More relevant to our time, so long as we profoundly misunderstand “McCarthyism,” I believe we will be unable to protect our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Dear Victor Davis Hanson,
You suggest in your syndicated column, “Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time,” that we “ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) the same question once posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy by U.S. Army head-counsel Joseph N. Welch: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?'”
First, I would like to ask you a question: Are you aware of the context of Welch’s showboating remarks?
M. Stanton Evans did the spadework in “Blacklisted by History,” his groundbreaking — no, orbit-reversing — book about the late Sen. McCarthy, who died in 1957. The book devastates the fact-devoid conventional wisdom (including the “no decency” fable) on McCarthy and reconstructs an evidence-based record. A very different person emerges from Evans’ research: a political leader who — alas for the purveyors of “court history” — in no way resembles the execrable Harry Reid.
Yes, Welch theatrically denounced McCarthy at a June 1954 Senate hearing for outing Welch’s assistant Frederick Fisher as a former member of a Communist front, the National Lawyers Guild. But weeks earlier, on April 16, 1954, Welch himself outed Fisher — confirming that he’d relieved Fisher from duty over his previous front membership — in the pages of The New York Times!
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