Whittaker Chambers

A Republican Looks At His Vote

David Chambers — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:42:40 +0000

During the 1958 elections, Whittaker Chambers recalls “a peculiarly braced sobriety” for a Democratic sweep the 1952 elections, writing:
The Republicans had lost touch with reality in all directions, and in all groupings, until domestic policy resembled irresolution tempered by expediency, and foreign policy more and more resembled something like eccentricity.

[...]

A Reminder

David Chambers — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:45:13 +0000

A reader catches out a repeated phrase in Whittaker Chambers‘ writings. His reply takes readers from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius to Antonov-Avseenko, who led the attack by the Red Guard on the Winter Palace in 1917.

Read “A Reminder.”

(back [...]

RIP: Virginia Freedom

David Chambers — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:52:46 +0000

Whittaker Chambers reminisces about the (then) late Mrs. Leon Freedom AKA Virginia Freedom of Baltimore, who bumped in him in a Baltimore department store, starting “Mr. C? I must talk to you.”

Enjoy “RIP: Virginia Freedom.”

Eleventy-One

David Chambers — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:10:56 +0000

Whittaker Chambers was born this day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: today would be his eleventy-first birthday.

Of his own birth, he wrote:
I was born in Philadelphia, on April 1, 1901. When my father, Jay Chambers, who was then a young staff artist on the

Some Untimely Jottings

David Chambers — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:15:36 +0000

Some Untimely Jottings
National Review – September 27, 1958

A UN speech by President Dwight Eisenhower sparked Whittaker Chambers to express continued concerns for crises in the Middle East, which he connected to the “Communist advance” stretching from “the Lebanon” to “Quemoy” (Kinmen, an island [...]

A Westminster Letter: Springhead to Springhead

David Chambers — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:05:40 +0000

A Westminster Letter: Springhead to Springhead
National Review – February 31, 1958

Living as we do in the wake of the 2007 recession and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, how were government subsidies affecting working folk back in the 1950s — especially American farmers?

Whittaker Chambers and Totalitarian Islam – Speak No Evil (Response)

David Chambers — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:45:36 +0000

Speak No Evil

National Review printed an article on the 50th anniversary of Whittaker Chambers‘ death that the Whittaker Chambers Family found most disappointing. As its author has updated the piece, below we are republishing our comments to the magazine and to him (in addition to our own observations [...]

Big Sister Is Watching You

David Chambers — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 02:45:42 +0000

Big Sister Is Watching You
National Review -December 28, 1957

Whittaker Chambers’ fifth article remains his most famous: a withering critique of Ayn Rand‘s new book called Atlas Shrugged. He excoriates her materialism: From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: [...]

To Temporize Is Death

David Chambers — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 19:00:43 +0000

In his fourth article for National Review, Chambers reviewed events of the last year, including the launch of Sputnik and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and bespoke Cold War fears of Communism’s continuing spread — as if a “second Communist moon had stirred in the West,” while his wife prayed for help [...]

The Coming Struggle for Outer Space

David Chambers — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:15:03 +0000

In his second article for National Review in 1957, Whittaker Chambers discussed the impact of the Soviet launch of Sputnik in “The Coming Struggle for Outer Space.”

(Also published at National Review online)