https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/the_enduring_relevance_of_whittaker_chambers_emwitnessem.htmlThe Enduring Relevance of Whittaker Chambers’ WitnessOctober 24, 2020
by David Gayvert
First published nearly 70 years ago, Whittaker Chambers’
Witness provides relevant, instructive, and inspiring encouragement for those currently engaged in the fight against today’s ascendant Left. Although there is a wealth of useful insights within its covers, two stand out as central.
First, Leftist ideologies are always and everywhere about acquiring power to wage an assault upon liberal (in the classical sense) values and institutions. Second, individual redemption after falling under the sway of these or any other malign influence is indeed possible by dint of reason, faith in a transcendent power, and the courage to follow those lights.
Witness is most well known as the firsthand account of Chambers’ exposure of and subsequent testimony against members of the communist Ware Group, which led to the 1949-50 espionage trials of Alger Hiss, then a high-ranking State Department official. Hiss was ultimately found guilty of perjury and sentenced to prison.
But Witness is more than just that story. It is a poignant autobiography of a young man born at the turn of the twentieth century, coming of age in the wake of the devastation of World War I. He became obsessed, as did many contemporaries, with what they saw as “the crisis of history†in the 20th century. It was despair generated by this fixation that drove Chambers to become a communist at the age of 24.
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