Yes, They Were Guilty.

The trouble with youth is that they think that the world did not begin until they were born. "We don't know who _________ is," as one of my students used to say.

I was in college. Liberals were crying that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were found guilty of espionage because Truman and Eisenhower didn't like their political opinions. I admired Ike for sticking to his principles and sending them to execution. Now, their co-conspirator, Morton Sobell, now 90-some years old, has admitted guilt as a Soviet spy.

Why is this important? It is important because very often the past is the key to the present. Those who rebel against authority use the same devices again and again. The guilty attack the witnesses against them, and impugn the honor of those who would hold them to account.

Liberals use the same devices year after year after year. Attack the accuser, call them bigoted and angry, defame their honor, refuse to listen to those who have experience.

"Indeed, Columbia University professor Eric Foner once wrote that the Rosenbergs were prosecuted out of a 'determined effort to root out dissent,' part of a broader pattern of 'shattered careers and suppressed civil liberties.' In other words, it was part of the postwar McCarthyite 'witch hunt.' "

The liberals of the 40's and 50's refused to admit that the United States was in a struggle with the Soviet Union for the very life of freedom and morality. They viciously attacked those who would bring them to account. Their spiritual children use the same devices against those who would defend liberty today.

They did not use argument or lawful procedures then, and they do not use lawful procedures now. They complain, they gripe, they moan and groan, they slander their opponents, they try to dig up dirt to destroy their enemies, and would leave a burnt earth behind them, if responsible people do not say "enough." Thank God there were enough sane people back then who were able to understand what was going on.

This is the misery of the young. Those who refuse to listen to history are bound to repeat it.