Payback Time for Aging Marxist Historians

The history profession probably contains more unreconstructed Marxists than mainland China, and they're upset at President Bush's appointment of Allen Weinstein to be archivist of the U.S. Their charge that he'll be too "secretive" is a screen for the real reason they want to deny him this honor, which has more to do with party orthodoxy than with the quality of his writings.

Allen Weinstein's real sin is that he employed rigorous scholarship to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Alger Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy. This argument, made in Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case in 1978, has been upheld by such scholars as Sam Tanenhaus, who had access to declassified Soviet papers unavailable to Weinstein 26 years ago. In other words, the increase in the amount of primary sources available has only strengthened the foundation of his original conclusion.

But historical evidence matters little to the radical left, especially where Alger Hiss is concerned. They pummeled Whittaker Chambers when he came forward with his charges that Hiss was a spy nearly 60 years ago, and they would dearly love to block the rise of one whose work did so much to make their denial of historical truth patently obvious. Here's hoping the President stands behind his man and doesn't let latter-day apparatchiks decide an honest scholar's fate.