Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961), born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers, was an American writer and editor. After his early years as a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he renounced communism, became an outspoken opponent, and testified at Alger Hiss's perjury and espionage trial. He described both events in his book Witness, published in 1952.
Youth and education
Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent his infancy in Brooklyn. His family moved to Lynbrook, Long Island, New York, in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha (Whittaker). Chambers described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their need to care for their mentally ill grandmother. Chambers' brother committed suicide shortly after withdrawing from his first year of college. Chambers would cite his brother's troubled life and eventual suicide as one of many reasons that he was drawn to communism as a young man.
"A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory"
"Political freedom is a political reading of the Bible"
"The simple fact is that when I took up my little sling and aimed at Communism, I also hit something else. What I hit was the forces of that great socialist revolution, which, in the name of liberalism, spasmodically, incompletely, somewhat formlessly, always in the same direction, has been inching its ice cap over the nation for two decades. ...[T]hough I knew it existed, I still had no adequate idea of its extent, the depth of its penetration or the fierce vindictiveness of its revolutionary temper, which is a reflex of it struggle to keep and advance its political power."
"I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism"
"Every sincere break with Communism is a religious experience, though the Communists fail to identify its true nature, though he fail to go to the end of the experience. His break is the political expression of the perpetual need of the soul whose first faint stirring he has felt within him, years, months or days before he breaks. A Communist breaks because he must choose at last between irreconcilable opposites — God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism."
"When you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wiser."
"On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary."
"The rub is that the pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general softening of the fibers of will, intelligence, spirit."
"I see in Communism the focus of the concentrated evil of our time"
"The Communist vision is the vision of man without God"
"I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism."
Nothing defines the leadership of the Democratic Party better than its positions on the death penalty and abortion. They save murderers while ensuring the “right” to kill babies ... (RELATED. James Burnham ... Whittaker Chambers’ One-Man War AgainstCommunism.
His aides and his wife hid Wilson’s condition from the American people... Wilson’s wife Edith effectively became the nation’s chief executive for about 17 months ... FDR’s work schedule was curtailed ... ... Whittaker Chambers’ One-Man War AgainstCommunism ... .
Handsome, charming, peripatetic, Reed, who spoke in a Delta patois that was best described as a drawling mumble or a mumbled drawling, was a Cold War conservative, an admirer of Whittaker Chambers, a ...
Remarkable, but perhaps unsurprising. Vought isn’t a politician ... He says that at his organization’s events, attendees will find themselves being given books — old books, in fact, like Whittaker Chambers’s Witness or Pat Buchanan’s various works ... .
Why would anyone become a politician? ] Witness , by Whittaker Chambers This 1952 memoir is still thrust in the hands of budding young conservatives, as a means of inculcating them into the movement.
“The government does not violate anyone’s free speech rights merely by speaking, no matter what it chooses to say or not say,” says a Texas legal brief signed by Florida Solicitor GeneralHenry Whittaker.
Reds. The Tragedy of Communism. By Maurice Isserman. (Basic Books, 384 pages, $27.99). Reds ... The italics increase. ... And, ... (READ MORE ... Whittaker Chambers barely gets a mention, but uninfluential Party diarists are discussed at length ... Gilmore does ... 132 ... .
The movie “Reagan” contains a scene from Ronald Reagan’s boyhood ... The three bullies fall back, lurking down by the street ... Reagan asks ... He was a reader and deep thinker, and we see him reading “Witness,” by former communist spy Whittaker Chambers.
First, they oppose you and condescend to you ... The movie has Reagan at one point reading a book late at night, and his wife Nancy asking him — after peeking at the cover — if he’d rather spend time with Whittaker Chambers or her ... ....
First, they oppose you and condescend to you ... How did he do it? ... The movie has Reagan at one point reading a book late at night, and his wife Nancy asking him — after peeking at the cover — if he’d rather spend time with Whittaker Chambers or her ... ....
Sun Sentinel
13 Oct 2024
Sun Sentinel
13 Oct 2024