The Witness

By Monica and Jeff Barton

Nov 16, 2024

Whittaker Chambers. Source: Library of Congress

The Wisdom of Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961) was an American writer and editor. In 1925, he joined the Workers Party of America (a legal cover for the Communist Party) and worked as an editor at the Daily Worker newspaper and New Masses magazine (1926-1932). In 1932, he joined the Soviet underground as an agent, eventually running a spy ring in Washington, DC.

After defecting in 1938, he joined TIME magazine, where he rose to senior editor (1939-1948). In 1948, Chambers appeared under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a Federal witness in what became the Hiss Case (1948-1950). He worked briefly for the nascent National Review. He died two years later on his Westminster, Maryland, farm before publishing more.

To understand and defeat communism, Ronald Reagan read extensively on the subject. Whittaker Chambers’ autobiography, “Witness,” was one of those books. So greatly influenced by Chambers’ work, Reagan awarded the 1984 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Whittaker and presented it to Chambers’ son, John Chambers, for his late father. At the presentation, Reagan read these words:

At a critical moment in our nation’s history, Whittaker Chambers stood alone against the brooding terrors of our age. Consummate intellectual, writer of moving majestic prose, and witness to the truth, he became the focus of a momentous controversy in American history that symbolized our century’s epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism, a controversy in which the solitary figure of Whittaker Chambers personified the mystery of human redemption in the face of evil and suffering. As long as humanity speaks of virtue, and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire.

In “Witness,” Chambers writes about the Hiss case in which he testified against Alger Hiss, a former colleague and fellow spy working for the Soviet Union. His distillation of the essence of the case in terms of what it meant about men and society applies to the division in our country today. Then, the threat was from the Soviet Union, today the threat is from within. Chambers’ analysis of the significance of the Hiss case applies beautifully to the significance of the 2024 presidential election. In what follows I have taken excerpts from “Witness: Forward in the Form of a Letter to my Children,” and reproduced them here in italics and attempted to cast his wisdom as it applies today.

Two Visions of America were on the Ballot

The election of 2024 was much more than a choice between two candidates or two political parties; it was a choice between two visions for America. One vision looked to the past and the founding of this Constitutional republic and the enumeration of individual rights given by God. This vision seeks to preserve America as conceived by its founders.

The other vision sees man and man’s creation of government as the ultimate authority and seeks to fundamentally change America. This vision sees the Constitution as an impediment to governance and seeks to curtail individual rights, especially as regards the First Amendment.

One man and his followers presented a unique and substantial threat to the government-centric view of the Democrat party. So resolute is his faith in the American system and its preservation, this man – Donald Trump – has been willing to suffer financial loss and perhaps even loss of life in his efforts. I do not believe any other candidate had fully rejected the statist view or could have as effectively combatted it. No other candidate could have been as fully immune to even the appearance that his ambition was rooted in personal enrichment.

Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. At issue was the question whether this man’s faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts.

With No Moral Compass, the Ends Justify the Means

In the past ten years we have seen the widespread abandonment of what were long held norms in politics and society. A former president had never been indicted. No former president had been impeached twice. The justice system had been weaponized against a president and a candidate. The federal government colluded with social media to censor information for political gain. Biological men are encouraged and allowed to compete against women in sports. School children are sexualized from a young age and taught to question their birth gender. “Gender fluidity” is normalized in public schools. Children are exposed to drag queens reading stories of homosexual relations. Our borders are wide open to unvetted “immigrants.”

This deliberate attempt to fracture and weaken our society politically, socially, and morally, is the work of one political party. This destructive force is a force of evil and exposes the godless character of its perpetrators. Once these norms were broken there could be no turning back. Society had been defiled and could never be cleansed. Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election, it was thought, America had been forever changed; if there were any innocence, it would be gone forever.

At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case. On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time - Communism and Freedom - came to grips in the persons of two resolute men… Neither would or could yield without betraying, not himself, but his faith; and the different character of these faiths was shown by the different conduct of the two men toward each other throughout the struggle. For, with dark certitude, both knew, almost from the beginning, that the Great Case could end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending figures, just as the history of our times (both men had been taught) can end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.

God or Man?

Although today the threat from Soviet Communism has passed, Chambers believed that ultimately the struggle was not between Communism or Marxist ideology and the West but that of the West with itself. He believed “Western civilization was destroying itself by betraying its heritage… Communism had triumphed, not in its Marxist tenet but in its concept of man – a concept which the West has accepted.”

Chambers traces his break with communism to one specific moment and writes of it beautifully in “Witness”:

But I date my break from a very casual happening. I was sitting in our apartment on St. Paul Street in Baltimore. It was shortly before we moved to Alger Hiss’s apartment in Washington. My daughter was in her highchair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear – those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: “No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design.” The thought was involuntary and unwanted. I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it, I should have had to say: Design presupposes God.

I did not know then that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.

The Witness

By Monica and Jeff Barton

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