If you’re in the mood to watch perhaps the greatest political thriller ever made, I suggest 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate” starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Janet Leigh. As a side note, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Leslie Parrish, also is in the film. But, I digress.

The reason the film is so interesting is because one on hand it is a hit on Senator Joe McCarthy and his confused crusade. On the other hand it acknowledges the basic veracity of McCarthy’s charges by the anti-communist angle of the film. An interesting dichotomy.

It may have been the last ideological appearance in the culture of a movement that under Truman had saved the West and had gone hand to hand with the communists all over the world under LBJ: Cold War liberalism.

No need to remind you of liberalism’s domestic failures. But there was a time in Greece, Korea, Berlin, Cuba, and Vietnam when Democrats stood up to communists. No, I’m not kidding. I’m actually not. Oh really? Then look it up yourself, smart guy.

It came out of the Soviet moves at the end of the Second World War and Democrat Harry Truman’s realization that a dying FDR had been hoodwinked by Stalin at Yalta. When Truman took over in April of 1945 he soon saw the Soviets were breaking their Yalta promises left and right. He then called in to the White House the Soviet Ambassador to the United States and dressed him down with a vengeance.

From History.com: “On April 23, 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov arrived at the White House for a meeting with the new president. Truman immediately lashed out at Molotov, ‘in words of one syllable,’ as the president later recalled. As Molotov listened incredulously, Truman charged that the Soviets were breaking their agreements and that Stalin needed to keep his word. At the end of Truman’s tirade, Molotov indignantly declared that he had never been talked to in such a manner. Truman, not to be outdone, replied that if Molotov had kept his promises, he would not need to be talked to like that. Molotov stormed out of the meeting. Truman was delighted with his own performance, telling one friend that he gave the Soviet official ‘the straight one-two to the jaw.’ The president was convinced that a tough stance was the only way to deal with the communists, a policy that came to dominate America’s early Cold War policies toward the Soviets.”

That was how liberal Democrats once dealt with communist thugs. These days their families do business with them and communists laugh at Joe Biden to the faces of his diplomatic representatives. The formerly communist Russians think even less of Joe Biden. How high have the mighty fallen. Cold War liberals, requiesce in pace.