A new small but telling controversy has arisen amongst the intelligentsia here in Grand Junction concerning whether or not the city should erect a statue or make some other commemorative gesture in remembrance of former citizen Dalton Trumbo.

Most of you probably know that Mr. Trumbo was a resident of Grand Junction until the late ‘20s, when he left and eventually made his fortune in Hollywood as a screen writer with such memorable movies as Spartacus and Johnnie Got His Gun.  He also published a  novel called Eclipse.  The story of Shale City was an unflattering, thinly veiled disguise for Grand Junction at the time.

What has really made Mr. Trumbo’s star shine so brightly among some was that he was one of the Hollywood “Ten” who was blacklisted during the ‘50s due to his refusal to testify before the House on American Activities Committee, chaired by Senator McCarthy.  His refusal netted him a yearlong stay in federal custody, and he became a hero to the Left years later.  He was not permitted by the studios to write screenplays under his own name, so he submitted them under the names of others and eventually moved to Mexico.

It’s regrettable to see a person’s creativity stifled in any way, and my personal opinion is that people should be permitted to express themselves and the public make the decision about whether or not they want to buy the product.

The problem with the Trumbo adulation, that is felt among actors, producers, other socialists and pretty much anyone who thinks they are being persecuted because of their loopy ideas, is that there is a lot more to the Trumbo story.  Any reasonable examination of his life will tell you that he is a committed Stalinist.  He supported Uncle Joe Stalin and all his works.  He was a Pacifist prior to World War II when Stalin and Hitler had formed the Soviet Nazi Non-Aggression Pact in 1939, which, of course, led to the Soviet Union annexing almost half of Poland and a large piece of Finland.

Most people today couldn’t tell you anything about that fact and would tell you that the Soviet Union was always opposed to Germany.  The sad truth is that the Soviet Union thought there was nothing wrong with Nazi Germany as long as they received something out of it.  It’s only when Hitler lost his attack against the Soviet Union that Trumbo and others switched from being Pacifists, not wishing to interfere in the Soviet-Nazi business, to vehement supporters of the War to save the Soviet Union from the Nazi’s.

During this time Trumbo became very conversive with the FBI, turning in others who contacted him regarding their resistance to the War since they now were not useful to the Soviets or Stalin and had to be removed so that America could go about the business of saving the Soviet Union from the Nazi threat.

It’s almost a certainty that had America not entered the War, the Soviet Union would have fallen before the Nazi’s. Stalin had liquidated a large portion of his population and concentration camps himself, done away with most of his military leaders, since anyone competent was seen as a threat, and had self-centralized power in Moscow that, had it fallen this time, unlike when Napoleon had taken the city, it would have been the end of the Soviet Union.

It was only after World War II when Trumbo began to turn his attention back to supporting Communism. 

What this effort to lionize such a person demonstrates is an unfortunate lack of either knowledge about history, which I suspect is the overriding reason many are so supportive of Trumbo, or in the alternative a feeling the American can never be right, so anyone that opposes it must, of course, be doing the Lord’s work.

Such self-punishment in America is a relatively new phenomenon growing out of the ‘60s’ revolt against authority when we had the great Baby Boomer bulge and everyone decided to throw the same bit fit all teenagers throw.  Those people have moved through society, vaccinated the schools with their particular vision of history by going into the educational establishment.  Now we are left with old socialists and not very well grounded students who can’t tell the difference between what amounts to a foreign agent living in our country and an icon of free speech.

That’s an individual who should certainly have his statue placed wherever private individuals want to pay for it and maintain it.  To place it on public property or use public funds should require some general agreement on the part of the citizenry that it belongs there.

And I can’t image that would be the case.