After watching
today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into Judge Samuel
Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, you can almost
hear the ghost of the infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy pursing communists
during the Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s.
McCarthy’s
anti-communist hunts destroyed careers, friendship and lives.
Those who had the courage to oppose him are celebrated even today.
“I
have here in my hand a list of the names of …,” the
demagogic McCarthy frequently declared, proclaiming that he had
uncovered commies in the Army, State Department and in the shadowy
niches and crannies of Washington.
For the majority
of Americans who weren’t around for those horrible times,
you can’t fully appreciate his loathsome behavior. Simply
reading “suspect” materials or having them in your
home was sufficient reason to be investigated. Any connection,
however slight, with the “wrong” people or groups
was enough to put you on someone’s blacklist.
I was around
for the Army-McCarthy hearings, which was the senator’s
vehicle for ruining lives under cover of the law. In honesty,
I cannot recall since then any performance that has come anywhere
close to this outrage—until witnessing the nauseating behavior
today of Sen. Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues on the
Senate Judiciary Committee. Not since the 1950s, have I witnessed
such a vile use of “guilt by association” for political
advantage.
In the words
of Joseph Welch, the Army’s counsel, after McCarthy had
destroyed his latest victim: “Let us not assassinate this
lad further, Senator.”
McCarthy
tried to interrupt, determined to continue on his destructive
path: “Let’s, let’s…”
Welch, in
words that entered political history cut him off: “You’ve
done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?”
No, Kennedy
and his crew don’t.
