February 21, 2008

The Commie Line

Belle Waring turns up a malignant gem at National Review Online. Others have been taken by the author's bizarre speculations about Barack Obama's parents, but I particularly liked this bit:
It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution. To their credit, of course, most black Americans didn't buy the commie line — and showed more faith in the possibilities of democratic change than in radical politics, and the results on display in Moscow.
It takes a peculiarly interesting kind of cleverness to notice that for a long period it was the communists who took the lead in the fight against Jim Crow laws, lynching and the like, and turn it into proof of commie subversion. Or cleverness in a particularly peculiar kind of mind. One might assume that this NRO pundit regards the lack of interest other political stripes took in fighting the oppression of U.S. blacks as evidence of their staunch anti-communism.