In what began as the dedication of a memorial to members of the 35th Infantry Division, of which Harry Truman was Captain of the 129th Field Artillery during World War 1, turned into a much anticipated speech on Foreign Policy which Truman delivered in a nationwide address on June 11, 1949.

In his address, Truman warned of dire consequences if Congress went ahead in slashing funds for European recovery, saying the only thing to gain from it would be Communism. He urged for stronger commitment to a stable European economy and a stronger United Nations in order to deal with conflicts abroad.

Here is that address, as broadcast over CBS Radio on June 11, 1949.

Back in the day when you could blame everything on the Russians, the 1950's were a simmering pot of nothing but paranoia and fear. So much so, that on April 4, 1954 President Eisenhower made a radio address to the nation seeking to allay those fears. Well . . .sort of.

President Eisenhower: “ Sometimes you feel almost as if we could be excused for getting a little bit hysterical, because these dangers come from so many angles and there’s such different kinds. And no matter what we do, they still seem to exist. But underlying all of these dangers is this one thing; the threat we have from without, the great threat imposed upon us by aggressive Communism. The Atheistic doctrine that believes in Stateism as against our conception of the dignity of man is a quality before the law; that is the struggle of the ages.”

One of the many double messages rampant in the 1950's. And it's no wonder the Tranquilizer became so popular. I often wondered if they named it Miltown as an homage to Milhouse (vice-President Richard Nixon's middle name) rather than the borough in New Jersey. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Still . . . .

( . . .and there went Prague Spring for the next 30 years)

It was a only matter of time. The writing had been on the wall for months. The experiment got out of hand. Communism With A Human Face retreated back to the closet. And Alexander Dubcek, the architect of Prague Spring would be removed from office. On August 20, 1968, the Soviets, along with East Germans and other Warsaw Pact allies, massed troops and tanks on the Czechoslovak border and headed towards Prague.

When the first news broke via Radio Prague, the White House was alerted and President Johnson called an emergency cabinet meeting to figure out what was going on.

The recording here from the first few hours recaps much of the happenings earlier in the evening, including the interruption of an evening session of Democratic Platform hearings with Dean Rusk, chaired by Hale Boggs as the story unfolded and reports kept coming in.

Hale Boggs: “We have here a bulletin which has just been handed to me by the Press from Czechoslovakia saying that Radio Prague announced Wednesday that Soviet troops have crossed the Czechoslovak borders. The broadcast asked Czechoslovak citizens not to take any action against them. The broadcast came at 2 a.m. over the direct network of Radio Prague. There was unusual activity at the airport which justified as apparently a landing”

As the hours drifted into days, it was very clear what the end result was going to be.

(Another in a series of painfully bad ideas)

In 1965 the "official" shooting war was less than a year old and already a growing number of people were starting to question what we were doing in Vietnam in the first place. The logic behind waging a war where there seemed to be no clear solution, other than hearing the fear card played over and over that it was part of the "domino theory" of Communist domination over the far east, that India could fall under the influence of the Kremlin and that, if India went, would Japan be far behind were the constant warnings being trotted out in order to justify escalation.

1965 was a pivotal year for the war in Vietnam because it signified a point where America would either be bogged down in a protracted war and propping up a corrupt and ineffective government or it would go in, makes it point and leave.

Unfortunately it was a situation that had a long history and one which wasn't going to be settled anywhere near 1965.

There is an eerie similarity to our current state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan and those in Vietnam. In 1965 the fear card was Communism and in 2002 the fear card was Terrorism. Both are situations we've found ourselves in where there was no easy way to extricate ourselves - a hopeless tumor that hemorrhages lives.

In late June 1965, ABC Radio aired a special "Dialogue And Decision". Hosted by a young Ted Koppel, the program tries to give some background (and try to make sense) out of a war that was quickly spiraling out of control with seemingly no solution at hand.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

(Sen. Claude Pepper - withstood many attempts at mud-slinging)

It's always interesting (and sometimes gratifying) to hear Sunday Morning talk shows from the past, just as a way of reminding yourself things were never as bad as they are now with mainstream media.

Case in point is certainly Meet The Press. Originally begun in 1946 as a feature on the Mutual Broadcast System Radio Network before switching to NBC in 1947, it was the brainchild of Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak and produced in association with American Mercury Magazine (of which Spivak was Publisher), Meet The Press pulled no punches and offered some serious grilling to whatever guest happened to be invited on. It prided itself in not asking canned questions and sometimes the results were newsworthy in themselves.

This episode, from November 27, 1947 features Senator Claude Pepper (D-Florida), himself an outspoken FDR Democrat, talking about our Post-war foreign aid policy and what needed to be done about it in view of the increasing presence of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Sen. Claude Pepper: “I’m in favor of spreading democracy in every part of the world. But there are many ways to spread democracy. You can’t cram democracy down the throats of people. And you can’t buy them off from Communism. We haven’t got enough money to buy the people of the world off from Communism. The best way, in my opinion, to spread democracy is to establish democracy so firmly here, that we’ll be able to propagate it to all nations and peoples of the world, we’ll be able to help them, we’ll set them a good example and the like . . not to buy them or cram it down their throats. . .

Lawrence Spivak: “ . . but certainly Senator we oughtn’t help those who are spreading totalitarianism . . or should we?

Pepper: Mister Spivak, we and the Communists have been living in this world a good many years together. Karl Marx started talking about Communism as you know in the last century. And it seems to me that unless we are willing to be blown to some other world to get away from a world where communism exists, we’ve got to live in a world with Communism. And they’ve got to live in a world with Capitalism. And the sensible thing to do is to learn to live together. We’ve got to live together whether we like it or not.”

Needless to say, Pepper didn't endear himself to the right wing fear mongers in the Senate, who nicknamed him "Red Pepper" and repeatedly attempted to smear him during the 1950's.

Times have changed - so have the people and so have the politicians.

The fear just doesn't stop, and it didn't stop in 1961. Before he was governor, Ronald Reagan was busy stirring up fears of Socialized Medicine, terrifying people into believing any sort of Public Health Care was a direct product of communism and government meddling.

And so, when the Medicare debate began during its first incarnation in 1961 (the bill was defeated owing to just these scare tactics and the influence of the Dixiecrats - the precursor to our Blue Dogs), people like Ronald Reagan flocked to the cause of the Insurance lobby, big Pharma and the AMA with the sole intent of scaring the living crap out of every human being within the United States.

And so the fear in 1961, as now is a misguided attempt at keeping the status quo pure by stamping out any thought an alternative may exist.

Ain't it all grand?

(It seemed like a great idea at the time)

Twenty years ago this month, hot on the heels of Glasnost and Perestroika within the Soviet Union, Chinese students tried for the same thing - a reform of government, an idealogical shift from hardline Mao-styled Communism to a more democratic approach, a relaxing of rigid policies and a free exchange of ideas and enterprise.

It was a little like a movement in the former Czechoslovakia twenty years before that. Prague Spring in 1968 and the liberal experiment of Alexander Dubcek. The climate in the Soviet Union was different that time, and the movement was quickly extinguished.

But it was thought since the mood had changed so much in the Soviet Union in those twenty years, why couldn't the mood change in China as well?

Lofty expectation but sadly, no. Or not in 1989 anyway.

Here are some clips from May 13-15 1989. As the confrontation wears on into June, I will add those to give some sort of timeline sense to the events that took place.

Hard to imagine it's been fifty years since Castro assumed power in Cuba. Even harder to imagine travel restrictions have been relaxed after all this time.

Ever since the government of Fulgencio Batista fell and Fidel Castro took over, the subject of Cuba has been a contentious one. In 1959 the Cold War was in full bloom and the almost constant fear of countries coming under the influence of the Soviet Union was on most Americans minds, especially when the countries coming under the influence happened to be in our own hemisphere.

Shortly after Castro assumed power, it was speculated by a number of American news outlets that Cuba was warming to the Soviet Union and that Communism had a definite toehold at our doorstep. Cuba, after all was a mere 90 miles away and it would prove to be a flashpoint in many an east-west showdown in the years following.

In May of 1959 CBS Radio did a documentary called "Is Cuba Going Red", hosted by newsman Stuart Novins. It was contended that Cuba had been overtaken by communist elements and was in the grips of becoming a totalitarian state, so fresh from its independence from the Batista government.

The documentary drew a huge amount of criticism and it forced CBS to run a companion show in order to allow Cuban spokespeople to air their side of the story.

The end result was a discussion that turned into a minor yelling match between Novins and Senator Charles Porter from Oregon.

The first part is the portrayal of Cuba as it was in May of 1959, asking the question if the island had gone Communist. And the second part is a rebuttal argument by the Cuban Ambassador and various officials from the Cuban government.