By David K. Shipler
On June 9,
1954, in a highly charged Washington hearing room, the elderly attorney Joseph
Welch, a man partial to homespun clarity, put to Senator Joseph McCarthy the stiletto
question that has entered American lore. Responding to the Wisconsin
Republican’s smear of a young colleague of Welch’s, the lawyer demanded
McCarthy’s full attention and began with this:
“Until this
moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your
recklessness.” When McCarthy tried to persist, Welch cut him down: “Let us not
assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of
decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
In the old
black-and-white film, McCarthy has a mean squint, a twisted look something like
Donald Trump’s when attacked. Trump’s method is different, but he plays on the
same ground of fear and demonization. So Welch’s question is relevant today,
and it ought to be directed not only to Trump but also to the American people:
Have you no sense of decency?
Or, to make a gesture toward hope:
After many months of waiting, when will America’s slumbering decency awake?
For that is
what eventually happened to end McCarthy’s slimy innuendos that ruined so many
lives with false implications of communist affiliations, based on scanty rumors,
guilt by association, and fabricated evidence. Preceded by Edward R. Murrow’s
devastating televised assault on McCarthy three months earlier, Welch’s rhetorical
question hit home. Huge numbers of Americans, watching live on national
television, knew the answer. Decency stirred.
This
episode remains as my first political memory. I was 11 years old. Coming home
from school day after day, I saw my grandmother, a Southern-born, Eisenhower
Republican who detested communists, sitting bolt upright in a straight-back
chair in front of the TV, appalled by McCarthy’s vile slanders. She loved
Joseph Welch. His gentle decency struck a chord with the decency she carried
inside herself.
So it was
during the Civil Rights movement as well, as Americans saw in their living
rooms the contorted, hateful faces of Southern white girls screaming racist
epithets outside integrating schools, the burly white cops swinging truncheons
at non-resisting black protesters, the dogs and fire hoses unleashed against
peaceful citizens demonstrating for their basic rights. Segregationists played
their role in a pageant of brutal injustice vividly enough to stir the decency that
resides in most Americans.
Where is
decency now? Is it gone or just marginalized, merely dormant? For a long time, McCarthy
got away with his witch-hunt as a sly weasel in an era of exaggerated fears about
communist designs on America. Trump gets away with his bullying as a vicious Rottweiler
in a time of real and fake fears about insecurity in all its forms. Many of his
supporters are legitimately scared of their economic peril, unduly afraid of
terrorism, and eager to accept the scapegoats he offers, which include the
varieties of people who represent a diversifying America.
Even if Trump does not win the
Republican nomination, or even if he wins that but not the White House, his
supporters will remain a restive, fulminating force of anger. So he has offered
the country a lesson in its failure to remember that tolerance, logic, and the
acceptance of difference is not genetic but must be learned anew by each
generation.
The society has failed those who
accept him as he vilifies and ridicules vast groups of people, a whole
religion, all who try to govern, all who disagree. It has failed those who give
a Nazi salute outside his rally and shout, “Go to Auschwitz,” as one man did. It has failed those who shout, “Nigger,” and “Go back to Africa.” It has
failed those who cheer his invitation to beat up protesters, the empty promises
he cannot possibly fulfill, the coarse insults he levels at fellow candidates.
It has failed those whose schools have not taught them to check facts, research
reality, know history, follow public issues, and make decisions that are carefully
informed.
On his 1954
program, “See It Now,” Ed Murrow read from the script that he and Fred Friendly
had written about McCarthy. It is worth listening to today:
“We will not walk in fear, one of
another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep
in our history and our doctrine—and remember that we are not descended from
fearful men. … We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape
responsibility for the result.
“We cannot defend freedom abroad by
deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have
caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable
comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t
create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully.
Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in
ourselves.’”
Murrow concluded with his
traditional sign-off: “Good night and good luck.”
Good luck, indeed.
