14.0: Whittaker Chambers, congenital idiot.

 As may have been noted, the format of these words of wisdom has changed a bit; rather than publish in easily digestible sections, I have elected to relate my thoughts in a continuous entry. While this may seem to be dissonant with the currently lamentable attention span of the average citizen, I nonetheless came to a stark realization: no on reads my posts, ergo I have nothing to lose. With this thought firmly in mind, I submit the latest of my drunken, end-of-the-evening ravings…

Whittaker Chambers has been lionized by the right as some sort of hero; a latter-day Don Quixote, tilting at the windmill of leftist claptrap, seldom recognized for the brilliance he brought to the conservative renaissance of the late 1950s era. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mr. Chambers was a congenital idiot.

It has always been remarkable to me that W.F. Buckley, no mean intellectual himself, could be taken so agog by the vapid commentary of this sad individual. Did he expose Alger Hiss- yes; were his assertions, so long dismissed by the left as outright chicanery borne true by recently declassified KGB documents- yes; does it truly matter in the grand scheme of life whether he was motivated by patriotism or pure narcissism- surprisingly, yes.

Chambers was the ne plus ultra definition of an attention-seeking media whore whose contributions to the human condition can be measured in the micro-grams. In attempting to paint Alger Hiss as an agent of Soviet interests, he unwittingly called himself into the public eye as exactly what he was: a self-aggrandizing puppet of irrational Red-hysteria. At first blush, I had taken his existence as a minor inconvenience to the forward progress of the American people; little did I realize exactly how wrong-headed this man’s incongruence with rational thought truly was.

This blissful ignorance was dispelled when I read his review on Ayn Rand’s masterpiece Atlas Shrugged. Having read his weak diatribe, I became convinced that he never actually read the book. To be sure, his review is peppered with direct quotes to provide some metric of validation; it is also salted with some of the most egregious misunderstandings of good literature that have ever been foisted on an unwitting public. As a brief submission of a few selected faults:

1.) Whittaker Chambers has not only demonstrated a profound misreading of Nietschze, Aristotle, and Marx, but a generalized neglect of philosophical understanding.

2.) His remarks as to the improper placing of time in the book (i.e., this is not the current reality) have not stood the test of time- the majority of the suppositions Ms. Rand asserted have been borne true by the passage of years- all within the context of Congressional “reforms” spawned in the timeframe she references. It is important to note that I do not condemn Mr. Chambers for being wrong as regards the subject: I nevertheless damn him for not correcting his earlier mistakes as the passage of time has proved his positions untenable.

3.) As he is a venerable icon of the right, it strikes me as ironic that he abuses Ms. Rand’s vision of unfettered capitalism as a profound good; to be frightfully honest, he has the unmistakable odor of a closet socialist (I will never capitalize that word) who is uncomfortable with his role as a darling of the right.

4.) With no recourse to skewer the book on its logical and rhetorical principles, Mr. Chambers devolves into a religious diatribe that centers on the book’s lack the guiding hand of “god.” The mere fact that he needed to stoop to this level surely alerts the reader as to the true value of his review.

5.) “Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.” Well said, Mr. Chambers: the only counter example I can think of is your review.

While I have never been known as a friend of the left, I can think of no greater caricature of intellectual fraud perpetrated by members of the right as the pitiful figure of Whittaker Chambers: a schoolboy shouting “he done it” among greater intellects, hoping that his mumbled voice will be perceived as the clarion to usher in a new age: mission failed. One can only hope that with the passage of time, this fraud of an “important voice” will be drowned out by those more cognitively gifted than he; by this I mean at least 80% of the population.

Whittaker Chambers, R.I.P.- and stay there.    

P.S. If you don’t believe me about the egregious misunderstanding of the aforementioned novel, check out W. C.’s original review at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback?page=3