JOE WON

What McCarthy messed up (James Lileks, May 13, 2003, Jewish World Review)

Reading these transcripts, you wish you could jump in a time machine, head back half a century and give Joe McC the testimony of his miserable career:

"Oh, I'll name names, Senator. I'll name one. Yours. We all know now about the stick of butter you eat to calm your guts before these hearings. And it's not even Wisconsin butter. For shame, sir! For shame! And how do we know this? Because Roy Cohn bugged your liquor cabinet and passes everything on to The Party. Khrushchev knows everything. Even about the late-night calls where you speak in baby-talk to Hoover.

"Now listen up, you fool. There are Communists at work in the land. There are men who write movies who have a sophomoric comprehension of the world and who cling to Communist nonsense. And there are double agents. Sympathizers. Fellow travelers. Just because the Salem witch trials convicted innocent women doesn't mean there wasn't some crone burning hair and casting spells in the town down the road.

"But you have killed your cause -- and what's more, you have poisoned debate for decades to come. In the future, the very accusation of Communist sympathies will be dismissed out of hand because few will want to be associated with your loathsome precedent.

"And even after Communism itself has been defeated -- which it will be, but not by men such as yourself -- the term McCarthyism will be used to shut down debate. The accusation will be the absolution. On behalf of everyone who opposed the totalitarians, the collectivists, the mealy-minded fans of charismatic brutes yet to come -- thanks for nothing.

"And now I must return to the 21st century, where U.S. astronauts have just completed a mission with their Russian comrades. Oh, and that Aaron Copland fellow you were so worried about? We play his Fanfare for a Common Man when the aircraft carriers return to port.

"Here's your grave, Joe. Lie down. Start spinning."

You have killed your cause -- and what's more, you have poisoned debate for decades to come.

It's easy enough to attack Senator McCarthy; he was an ignorant opportunist and his unseriousness about the task at hand not only led to irresponsible charges but allowed other communists to slip through the net. However, there are a few things we should consider before we dismiss him entirely. The first is that McCarthyism worked--it created a political climate so charged with anti-Communist passion that it made even token support for the Soviet Union dangerous and association with the CPUSA suicidal. Sure it created unhealthy tensions in society and many of the charges were over the top, but just as Vietnam War protestors take no responsibility for shredding the social fabric in their cause, Senator McCarthy might justly claim that he had to crack a few eggs to make his omelet.

Secondly, once we grant that there were more dangerous communist spies who we didn't catch because of McCarthy's shenanigans, the question must be asked: where were Harry Truman and the serious members of Congress all this time? Truman, of course, simply refused to acknowledge that his government was riddled with communists, something he presumably found easier having turned a blind eye to the corruption of his friends in the Kansas City political machine for all those years. In Congress meanwhile, though Richard Nixon's exposed Alger Hiss in a textbook piece of investigation (earning the
undying enmity of the Left for being right), credible charges (of either active subversion or indifference to same) against a wide variety of other government officials, scientists, artists, and others were not pursued with the vigor that was required. Worst of all, the U.S. military, which had broken the Venona code and could have revealed the truth behind many of even the wildest seeming charges--including those against Harry Hopkins and Robert Oppenheimer--apparently concealed its discoveries from even President Truman rather than let the Russians know they'd been penetrated. (If Truman was in fact informed then he was an even worse president than previously stated.) In effect, because the "good" people left a vacuum, they allowed the "bad" people--McCarthy, Cohn, Bobby Kennedy--filled it.

Lastly, the press--including Mr. Lileks who usually knows better--seems to have seized on the Aaron Copland example to "demonstrate" that Senator McCarthy was out of control. But the composer was a communist; were those investigating communism supposed to ignore that? Imagine for a moment that the Dixie Chicks, rather than just saying stupid things, started doing benefit concerts for al Qaeda; what voices would we hear raised in protest when John Ashcroft called them in for an interview and would we pay them any attention? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 14, 2003 10:35 AM