Those with a weather eye out for the debate in the Democratic Party are noting a recent column by the editor of the New Republic. The editor, Peter Beinart, sketches the history of how the Americans for Democratic Action committed the party to fight the communists. He thinks the party should pick up this liberal, hard-line spirit, starting with the war against Islamic terror. By our lights it would do better to start with communism and finish what the ADA began, a crusade the Democrats forsook about the time the Navy discharged the man the New Republic just endorsed for president, Senator Kerry.

The Kerry mind-set can be glimpsed in Mr. Kerry’s testimony of April 22,1971, before the Senate. In the opening statement, he asserted that “there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy.”

Mr. Kerry, then just out of the Navy and a follower of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, said he wanted to relate to the committee “the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism.” This is the part of his testimony in which he claimed that “most people” in Vietnam “didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy.”

The callousness of the Kerry testimony is breath-taking. At one point, Senator Aiken asked whether Mr. Kerry believed the North Vietnamese would seriously undertake to impede America’s complete withdrawal from Vietnam. “No, I do not believe that the North Vietnamese would and it has been clearly indicated at the Paris peace talks they would not,” the future senator said, speaking of talks where he had been meeting with the communist enemy. This prompted Senator Aiken to ask: “Do you think they might help carry the bags for us?” His question was met with a gale of laughter from the audience.

So Mr. Kerry replied: “I would say they would be more prone to do that than the Army of the South Vietnamese,” which garnered not only laughter but, according to the transcript, applause. Pause for a moment to think of the horselaughs and applause greeting that remark. America was a treaty ally of the South Vietnamese army being mocked by Mr. Kerry and his audience, an alliance entered into American law by the very Senate before which Mr. Kerry was mocking it.

Mr. Kerry was speaking of a South Vietnam army that knew that once America took his advice, it would be left alone to face a Soviet- and Red Chinese-backed onslaught that would claim the lives of millions. Senator Case got Mr. Kerry to ridicule the efforts of President Nixon to tie the war in Indochina to world peace. Mr. Kerry spoke of America’s post-World War II “paranoia about the Russians …”He belittled what he called the “so-called Communist monolith.” Quoth he: “There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands.” And he got more horselaughs.

So much for the ADA. The truth is that, as admirable as Mr. Beinart’s sentiments are, even the wing of the party he represents has not been prepared to follow through on the ADA’s fight against the communists. What passes for hard-liners in the Democratic Party today is the very camp that faltered in President Kennedy’s vow to carry any burden in the cause of liberty. The Democrats just ran for president a candidate who epitomizes the retreat from the anti-communist crusade. It looks to us like the party would have an easier time getting the current war against Islamic terror right if it got itself right on the war against communism.