The announcement of the resignation of President Obama’s Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, was made early Sunday morning, just prior to the non-news cycle that is the Labor Day weekend.  Apparently, the political demise of Mr. Jones is best kept low-key.  

The reason for that is simple.  Mr. Jones is an avowed communist.  By his own admission, he was “radicalized” while serving as a volunteer legal monitor for a protest of the Rodney King verdict.   Jones was dissatisfied with the system and says he was a “rowdy nationalist” before the King verdict, but by August of that year:  “I was a communist.”

So who cares?  The Soviet Union is dead and communism as a political threat is no more!  Well, maybe; maybe not.  The United States was founded as a capitalist society and still is to a great extent.  A few socialized segments of society such as the Post Office and public schools do not make everyone “equal,” nor are we forced to swear loyalty to the central government.  

And yet, Van Jones matters because the President of the United States, undoubtedly knowing that Mr. Jones is a self-proclaimed communist, selected him anyway.   This appointment is a microcosm of why the President’s healthcare plan was shouted down at town hall meetings and why so many Americans were suspicious of the President’s speech to schoolchildren.   Obama’s policies seem to some to be an attack on capitalism, and so the idea of having open communists in our government is somewhat chilling.  

Those on the far Left worry little about such things.  They have elevated the term “McCarthyism” to the highest level of political smear.  But the story of communists in our government actually goes back to the late thirties when Whittaker Chambers left the Communist Party, amid fears that it would murder him.   

He was able to get a meeting with FDR’s assistant Secretary of State, Adolph Berle, to whom he outed at least two dozen Soviet spies within the Roosevelt administration.  One of them was a State department official named Alger Hiss.  Roosevelt responded to the accusations by giving Hiss a promotion.   

Years later, Chambers would go before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to again reveal Hiss as a communist.   By all accounts, Hiss was masterful at his own defense and at making Chambers seem like an alarmist.  The 1948 news media – mostly newspapers – was generally sympathetic to Hiss.  There was no talk radio, no cable TV, no Fox News and no blogs.  

Even so, an American communist named Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were found guilty of passing secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviets – and they were executed in 1953.  Since that time, decoded Soviet cables have confirmed the evidence – but even with doubts of their guilt mostly dispelled, the Rosenbergs still have their supporters on the Left.  

From the thirties to the fifties, the concern was that communist spies in the government would pass secrets to the Soviets – as the Rosenbergs were convicted of doing – that could undermine the United States and lead to the deaths of soldiers at war.   

Concerns are different in the modern world.   Those who oppose communism do so on the grounds that it puts government ahead of people – that its goals of a classless society based on central planning and social justice are a danger to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.   

Twenty-first century communists like Van Jones, seeking to use the green movement to advance a political agenda – or the new FCC “diversity czar” Mark Lloyd who opposes the conservative dominance of talk radio are as troubling in their own way as Hiss and the Rosenbergs were in theirs.  More troubling still is the fact that our President nominated them knowing what they stand for.  

Lynn Woolley is a radio talk show host streaming 8 AM – 11 AM from www.BeLogical.com.