather than Joe Stalin, Joe McCarthy plays the villain in the revisionist Cold War narrative. Calling Government Printing Office employee Edward Rothschild a Communist strangely ranks as a graver sin than killing tens of millions of people. The Wisconsin senator got that one right, but even after Franklin Roosevelt brought Alger Hiss to Yalta and Harry Truman promoted Harry Dexter White to head the International Monetary Fund the media caricature painted the anti-Communists as the ones unable to differentiate between Reds and liberals.

This same left-wing of the Democratic Party employs the low evidentiary standards and gutter tactics today that they accused their enemies of embracing back then. None dare call it McCarthyism.

Is it possible Russian computer geeks exposed machinations against Bernie Sanders, debates rigged by a CNN employee, and reporters colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair? Sure. But the presented evidence of this—speculation, really—does not approach the proof of skullduggery by Donna Brazile, Glenn Thrush, and others provided by WikiLeaks.

And it certainly doesn’t approach the damning evidence against Julius Rosenberg, John Stewart Service, and Judith Coplon. Back then, the Russians placed their agents not merely in our computers but in our government.