World News Daily
June 17 2012
America’s Marxist picnic
Exclusive: David Kupelian explains why government no longer worries
about communists
Here’s a very personal story that illustrates just how radically
America’s attitude toward Marxism and communism has changed during our
lifetime.
It’s about one of our nation’s top rocket scientists – my dad, Vahey
S. Kupelian, who if he were still alive would be 100 years old June
23.
As a little boy, my dad survived the horrific Turkish genocide of the
Armenians that took the life of his physician father, infant sister
and dozens of other family members. Yet he and his mother, Mary, were
blessed to escape to the Promised Land, America, where they thrived.
It was hard – my father worked as a janitor at age 13 while he was
learning English – but a few years later he graduated from MIT and
ultimately became one of this nation’s key aerospace pioneers.
As the Army’s chief scientist for ballistic missile defense, and
later, as deputy undersecretary of defense for strategic and theater
nuclear forces under Ronald Reagan, my dad contributed greatly to his
adopted nation’s security, heading up the development of many
cutting-edge ballistic missile defense projects including the Army’s
HIT program – the original `spaced-based’ missile interceptor in
Reagan’s visionary Strategic Defense Initiative.
In fact, as I write this, I’m holding the original of a personal
letter to my dad from President Reagan, which says, in part:
`You have been responsible for major steps forward in our ability to
deter aggression and to meet the threats posed by our adversaries. I
am particularly grateful to you for the outstanding leadership you
have contributed to our strategic defense program. Because of your
ideas and your labor, we are much closer to reaching the dream of a
world free of the possibility of nuclear holocaust. Your work on
ballistic missile defenses will have a profound and continuing effect
on U.S. policies and strategic thinking for generations to come. God
bless you. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan.’
Yet there was a time during the 1970s that my father’s four-decade
career was in danger of grinding to a halt, when the government
considered withdrawing his top secret security clearance.
Why?
Well, it seems that decades earlier, during his teen years, his mother
had driven to an Armenian church picnic (Armenia was then, however
unwillingly, part the Soviet Union) where apparently a pro-Soviet
speaker gave a talk, and she had picked up a copy of the communist
newspaper Workers World. The FBI was surveilling the event as possibly
subversive, took down my grandmother’s license plate, and somehow –
years later – made the cross-connection with my dad’s top secret
clearance and determined to find out whether he had any communist or
Soviet loyalties.
This, we must remember, occurred during an era when, due to proven
Soviet infiltration of the United States government, the FBI was very
concerned about the loyalty of federal employees, especially those
with security clearances and access to sensitive national security
information.
Today, those on the left contemptuously scoff at the `McCarthy era,’
`red scare’ and `Hollywood blacklist’ as though they constituted the
modern equivalent of the Salem witch trials, hysterically demonizing
and destroying the lives of countless innocents.
Innocent? It’s true that some Americans faddishly joined the Communist
Party USA because it was the `cool’ (if stupid and deluded) thing to
do at that time (when Reagan headed the Screen Actors Guild there were
more than 400 Communist Party members in Hollywood alone, including
well-known actors and directors, some of whom later disavowed their
previous communist infatuation). However, overshadowing this is the
reality that the U.S. government was host to many real-life Soviet
agents, as proven conclusively by the post-Cold War release of the
decrypted `Venona cables’ in 1995, transcripts of actual
communications between the Kremlin and Soviet agents in the U.S.
Let’s be very clear: We’re talking about people in the United States
government, some in very senior positions, who were secretly loyal to
our No.1 enemy – an `evil empire’ dedicated to America’s destruction –
a threat ultimately manifesting in thousands of nuclear-tipped
intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at American population
centers. It was not `cool’ to have such people occupy trusted
positions in our government.
Therefore, due to this official fervor to root out communists at that
time, my father was in danger of losing his security clearance. Years
later, my mother would tell me of my dad sitting on the side of their
bed, tearfully breaking the news to her that he might lose his career
and livelihood over this long-forgotten Workers World incident from
decades earlier.
Crazy as this scenario may sound – high-level government concern over
reported possession of a communist newspaper his mother picked up at a
church picnic – my dad submitted a detailed written defense of his
picnic activities to the FBI.
In the aftermath of my mother’s recent death, I have had occasion to
go through many of my father’s papers and came across a partial copy
of his defense.
As my dad explained to the government, his mother Mary was a trained
social worker who dealt routinely with people of foreign nationalities
and differing political ideologies, and she had an obvious special
interest in helping Armenians. Therefore, explained my father, she was
`bound to come into contact with … persons who were pro-Soviet
Armenia.’
`Since my mother was a social and Americanization worker with many
ethnic groups, she would have had access to some of their nationality
journals and papers,’ my dad continued, explaining:
At one time or other I recollect seeing papers in Armenian, Turkish,
Greek, and probably even the Daily Worker, which I presumed contained
news of Soviet Armenia. However, I don’t recall actually reading the
Daily Worker, and I know that it has never had any bearing on my
political thinking. …
I cannot recall ever having attended, specifically, any meetings,
picnic, or rally where any kind of political speeches were given. It
is inevitable that I may have gone to an occasional Armenian picnic
where Armenians of all political beliefs were present, but I cannot
recall any such picnics or other meetings where political propaganda
was distributed or the Daily Worker was distributed. I have never been
a subscriber to the Daily Worker or the Sunday edition of that
newspaper and I have never subscribed to any periodicals or papers
that promoted Communism.
I am not now nor have I ever been a member of or in any way affiliated
with the Communist Party or any other Communist controlled or Soviet
organization. To the best of my knowledge, I have never belonged to
any organization designated by the Attorney General of the United …
That’s all I’ve got – `United’ being the last word typed on Page 4,
the only page I have of my dad’s defense of his and his mom’s youthful
picnicking activities. Had the government not believed him, our nation
would have lost one of its most important, creative and loyal defense
scientists.
Now let’s contrast the government’s level of concern over communism a
generation ago with that of today.
The president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama – whose level
of security clearance is far higher than was my dad’s, who indeed has
access to all intelligence and all secrets, not to mention having his
`finger on the nuclear button’ – was during his college years a
committed Marxist, advocating the revolutionary overthrow of America’s
capitalist system. His father was a communist. His main mentor as a
young teenager, Frank Marshall Davis, was a card-carrying member of
the Communist Party USA.
Obama admits in `Dreams From My Father’ that, during college, he was
attracted to the `Marxist professors.’ Indeed, the Marxist student
leader at Occidental College at the time, John Drew, says Obama was
far more radical than even Drew was, actually believing that Marx’s
prophesied proletariat revolution to overthrow capitalism was imminent
in the United States. Today Drew, who has long since repudiated his
former radicalism, says that even in his Marxist days he attempted to
rein in Obama by trying to persuade him to work within America’s
political system to bring about the Marxist transformation they all
desired.
After college, Obama followed in the footsteps of Chicago Marxist Saul
Alinsky and went on to practice and teach Alinsky’s revolutionary
street-organizing methods. Obama launched his political career in the
living room of Bill Ayers, a self-described `small-c communist’ and
unrepentant Pentagon-bombing terrorist. Moreover, the evidence is
indisputable that Ayers played a major role in writing Obama’s highly
acclaimed autobiography, `Dreams From My Father.’
Obama’s pastor for two decades, whom he described as his `spiritual
mentor,’ was Jeremiah Wright, a perennially enraged, America-hating
purveyor of `Black Liberation Theology’ (Marxism disguised as
Christianity). As president, Obama appointed as White House
communications director Anita Dunn, who in a speech to students
claimed mass-murdering Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong was one of
her `favorite political philosophers,’ and `green jobs czar’ Van
Jones, who in his earlier years admitted to being a communist and, in
fact, founded the communist group Standing Together to Organize a
Revolutionary Movement, or STORM.
I could go on and on. These oft-cited facts merely scratch the surface
of Obama’s long-term radicalism. But the point in juxtaposing my
father’s story and Obama’s is as inescapable as it is troubling:
My dad, a true American who was immeasurably grateful and loyal to his
adopted country, could have lost everything because his mother went to
a church picnic and picked up a Marxist rag.
That was then. But now, sitting in the White House is a man who has
spent most of his entire life immersed in Marxist ideology,
influences, mentors and benefactors. He has proven, as president, that
he is still fully committed to dragging America – kicking and
screaming if necessary (recall the outrageous and illegal way
Obamacare was passed) – into a new era of unprecedented,
government-coerced redistribution of wealth and power. To be precise:
Marxism.
It would be folly, of course, to imagine that Obama just magically
appeared out of thin air to lead a nation of liberty-loving,
responsible, moral, right-thinking grownups leftward. America has been
moving in this sad direction for decades. No, not under the `Marxist’
label, or any of those other nasty words of yesteryear, like
`socialism’ or `communism’ or `collectivism.’ They’ve all been
carefully replaced by warm-and-cuddly terms like `fairness,’ `economic
justice,’ `redistribution,’ `progressivism’ and – as an off-script
Obama famously told Joe the Plumber – `spread[ing] the wealth around.’
The spirit of socialism has taken root and flowered spectacularly in
America, especially in all of our elite, idea-generating institutions
like education, the news and entertainment media, and, of course,
government. The original American spirit – stout, risk-taking,
God-fearing, responsible, adult – has progressively been displaced by
the spirit of dependency and helplessness, of perpetual grievance and
victimization, and most of all, of envy and resentment. All of which
cries out for ever bigger government.
So the question is: Will we Americans re-embrace the values that made
ours the greatest nation in history, or will we continue on our
current path toward the godless mirage of `redistributive change’ –
and the poverty and loss of liberty that always follow?
In any event, for the present I can at least derive some solace from
remembering that I was raised by parents and grandparents who
appreciated their adopted country and all the blessings the Creator
freely bestowed upon it – and weren’t angrily obsessed with
`transforming’ it into a socialist paradise. For that I am truly
grateful.
May those blessings continue. May this nation repent of its sins. And
may we come to our senses before it’s too late.
Happy 100th birthday, Dad. God bless you.
The preceding is reprinted from the June issue of WND’s monthly
Whistleblower magazine, `MARXISM, AMERICAN-STYLE.’
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
