Sunday, April 08, 2007

Hiss story

Adolf Hitler has some kin in the US. Not surprisingly, they don't use the Hitler name. But we could yet see the day that they not only embrace it but stand up in public claiming he was framed.

Why not? The Hiss family hasn't given up on convicted Cold War spy Alger Hiss yet. And I wouldn't be surprised if relatives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were still politicking too. Anyway, Powerline has much more on Hiss here.

Hiss was busted thanks to the late Whittaker Chambers, who earlier had spied for the Russians himself. But he broke with the Evil Empire after seeing it in action enough times, documenting his journey in his bestselling book "Witness". It's still worth a read over half a century after publication.

(Now Thomas Sowell has written another book, which in part documents his recovery from leftism. Mona Charen writes of it here.)

Yes, I'll kowtow to Godwin's law and acknowledge the obvious - Hiss was no Hitler. Or perhaps more appropriately, he was no Stalin. But he and his ilk were enablers, without whom such beasts could not attain power. And with tens of millions of deaths attributable to Communism, there's plenty of guilt to go around.

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