El Paso Herald-Post, December 19, 1962
ANYWAY, MARTY TALKED A LOT By Peter B. Walsh
Nowadays, friends chide me about my membership in the Birch Society. They point out that, according to "authoritative" sources, the American Communist Party is a "pitiable" minority of crackpots. When I hear such talk, I shudder. In college, about 15 years ago, one of my classmates, Marty, was a zealous Communist.' Marty disappeared, very suddenly, during the spring of 1949 (over the years. I've come to wonder if other Communists didn't murder him). Here, as well as I remember them, are a few of the things Marty told me. "America, is currently being eased out of control of herself by a method of subversion that is, “beautifully simple. We few party members are like microscopic germs that can localize, multiply and can murder a grown man." The U. S. Communist conspiracy, Marty explained to me, is a 3-pronged effort. There is, first, the "open" party. Second is the vastly larger "discretionist" party. The rank and file of the open party, Marty said, are malcontents, exhibitionists, neurotics. The more grotesque they are, the better Russia likes it. The open party is a decoy. The Commies' real weapons are discretionist. Their number includes writers, educators, politicians, entertainment figures. "All discretionists." boasted Marty, "are known to Moscow. Almost all are 'respectable.' But they are not known to each other as party members. Many discretionists get only a single interview with an agent of the Soviet — this on joining the party. Then they are briefed carefully on long-range party goals. A discretionist, joining the conspiracy as, say, a law student in 1932, might be a superior court judge and 30 years older before getting a second, direct party contact. The bulk of discretionists go as liberal or moderate. Their assignments? To promote stronger central government, increased taxation, more power for the U. N.: to promote "progressive" education, disarmament, mental health, forced integration—"Everything and anything," said Marty, "that we are certain weakens the United States." The third prong of the conspiracy is a tough, secret corps of spies and saboteurs. On one occasion, Marty estimated, stressing that he was just guessing, that "about 3 million Americans were discretionist Commies. I asked Marty, once, how old he thought I'd be before tie Communists took over (I must have asked this in 1948). "Ought to be a little before you're 40," he answered thoughtfully. "A sure sign will be when their army gets used against the American people themselves, 'stead of against obvious, outside enemies . . ." I often think of Marty nowadays. In October, American troops were used to rape Oxford, Miss. In a few more months, I'll be 36 years old. Jemez Springs, N. M.
El Paso Times, June 10, 1963 (Letters to the Editor)
What Was Truth on McCarthy?
EDITOR: May 26 was the sixth anniversary of the death of Sen. Joe McCarthy. Even six years dead, McCarthy continues as a sharply controversial figure. To most of us on the right, he is a martyr-saint. To our left-wing opposites, he is a modern Torquemada. The truth, I think, is somewhere off by itself. It resembles neither McCarthy stereotype. As most adult Americans know, McCarthy's obsession was: That Communist treason and espionage flourished, throughout the U.S. in the 1940's and '50's. It not only flourished, McCarthy insisted; it did so with protection from persons highly-placed in Government. From 1949 to '54, as Republican from Wisconsin, McCarthy subpoenaed several-score Senate witnesses. All McCarthy's effort, liberals like to point out, failed to "get the goods" on a single home-grown subversive. Yet the truth remains; No other public figure in American history (unless Lincoln) suffered the facts-twisting defamation McCarthy did. And, few other politicians have had the enthusiasm of Main Street, grass-roots America, McCarthy had. By 1951, U.S. Communists and liberals were attacking McCarthy furiously, calling him sadist and fascist. In whisper campaigns, they hit lower, claiming McCarthy was a drunk, sex-pervert and tax-cheat. "And, a hundred times," writes a Catholic priest from Milwaukee, "Joe had the chance to get rough back, and wouldn't. He hated 'wire bugging,' hated what he called 'Gestapo stuff.' Sometimes he blew up in hearings and seemed to bully witnesses. But, if you knew how often, in private pre-hearing. those same witnesses told things they didn't have the courage to say formally . . . ." I think the best McCarthy summation I know comes from a former liberal. He writes me, "For all his publicized Marine Corps-amateur boxing background, McCarthy wasn't a tough man. And he was certainly naive. He could hate communism, yet sit in the Senate and vote for things as Marxian as public housing. It's possible that, when he started out on his Communists-are-in-the- Government campaign, he was looking for what he thought would be easy political capital. Then he began finding out there really IS a super-subtle, hideously-powerful underworld of secret Communists, unsettling not only Government but every facet of American life. How vulnerable those Communists were was shown by the fact that they finally attacked McCarthy, a weak opponent, with everything they had. How essentially unresourceful they are is shown by the fact that they continue, to this day, to hit at anti- Communists, high and low, exactly as they hit at McCarthy. They can't seem to get over the fact that they 'got' him. So, thanks to McCarthy, there's a sturdier, more knowing kind of anti-Communist on the scene today. It may be-if the conspiracy's eventually exposed and destroyed-that, in spite of himself. McCarthy stands as the American statesman of the century . . ."-Peter B. Walsh, Jemez Springs, New Mexico.
El Paso Herald-Post, July 16, 1963
Integration Leads to Segregation? EDITOR:
Recently I remarked to a college professor, a native of the South and expert on Russia, that it seems strange so much Soviet activity in America apparently involves race agitation. "Seems to me," I said, "the Russians could do more damage with drug traffic. Or sabotage of industry." The professor nodded. "You don't know the Soviets," he said. "The world's most race-conscious people! They've felt inferior to Nordics. They've tried to lord it over Asiatics. They're also some of history's very bloody anti-Semites." "What," I said, "do you think's going to happen out of this so-called 'Negro revolt?' These parades, these 'sit-ins'?" ''Not integration," the professor said. "American segregation isn't a matter of economics or morals or anything really-conscious any more—it's a cultural reflex action. Even among white liberals. Oh, they're in the NAACP; they 'sit-in:' they 'integrate.' Then the drama's over for a while, and, half-consciously, the white liberal feels himself wanting the company of whites; the Negro feels easier with Negroes. Liberals talk about integration being 'inexorable process.' There's another 'inexorable process':— re-segregation. One kind of segregation ends; another, subtler kind starts up. If you're going to integrate a culture racially, you've got to start early and have the right luck. For America and the Negro, it's just too late." "I suppose you hold to the Southern view: Colored people are inferior?" "This answer may surprise you," the professor said. "I'm too Southern to think they are—I've known too many gifted ones. I am saying Negroes are different—too different, now, to be integrated with whites or really, deeply to want to be. I'm saying they've recently been troubled by some calculated mind poisoning. I'm not saying that, collectively, they've been taken in. Even in Mississippi, where the colored population's 70 per cent of the white, there've been a few spectacular events and demonstrations involving extremists. All these have been played up by hysterically- liberal news services—and by our own American Commies! If there were real revolt in Mississippi, the state, right now, would be battleground after battleground of race war! But, collectively, colored people are pretty sensible. I'm personally betting they're going to end up looking more sensible than the Communists and liberals are."—Peter B. Walsh, Jemez Springs, N.M.