West/Radosh

I’ve been watching the argument between Diana West  and her new book, aand a number of detractors, recently. Most notable  is Ron Radosh, a man for whom I’ve had respect for a long time  And I admit to not having read Diana’s book as yet. I’m looking into obtaining a Kindle copy later tonight.  In keeping with the issue of complete fairness, I should point out that Ron is a fellow writer at Pajamas Media, and also that I’ve quoted and vehemently agreed with Diana in these spaces on several occasions.

That said, I have read a number of the writings in reaction to that book, including that of Radosh, and I find a number of things about all of this very disquieting.  Many of the side voices we see, (I think myself correct in including as an example, David Horowitz of  Front Page Magazine, who now seems taken with running articles written by Radosh)  seem to question the “methodology” of West.

What I see here seems to fit a pattern that I’ve seen previously.  The fact of the matter is that what we have here is a number of people defending themselves desperately from the conclusions that West and her work draws.  Now, that may seem strange at first, but bear with me.  The people objecting to West, and her work, particularly Radosh, it seems to me, have invested years in a particular methodology… one that is revealed as being totally inadequate to the task and invalid in the extreme if we accept West’s conclusions about the socialist penetration into our government from FDR forward.  The vehemence of the response from her attackers seems to confirm that feeling.

There is another subtext to all of this which I find equally disturbing.  That being that west has a tendency to subscribe to the thinking of the tea party, whereas Radosh and his defenders… (more particularly his defenders I think ) have a tendency to side with the establishment GOP.  It’s no secret that the GOP as it stands right now, at least the GOP leadership, has been remarkably pliant to the desires of the  UnAmerican left.  I find this angle worthy of investigation.

As indeed I do the rest of what I mentioned here.  My investigation will continue and I will write to those points as I find them.

For the meantime, I think their little doubt that there is something more going on here than meets the eye.  There always is when the back and forth is this loud.