I recall None Dare Call it Treason
Reader comment on item: None Dare Call It Treason... 25 Years Later

Submitted by Phil (United States), Nov 18, 2005 at 20:54

I read the book when it first came out. It was distributed by the John Birch Society and my boss had a stack of 20 or so copies on top of his piano and insisted I have one. Because membership in the JBS was secret, I never knew if my boss was an active member, but I would suspect he was. Anyway, it was a classical example of yellow journalism. He had a number of unattributed quotes and played fast an loose with those which were attributed. He had a vague sense of honor because he sometimes provided "supporting" material. As an instance of his style, in the section where he was making a case for President Eisenhower being a Communist conspirator (really!!!) he quotes some Congressman (I couldn't say who after all these years, although the book does) as saying about the President "He's either a fool or a Communist". If one followed the key back to the afternotes, one encountered the complete quote "He's either a fool or a Communist, and I know he's not a Communist". Puts a different twist on it, wouldn't you say? The author also introduced me to the term "traditional truth", which he defined as something one believed, although he knew it to be wrong, because he wanted it to be true. I think this puts an even finer point on the concept of "faith".

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