Photo: Nick Wagner / Austin (Texas) American Statesman

A crumpled newspaper lay in the trash bin. A janitor, deeming its content insufficiently patriotic, alerted the FBI.

Thus ensued my grandfather’s ordeal. Alexander Levine, a decorated Army veteran after whom I’m named, endured a years-long series of federal investigations and Loyalty Board hearings. The damage to his family, his career and his dignity cut deep for the rest of his life.

But that was the 1950s. The culture has progressed since then, right? We’ve learned from McCarthyism. From Salem. From Dreyfus.

Or have we? Last week, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused current Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being an “asset” of a foreign power, specifically Russia. Such a claim requires breathtaking chutzpah. After all, the latter is a combat veteran of the Iraq War, which the former voted to authorize before changing her mind during a political campaign. In Clinton’s eyes, anyone who prefers dialogue to armed conflict with a regime seemingly inimical to her candidacy qualifies as a traitor.

What Clinton fails to understand, but actual presidents such as Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Nixon and Trump have successfully embraced, is that it is possible — and indeed advisable — to ally with Moscow where national interests overlap, such as in countering Nazi aggression or radical Islamic terror, while simultaneously opposing it where they diverge. These five presidents also believed that detente is preferable to nuclear brinkmanship.

Americans weary of war after 15 years endorsed this commonsense view in 2016. However, to Clinton and her acolytes in Congress and the media, shades of gray do not exist. To them, Vladimir Putin is tantamount to Adolf Hitler. To cooperate in the pursuit of any goal no matter how noble is to betray America itself. Yet ever since the voters rejected Clinton’s policies, her supporters have resorted to maligning President Trump — and, more recently, Congresswoman Gabbard — as an agent of the Kremlin. Even after the special counsel cleared the president of “collusion,” prominent Democrats such as House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff continue to smear him anyway.

It’s somehow inconceivable to these politicians and their echo chamber in the media that any rational voter in 2016 could have supported a foreign policy to wind down America’s endless wars and refrain from cooking up new ones. But millions of us did and plan to do so again.

My late grandfather, a confirmed man of the left, would unlikely have supported President Trump at the ballot box. But, having suffered mightily under McCarthyism the first time around, he would be appalled at its resurgence in the form of mainstream Democratic bare-knuckle tactics today.

During the 2016 presidential race, Alex Steinberg wrote on foreign policy for Donald Trump and his campaign surrogates. He currently writes for senior executives in the software industry.