Treason From the Past and the Distant Past

Ann Coulter wrote a book a few years ago entitled Treason. In this book she demonstrates how Liberals have been on the wrong side of foreign policy in everything from the Cold War to the war on terror.
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In the course of her arguments, she defends Senator Joseph McCarthy, who has been demonized by the Left for so long that his name has become a code word for unwarranted persecution. McCarthy led hearings and investigations into Communists who had infiltrated America, especially the government. Coulter illustrates that for forty years McCarthy was judged harshly as being wrong -- but that Soviet documents revealed in 1995 that Soviet Communist spies actually did infiltrate the American government, and that McCarthy was right all along. Her thesis is backed up by M. Stanton Evans' book Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies.

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This long buildup to my point stems from a video clip I saw recently. Coulter was a guest on Bill O'Reilly's TV show, where she was plugging her book. O'Reilly refused to take seriously her argument for McCarthy's correctness, and he argued (O'Reilly style) that she was wrong. The most wonderful exchange was this one:

Coulter: "I'm responding to 50 years of the liberal creation of a myth—turning an honorable American, a great American patriot, Joe McCarthy, into a virtual Nazi."

O'Reilly: "I'm not going with that. I'm not going with that. A guy who used his power to do some good but a lot of bad too."
Coulter: "Like what?"
O'Reilly: "He demonized people who didn't deserve to be demonized."
Coulter: "That's not true. Name one. There is not one."
O'Reilly: "I'll name one—Dalton Trumbo."
Coulter: "He had nothing to do with Dalton Trumbo."
O'Reilly: "Sure he did. It was the House Unamerican Activities Committee. And who was overseeing that?"
Coulter: "He was known as Senator McCarthy. He was in the Senate, not the House."

O'Reilly, it seems, in his desire to portray himself as a "centrist" and paint Coulter as a "right wing nutjob," had bought into the Liberal propaganda without thinking it through.

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It strikes me how easy it is to dismantle most Liberal arguments with facts. When confronted with facts that they can't refute, Liberals begin blustering and turn their attacks on the messenger (see "Joe the plumber.") Their attitude is My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts.

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Although O'Reilly is no Liberal, he fell apart like a Liberal under facts that contradicted a "truth" he had held for so long. The lesson? Don't accept a Liberal's statements of "fact" until you've done your own research.