RUST COMMENTARY: ELIA KAZAN DESERVES ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEING A PATRIOT

Over 35 years ago as one of the vice presidents of the MISSOURI JAYCEES and chairman of the Americanism and Anti-Communist Committee, I studied and spoke frequently about the Communist and Socialist parties' activities in Hollywood and the media.

RONALD REAGAN was president of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild and openly fought this group within the Hollywood arena.

When it was announced recently that ELIA KAZAN would be given an award at this year's Academy Awards ... he received more attacks on network TV than plaudits. Why? Because he identified by name some of the Communist Party members at a congressional hearing.

This is UNACCEPTABLE! If we continue to accept without defense attacks on those who display courage (many recent examples are currently being displayed by people who feel it their duty to identify current bad-government actions) and those who stand for principles rather than compromise ... then we will not enjoy looking back on the legacy we have left for our children and grandchildren. Too many in the past have sacrificed too much for us to take the easy way out of non-confrontation or silence.

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Elia Kazan: Moral hero: Some people are condemning the decision to give an honorary Oscar to film director Elia Kazan. They claim that because Kazan, a former member of the Communist Party, testified against fellow party members before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he does not deserve such recognition. As one writer charges, "There can never be honor, much less an honorary Oscar, for one who sells the lives and futures of his fellow man."

But Kazan does deserve to be honored, not despite his testimony, but because of it -- not because we should separate his politics from his art, but because his politics helped preserve artistic freedom for everyone in America. Kazan was the one defending freedom -- while it was the Hollywood Communists who were betraying "the lives and futures" of their fellow man.

The search for Hollywood Communists was not a hysterical witch-hunt. There were real Communists in Hollywood (as numerous reports, such as Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley's recent book, "Hollywood Party," have shown). Thus, the injustice of which Kazan is being accused is not that he made false accusations -- but that he was an anti-communist.

Yet there is nothing unjust about exposing the supporters of dictatorship. The Communist Party was not merely a political organization like the Democratic Party or Republican Party. It was a totalitarian network. Its goal was not to win an electoral majority but to eliminate free elections and institute a one-party dictatorship. The party's charter called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and its officials took orders from Soviet despots.

With brazen effrontery, however, the Hollywood Communists painted themselves as martyrs for freedom. In an attempt to conceal their dirty secrets, they claimed that their political rights -- the very rights that had been systematically exterminated in the slave state they admired and worked for -- were being violated by the House investigations and by the Hollywood blacklist, and, amazingly enough, history has believed them.

It is perfectly legitimate for Congress to investigate any organization that declares its active intent to overthrow a free society on behalf of a foreign dictatorship. It was not the Communists' ideas that were the inquiry's target, but their actions -- or threatened actions.

As to the blacklist, why shouldn't private employers, such as the Hollywood studios, refuse to give platforms to people whose views they find repugnant? The Communists claimed that right to free association in order to shield themselves from the disapproval of others. Didn't the studio owners have the same right not to associate with advocates of totalitarianism?

The morality of congressional investigations and private blacklists would not be challenged if the targets were, say, the militia movement or some neo-Nazi group. Such entities would be clearly recognized as threats to individual freedom. The left would surely support an anti-Nazi blacklist, but somehow regards an anti-communist blacklist as unpardonable.

Further, whistle blowers are hailed today as protectors of our rights when they disclose that corporations are circumventing minimum wage laws or OSHA regulations. Yet a man who blew the whistle on a genuine evil -- on a movement bent on establishing an omnipotent state -- is condemned for selling out.

What can explain such perversity, except the belief that communism is not an evil, but anti-communism is?

Kazan's own defense of his testimony provides the most revealing analogy. His 1954 film, "On the Waterfront," portrays a young hood who becomes disillusioned with the gangsters who control the local longshoremen's union. The rule on the docks, enforced by terror, is that union members are supposed to be "deaf and dumb" -- to pretend they don't know anything about the gang and to refuse to speak to the police. The hero of the film is the one man who has the courage to break this code of silence and testify against the gang. Kazan intended the film as a metaphor for his decision to testify against his former comrades in the party.

Ironically, those who oppose giving Kazan an Oscar have banded together under an organization called the Committee Against Silence. But it is they who seek to perpetuate the code of silence. It is they who want to hide the truth about communism and its malignant influence in Hollywood.

Almost 50 years later, the sympathizers of leftist dictatorships still want to cover up the fact that the real defenders of freedom were not the "martyred" Hollywood Reds but the courageous men who acted to expose them. -- Robert Tracinski

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Former Hollywood 10 member supports pro-Kazan group: Edward Dmytryk, director of "The Caine Mutiny" and other Hollywood classics, has given his support to the Ad Hoc Committee for Naming Facts and its defense of Elia Kazan. Joining Dmytryk in support of the committee are former International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees president Roy Brewer and the Congress of Russian-Americans.

"I congratulate you and your Committee for Naming Facts for your strong defense of Elia Kazan and the academy's decision to award him the much-deserved special achievement Oscar," wrote Dmytryk to the committee in a statement of support.

What makes Dmytryk's support striking and doubly important, according to committee chairman Peter Schwartz, is that the Hollywood director was a member of the Hollywood 10 and the only one of its members to turn against the party and testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951.

Roy Brewer, the former head of IATSE, testified to HUAC as a friendly witness in 1947.

"I encouraged and supported Mr. Kazan to testify against the Communist Party," Brewer wrote in his statement. "I thought he made the right decision then. and I have not changed my mind. He was right to testify before HUAC because the Communist Party wanted to destroy the rights of American citizens and replace our free system with a dictatorship."

George B. Avisov, president of the anti-communist Congress of Russian-Americans, which defends human rights, said about Kazan that "indeed, to have had the moral strength, outside pressures notwithstanding, and to have spoken up against what he, Mr. Kazan, perceived to be evil, dishonorable and treacherous was more than a lot of other individuals did."

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New York Times exclusive: Inside China's military: The New York Times on Monday reported that China now has "roughly 20 nuclear missiles that can reach American shores, and perhaps 300 nuclear weapons that, aboard medium-range missiles or bombers, could hit Japan, India or Russia.

"China has deployed five to seven of its longest-range missiles, called the DF-5, that can hit virtually any part of the United States. An additional dozen or so missiles, the DF-4, can reach the West Coast."

The paper's David Sanger and Erik Eckholm write: "The revelation that China appears to have stolen the design of America's most advanced miniaturized warhead has prompted new debate in Washington over whether China's small nuclear force could become a far more potent arsenal that could rekindle the kind of fears that shaped the cold war."

The duo report that China currently has only one nuclear-equipped submarine, with 12 missiles that have a range of 1,100 miles. The sub's seaworthiness has long been doubted by intelligence experts, and it does not threaten the American mainland. -- Drudge Report

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Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. -- Proverbs 29:18

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.