VILIFICATION NOW PERMEATES OUR PUBLIC DISCOURSE

Joseph Shumpeter wrote that "the first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."

The great collective lie of modern politics was the innocence of Alger Hiss. A former State Department employee, Hiss possessed a liberal pedigree and impeccable Ivy League credentials. He also was named as a Communist spy by his reformed comrade, Whittaker Chambers. Known primarily as the case that launched the career of Richard Nixon, it is a fascinating twist of history that an otherwise obscure trial 50 years ago would play such a prominent role in post-World War II politics.

During the trial, much was made of the physical contrast between the handsome Hiss and the rumpled, overweight Chambers, described by one reporter of the time as "bland, dumpy and devious." As is often the case, appearances can be deceiving. Chambers was a gifted linguist and a senior editor for Time magazine. His book, "Witness," is regarded by many as a classic of American autobiography.

Hiss served a brief prison sentence for perjury, but -- based on corroborative evidence gathered in the wake of the Soviet collapse -- it is clear that Chambers told the truth. Literary critic Leslie Fielder believed the failure of liberals to acknowledge Hiss' guilt derived from "the implicit dogma of American liberalism" which assumed that in any political drama "the liberal per se is the hero." To concede Hiss' guilt was to accept "that a mere liberal principle is not itself a guarantee against evil; that the wrongdoer is not always the other."

Hiss assumed the mantle of the victim. Until his death in 1996, his defense consisted of little more than the moral posturing of the self-appointed martyr and the character assassination of Chambers. Combining personal attack with the righteous indignation of the aggrieved victim was a strategy that worked so well it now permeates our public discourse and, by rights, should be labeled the "Whittaker Chambers effect."

The vilification of people like Ward Connerly is an example of the Whittaker Chambers effect in action.

Connerly is routinely attacked in public debates as a "race traitor" and is a frequent target of death threats. His transgression is that he is a black man with opinions on racial preferences that the polls show agree with a majority of Americans. But, on occasion, even liberal heroes can go too far. The Gore campaign quietly apologized to Colin Powell after questioning his moral fortitude on matters of race.

Anyone can invoke the Whittaker Chambers effect, but it is an army of academics, bureaucrats and assorted members of the cultural left who reap the spoils from serving the constantly shifting ranks of the politically oppressed. The spoils take the form of expanded budgets, grants, lawsuits, news stories and jobs as victim-group spokesperson. The business of identity politics dictates that the oppressed group be large, but not too large -- if we are all victims, then no one is a victim. If the victim group is too small, then so is the political payoff.

In an interview in the gay magazine Advocate, Bill Clinton described himself as oppressed, just like gays and blacks. The president claimed he was "humiliated and abused" as a consequence of the Lewinsky scandal and blamed political enemies desperate to "undermine the result of two elections."

The oppressed can be anonymous disenfranchised voters or, in some instances, not even human. When animal-rights activists compare chicken farms and stockyards to Nazi concentration camps, the hyperbole is especially offensive. If the oppressed group is unassailable, due process and common sense may be compromised. During the 1980s, a media-fueled frenzy worthy of an Arthur Miller play caused many day-care centers to be closed and people falsely imprisoned based on the recovered memories of preschoolers. Florida States Attorney Janet Reno rode the frenzy into the Clinton Cabinet.

When political factions subvert the truth, no matter how noble the cause, it suggests that morality exists only in the ends. The Framers of the Constitution understood that morality lies in the means, not the ends.

Chambers was neither a hero nor a villain, but a man who squandered his youth serving a Communist ideal that he came to regard as false and dehumanizing. In a century characterized by world war and untold human misery inflicted in the name of political ideology, Chambers' legacy is the realization that the answers to life's most important questions cannot be culled from politics or social science, but reside elsewhere.

It is a simple message that begs to be shared with posterity.

Michael Devaney is a professor of finance in the Donald Harrison College of Business at Southeast Missouri State University.