CARRIED OFF ON HIS SHIELD:

A Warrior has left us (David Horowitz, November 20, 2004, Townhall)

What I admired most about Reed was that here was a man in his late sixties and then seventies when I knew him and he had more fight in him than most of the young conservatives I met at the time (Grover Norquist would be the exception) and all of the adults. Reed was like the radicals I had known in his passion for the cause and his persistence in pursuing it. And I wished that all conservatives were like him. If they were the battle would be already won.

I remember an evening in 1990 when Reed would have been 70 years old. It was a little after 8PM and I was lying in bed reading when the phone rang. It was Reed. "You've got to call in to Larry King's show. Carl Bernstein is on talking about his book on his father and the McCarthy era. You've got to take him on." Bernstein had written a preposterous book about his Communist father claming that the McCarthy era was a "reign of terror." In fact Bernstein's father was working for the Soviet enemy and the consequences to him were not that great. As Carl's book showed his father was still lying to his own son about his Communist activities. So unlike a reign of terror was McCarthyism that when Bernstein the younger told Ben Bradlee his editor at the Washington Post about his father's Communist Party membership, Bradlee kept him on the Watergate story and the hunt for President Nixon. As far as the Washington Post was concerned it was okay for the son of a Communist to bring down a sitting American President in the middle of the Cold War.

"Reed," I said. "It's 11PM where you are; you should be in bed, relaxing. Larry King will never take my call and he'll hang up on me if he does." (I knew that King was a fellow-traveler in the McCarthy period and he was obviously a fellow-traveler still.) But I said, "O.k. Reed, I'll turn on the show."

Ten minutes later the phone rang again. It was Reed: "Are you listening? Have you called?"

"No Reed. I just think there's no point."

"But you've been there. You know what this guy is doing. King is just fawning all over him. You have a responsibility to refute him with the facts."

Ten minutes later the phone rang again. By this time I was feeling guilty enough that I assured Reed I would call, and I did. I waited 45 minutes on the line before King picked up my call. "My parents were members of the Communist Party," I said, "and this is a preposterous book." King hung up on me.

I have no regrets about making the call. Whether Reed was right about this use of my time or not, he was right about the need for all of us to put our all into these battles.