I agree, he could do more to establish the topic.
But he's right about the Imaginative Conservative. Many good essays there.
As to "Whittaker Chambers’ 'Witness': A Story for the Ages," it's an interesting piece I've been reading. It pits Menchkin against Chambers and follows as Chambers changes over time.
Who knows for sure, but the full-time Baltimorean (Mencken) might well have had a part-time Baltimorean (Chambers) in mind when he wrote the following: “I dislike and distrust all communists and Calvinists and other such enemies of reason. But I dislike and distrust ex-communists and ex-Calvinists very much more.”
Chambers was initially a communist.
But should Menckens have rejected Chambers?
On the other hand, Chambers was surely right about the H. L. Menckens of the early twentieth century. Chambers regarded the twentieth century as “unique in the history of man for two reasons.” As Chambers saw it, his century—and Mencken’s—was the “first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind (had) not merely ceased to believe in God, but (had) deliberately rejected God.”
The second reason clinched matters for Chambers. His century—and Mencken’s—was also the century “in which this religious rejection had taken a specifically political form.” As a result, “the conflict between the two great camps of men—those who reject and those who worship God”—had become “irrepressible.”
Chambers changed in time.
What’s more than doubly important here is that Chambers saw himself as a witness is a double sense. He would not just be a witness against communism, but he would also be a witness of and for his newly found faith in God. The communist courier had become a faithful Quaker.
...At the time of his departure from the CP, Chambers defined it to be a “contest” between “capitalism and communism,” each of which was essentially a materialistic philosophy. But there was this crucial difference: Capitalism was a philosophy that had abandoned religion, while communism was a philosophy that had become a religion. From Chambers’ impending post-communist vantage point, such a contest was really no contest.