“Liberals’ loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for rational discussion?”

In a stunning follow-up to her number one bestseller Slander, leading conservative pundit Ann Coulter contends that liberals have been wrong on every foreign policy issue, from the fight against Communism at home and abroad, the Nixon and the Clinton presidencies, and the struggle with the Soviet empire right up to today’s war on terrorism. “Liberals have a preternatural gift for always striking a position on the side of treason,” says Coulter. “Everyone says liberals love America, too. No, they don’t.” From Truman to Kennedy to Carter to Clinton, America has contained, appeased, and retreated, often sacrificing America’s best interests and security. With the fate of the world in the balance, liberals should leave the defense of the nation to conservatives.

Reexamining the sixty-year history of the Cold War and beyond—including the career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Whittaker Chambers–Alger Hiss affair, Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” the Gulf War, and our present war on terrorism—Coulter reveals how liberals have been horribly wrong in all their political analyses and policy prescriptions. McCarthy, exonerated by the Venona Papers if not before, was basically right about Soviet agents working for the U.S. government. Hiss turned out to be a high-ranking Soviet spy (who consulted Roosevelt at Yalta). Reagan, ridiculed throughout his presidency, ended up winning the Cold War. And George W. Bush, also an object of ridicule, has performed exceptionally in responding to America’s newest threats at home and abroad.

Coulter, who in Slander exposed a liberal bias in today’s media, also examines how history, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, has been written by liberals and, therefore, distorted by their perspective. Far from being irrelevant today, her clearheaded and piercing view of what we’ve been through informs us perfectly for challenges today and in the future.

With Slander, Ann Coulter became the most recognized and talked-about conservative intellectual of the year. Treason, in many ways an even more controversial and prescient book, will ignite impassioned political debate at one of the most crucial moments in our history.

From the Hardcover edition.

5 Responses to “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism”

1. Gloria E. Watson says:

   August 9, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Ann has outdone herself with this book. WOW….this should be required reading in every school system in the USA as well as Congress. Because of this book, I purchased the Venona Project. SCARY!!! The lies and propoganda that we’ve been fed all these years about Sen. McCarthy certainly has done this man a grave injustice. Too bad he isn’t around for some of us to say “Thank you, Joe.” He literally saved our nation from a communist take-over. We could do with a few more McCarthys today.

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2. Brenan Nierman says:

   April 30, 2010 at 12:00 am

   This is an excellent, well-documented book. Ms. Coulter has used many primary sources to document the sad and sordid tale of American liberalism’s complicency in Communism.

   It’s all here: from Franklin Roosevelt’s twice-fold dismissal of concerns over Soviet spy Alger Hiss, to Harry Truman’s refusal to listen to evidence against Soviet spy Harry Dexter White, to the useless idiots who smeared Senator Joseph McCarthy when they knew full well that McCarthy had pulled in more than his full shareof Communists working in the US government: Ms. Coulter lays it all out.

   If you are a liberal, and an intellectually honest person, you will not be able to read this book,love your country, and vote Democratic ever again. Something’s gonna have to give.

   The blood of miliions is on the hands of FDR, Truman, Dean Acheson (who passed government evidence along to Alger Hiss’ defense team) and all the intellectual snobs who turned their noses up at Joe McCarthy. Remember the great scene in which the self-righteous Mr. Welch blasts Joe with his “have you no sense of decency” speech? Does anyone know what that was all about? Well, you can read all about it here: the true story. Turns out that Mr. Welch was baiting Roy Cohn to come up with the names of some Communists, baiting himover and over again while the liberal press snickered. And finally, Joe had had enough: Mr. Welch had a Communist working for him. McCarthy was ever reluctant to name names in publis, but this time he did. And to mask the fact that his bluff had been called, Mr. Welch resorted to theatrics. It truned out that McCarthy was right after all, but by then the press was so biased that noone cared to report it correctly.

   Ms. Coulter (and the great Stan Evans in his majestic book on McCarthy), sets the record straight.

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3. Richard Stowell says:

   March 20, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Ann Coulter has done it again. Her latest book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terror has spent several months on the New York Times Bestseller list. The title earned every second of it with a dazzling blend of historical fact, snappy humor, and sarcastic wit. Her main point echoes throughout the 292 pages that, “liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason.”

   Pound for pound, Coulter is easily the most potent weapon of the right against liberal indoctrination that has here to for withstood any erosion. The constitutional lawyer makes the point that more docile conservatives have avoided: liberals are not patriotic. Clarification: liberals who incessantly bash America are not patriotic.

   Ever since 9.11 we were forced to suffer liberal diatribes about how the United States was bullying hapless, desperate nations, and how we should get approval from France before taking military action, and about how John Ashcroft was bent on sifting through grandma’s underwear drawer and library records, and how normal Americans were Nazis for not buying more Dixie Chicks albums, and how the problems in the Middle East were our fault for driving SUVs, and on, and on, and on…

   After all this vitriol against America, we were supposed to believe them that it was somehow not unpatriotic to criticize ad nauseam your country and its leaders. Even though Webster defines “patriotism” as “devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country,” we were supposed to thankfully venerate the paragons of national loyalty: Janeane Garafolo, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, et al, when they went abroad to sideswipe our president, our national policy, our stupid electorate, the fact that we are the most prosperous nation, etc. But even liberals realized that to be labeled unpatriotic was not appealing in wartime.

   Coulter explains how the liberal charade began much earlier than the War on Terror. The quasi-hero of her book is Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom she defends as a courageous American who exposed communist infiltration in the top reaches of government. Liberals were happy to harbor communists in the State Department, Pentagon, and Army who were security risks at the least, and paid KGB agents at worst.

   Coulter explains how the left combated the assault on their treachery by making McCarthy, and not communist infiltration, the story. Now when you read about American communism, McCarthy is portrayed as a paranoid lunatic who deliberately ruined innocent people’s lives for a few moments in the spotlight, and “McCarthyism has become a useful label to shut anybody up who called into question liberals’ patriotism. Thus, Coulter uncovers what the establishment media omits, tracing what McCarthy was actually up to. Her reliance on history is a patient exercise in patriotism. She cites information from the Venona Project, a cache of Soviet cables that had been decoded during the Cold War, declassified in 1995. Coulter writes:

   “Soviet spies in the government were not a figment of right-wing imaginations. McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. He was tilting at an authentic Communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party. The Democrats had unpardonably connived with one of the greatest evils of the twentieth century. This could not be nullified. But liberals could at least hope to redeem the Democratic Party by dedicating themselves to rewriting history and blackening reputations.”

   Another highlight of the book is her exhaustive explanation of Ronald Reagan’s masterly direction of American foreign policy vis à vis world communism. Chapter 8 is sarcastically entitled, “How Truman Won The Cold Ward During The Reagan Administration.” Reagan falls in the McCarthy mold, in that he almost single-handedly brought down the Soviet Empire, only to be belittled and marginalized by liberal educators eager to mitigate their idiotic prognostications during the eighties. For instance, Coulter points out that liberals called Reagan foolish for challenging such a robust Soviet Union when he assumed power in 1981, but by the end of the decade they had changed their tune to, “the Soviets were in decline anyway.”

   It is also interesting to realize the freshness of Reagan’s attitude toward the Russians. He abandoned “parity” and “détente” that his predecessors strove for. He wanted the end of soviet communism, and his critics believed him mad when he confidently halted arms talks in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986. Reagan would not compromise with communists. Although he made history by engaging the Soviet Premier in arms-reduction summits, he would not abandon the United States’ prerogative for missile defense (Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI, otherwise known as “Star Wars”). We all know what happened next. Coulter writes:

   “Reagan had spent six years bleeding the Soviet Union from every limb. By walking away from the table at Reykjavik rather than abandon SDI, Reagan consigned the USSR to the dustbin of history. His victory over the evil empire was complete. The rest was paperwork…To be sure, refusing to compromise on Star Wars, Reagan had abandoned any hope of ever winning a Nobel Peace Prize. It must have provided some consolation to know that he had forever destroyed the Soviet war machine on behalf of the free world.”

   Amazingly, Coulter asserts, liberals still disdain a missile defense system. It must be the association it has with the Gipper, whom they loathe because of his hard-line stance against the communists.

   Of course, no book with the subtitle, “Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism” would be complete without ample treatment on Mr. Bush’s war. Coulter skillfully and comically exposes liberal hypocrisy throughout the War on Terrorism. Her polemic is hard-hitting as well as side-splitting. Explaining the democrats’ obsession with European endorsement of U.S. military action, for instance, she writes, “democrats couldn’t care less if people in Indiana hate them. But if Europeans curl their lips, liberals can’t look themselves in the mirror.” Continuing in the same vein, she shows how ridiculous it is for liberal pundits to worry about our enemies’ disposition.

   “One could mine every war-making text throughout history–Sun Tsu, Carl von Clausewitz, Alfred Thayer Mahan–without finding a single reference to being liked by your enemies as a tactic associated with winning a war…They hate us? We hate them. Americans don’t want to make Islamic fanatics love us. We want to make them die… So sorry they’re angry–wait until they see American anger.”

   Coulter is on a crusade to show how liberalism is not patriotic. From WWII, to The War on Terrorism, with everything in between–Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, Grenada, Iran, Somalia, Indochina, Lybia, Central America, and North Korea, Coulter describes the democratic tendency to commit treason, be it overt or de facto. They do not like what America stands for. Treason is a valuable and fun instructional tool, as well as being the antidote to the poisonous mentality that loses wars and surrenders freedom–a must read.

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4. Dr B Leland Baker says:

   February 20, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Ann Coulter writes that “Liberals unreservedly call all conservatives fascists, racists, and enemies of civil liberties with no facts whatsoever.” (They) “attack their country and then go into a diarrhea panic if anyone criticizes them” (p. 6). Interesting facts: SDS radical leader, Tom Hayden became a Democrat State Senator in California; Black Panther’s Bobby Rush became a Democratic congressman (p. 12). History Lessons: In 1938, Whittaker Chambers defected from the communist party due to his realization that they stood for terror, torture, fascism, and death (p. 18). Chambers provided significant information on the Communist spy network in to include two dozen spies in the Roosevelt administration including Alger Hiss (p. 18). Coulter describes the “Pumpkin Papers” that proved Hiss’ guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Nearly 100 million were murdered in the name of Communism, surpassing Nazi brutality (p. 34).

   She provides eye opening details on how the “Roosevelt administration was teeming with paid agents of Moscow” (p. 37). Spies have been proven through declassified Soviet cables to include: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Laurence Duggan, Frank Coe, Solomon Adler, Klaus Fuchs, Duncan Lee (p. 44) and were confirmed by ex-spies Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley. Declassified Soviet cables also proved indisputably that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, and Judith Coplon were spies, who provided classified data to the Soviets (p. 50). Coulter builds the case that McCarthy’s fundamental thesis was correct: “The Democratic Party had fallen to the allures of totalitarianism” … and that FDR was infatuated with Mussolini (p. 71). Coulter states that liberals decried the evils of McCarthyism, creating a false belief that Senator McCarthy caused Hollywood blacklisting even though there was absolutely no relationship (p. 76). Yet, liberals chose to ignore that “Stalin executed, starved, exiled or imprisoned more than ten million people” (p. 79). She discusses George Marshal, Owen Lattimore and Henry Wallace … concluding that “the result of being called a Communist by McCarthy was you got to teach at Harvard” (p. 92). She also discusses I.F. Stone who was later proven to be a paid Soviet agent (p. 97). Despite press misrepresentation that McCarthy was unpopular, the majority of Americans were pro-McCarthy as were John and Bobby Kennedy (p. 101), and that the “primary victim of outrageous persecution during the McCarthy era was McCarthy, (p.104) who suffered attacks by the leftist-press for over four years.

   Coulter discusses numerous foreign affairs failures to include Bay of Pigs (JFK), Berlin Wall (JFK), Cuban Missile Crisis (JFK), Viet Nam (JFK, LBJ), Iranian Hostage Crisis (Carter), Beirut (Reagan/Democrat Congress), and Somalia (Clinton) concluding that “whenever Democrats dabble in military affairs, America suffers relentless defeats, …and the nation is demoralized and humiliated” (p. 144). Coulter identifies that President Truman thought “Stalin was a fine man” and that Russians “have always been our friends” (p. 148) showing he was either naïve or intentionally soft on communism and like FDR, Truman refused to remove “members of his administration identified to him by J. Edgar Hoover and others as Communist agents” (p. 154). Also, a very interesting discussion of terrorists: Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, as well as John Lee Malvo and John Allen Williams (who was a member of the Nation of Islam). After a few more enlightening chapters of detailed fact-laden information, the author concludes that conservatives are God-fearing; whereas Liberals pray to the infallible state … believing that they are God.

   Even if you do not agree with Ann Coulter’s politics, the historical research on Alger Hiss and other post-WWII spies is well worth the price of this book.

   Dr. B. Leland Baker, author of Tea Party Revival

   Tea Party Revival: The Conscience of a Conservative Reborn: The Tea Party Revolt Against Unconstrained Spending and Growth of the Federal Government

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5. L. Lewis says:

   February 18, 2010 at 12:00 am

   Ann succinctly puts the blame where it rightfully belongs.

   The Venona Papers prove that there were communists in FDR’s cabinet and serving as aides to FDR. McCarthy knew it and was excoriated for that knowledge. He tried his best to tell the people, many of whom had lived through the war and it’s aftermath. They were smarter than their duly elected officials, and Joe McCarthy was a hero to the common person.

   Go Ann. All your books are good,this one really struck a chord. Thanks.

   Reply