Talk:Ellen Schrecker

Quote

Here is the full quote from Many Are The Crimes, pg 181 (with a senence on Fuch left out):

Unlike Soviet Agents in the Cold War, the men and women who gave information to Moscow in the 1930s and 1940s did so for political, not pecuniary reasons .... It is important to realize that as Communists these people (those who spied for the Soviets in the 30’s and 40’s) did not subscribe to traditional forms of patriotism; they were internationalists whose political allegiances transcended national boundaries. They thought they were ‘building… a better worlds for the masses,’ not betraying their country.

I do not think it is being taken out of context. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 12:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll accept the inclusion of the quote if the entire sentence, beginning with "It is important to realize..." is quoted. RedSpruce 13:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

A few comments: 1) the Wiki advice pages say "avoid deletion". Why not take a page from TDC's playbook here and help find sources and discover the truth instead of just removing what you don't like? 2) you justified your removal by claiming that "she didn't say this about "those who spied"". In fact, as TDC has shown, SHE USED THOSE EXACT THREE WORDS you claim she didn't!! If one makes the good faith assumption that you didn't deliberately lie, then you clearly never bothered to ascertain what the truth was before you reverted. You simply asserted what you imagined the truth to be and then reverted on that basis. In sum, may I recommend applying the "do not just make stuff up" policy henceforth.Bdell555 23:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for assuming I'm not a liar, Bdell555. I'll do the same for you, and assume you're merely too stupid to read my comment as I wrote it. RedSpruce 15:06, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

You are correct, I am "too stupid" to have perceived how the absence of "for the Soviets in the 30s and 40s" (or, for that matter, "It is important to realize") could have possibly been what you objected to; - given the article's focus on the McCarthy era, readers were OBVIOUSLY tempted to mentally insert "for ancient Egypt" after "those who spied"!! This just brings us back to the point that if you were indeed aware of what the fuller quote was, you could have saved the writer from this incorrect inference by just adding what you thought were necessary to it instead of denying the reader the opportunity to have any knowledge of the quote at all.Bdell555 20:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Aside from the bad turn this conversation has taken, I have to agree with Bdell555 on this, the source was extremely easy to find, and an effort to do so should have been made. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 21:12, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I apologize for leveling the "making stuff up" charge since however difficult it was to appreciate that Redspruce was objecting to the absence of "for the Soviets in the 30s and 40s", however frivolous the objection itself was given the ultimate impact, and however inappropriate his solution was, it is possible that Redspruce was aware of what the fuller quote was before TDC provided it here. It's just that the article Redspruce objected to didn't have "those who spied" within quotation marks in contrast to the rest of the quote, so he was presumably objecting to those three words as being an out-of-context paraphrase when he repeated those words in his justification; in order words, he presumably objected to what was IN the article as opposed to what was NOT IN, a presumption reinforced by the act of deletion instead of addition.Bdell555 22:29, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Most of these article's on espionage and the Soviets in general, may not have extensive citations, but almost all of the material is accurate. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 00:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Sources for Radosh & Haynes quotes

Ronald Radosh called Schrecker "the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians" in reviewing Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley by Kathryn S. Olmsted, in National Review, Feb 24, 2003. There's a copy at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_3_55/ai_97347251.

The quote about devoting "hundreds of pages to demonizing opposition to communism in any form" comes from Reflections on Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman's essay, "The Right's Cold War Revision" by John Earl Haynes.

Cheers, CWC 15:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

schrecker condemnation of modern anti-communists

I just reverted a minor change where the claim was made that Schrecker did not have anything to do with contemporary anti-communists. The quote below should negate that. She obviously had negative opinions on anti-communists at least into the late Reagan years.

from: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/schrecker-legacy.html

Moreover, even after the anti-Communist furor receded, the antidemocratic practices associated with it continued. We can trace the legacy of McCarthyism in the FBI's secret COINTELPRO program of harassing political dissenters in the 1960s and 1970s, the Watergate-related felonies of the Nixon White House in the 1970s, and the Iran-Contra scandals in the 1980s. The pervasiveness of such wrongdoing reveals how seriously the nation's defenses against official illegalities had eroded in the face of claims that national security took precedence over ordinary law. McCarthyism alone did not cause these outrages; but the assault on democracy that began during the 1940s and 1950s with the collaboration of private institutions and public agencies in suppressing the alleged threat of domestic communism was an important early contribution.

It's a heck of a stretch to say that there's anything in that quote about contemporary anticommunists, and there's absolutely, positively, nothing there to support the "contemporary" in "Her condemnation of the practices of both McCarthy-era and contemporary anti-communists has led some scholars to characterize Schrecker as leftist and an apologist for American Communists." RedSpruce 23:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Are we reading the same quote? What is the commonality betwen Iran-Contra and McCarthy's hunt for communists other than both episodes featured prominent anti-communists, the latter obviously from the McCarthy era, the former contemporary anti-communists? Reading comprehension is not original research. It is quite obvious, at least to me, that the "assault on democracy" is an anti-communist trait according to this person and the thread runs through many decades straight through today. TMLutas 01:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be more accurate to refer to her condemnation of contemporary anti-terrorists given her opinion that modern McCarthyism secured the dismissal from USF's faculty of Sami Amin Al-Arian, who 1) explicitly called for the deaths of Americans and Israelis 2) raised funds for terrorist organizations, and 3) attempted to secure a spot on USF’s faculty for Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah.Bdell555 (talk) 12:56, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

footnote help

..anybody have a copy of "many are the Crimes" in easy reach? I don't have access to it... - Ling.Nut 02:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I have it in easy reach when I'm home. Note that you can use Amazon's "search inside" function from the book's hardcover page, here. If I can be of help, contact me on my Talk page. RedSpruce 14:27, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Redspruce's "compromise version"

An edit war gets resolved with, in Redspruce's words, a "compromise version". He then waits a month to throw out what HE deemed the "compromise version" in favour of his own, uncompromising version. An edit war with Redspruce is thus only resolved for as long as you don't have your backed turned, in other words.Bdell555 (talk) 12:15, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Correct; as long as no one's around actively lobbying for a poorer version of an article, I will make it better. RedSpruce (talk) 14:38, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Unilateralism at its best. The point here is that there was a multilateral version that you AGREED to.Bdell555 (talk) 06:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality

Hi, I tagged neutrality because it's clear from this discussion page that the regular editors of the page have yet to come to a consensus, suggesting that, at different times, the article is bound to represent one viewpoint or another, instead of a balance of views (this fact is apparent from reading the article as well.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.68.32 (talk) 03:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The nature of the neutrality dispute is this: User:Bdell555 has inserted quotes by Schrecker with the purpose of portraying her as an apologist for Communists and reducing her credibility. I would like to reduce the number of quotes, specifically eliminating the ones Bdell555 favors. However, no debate between the two of us is likely to be fruitful, and neither of us in interested in starting one. If some other editor were to weigh in on either side (or some third side), that might make break the deadlock, or at least make things more interesting. RedSpruce (talk) 00:16, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

What ever happened to assuming good faith? If your account of my motivations is correct, Redspruce, then why am I not REMOVING material like the "magnificent study" praise? In my view of the dispute, it's inclusionism vs deletionism.Bdell555 (talk) 06:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Intro POV

I find the intro, which quotes Ronald Radosh, to be POV. Who ever heard of prominently quoting a hostile critic in an intro to someone's biography? And the phrase "anti-anti-Communists" is a polemical term of art, which will not be understood by most people, and raises many unanswered questions, as well as being ad hominem, not to say ad feminam.n173.77.76.170 (talk) 13:08, 10 May 2013 (UTC) 173.77.76.170 (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2013 (UTC)