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At long last, have you no sense of decency, sir. [1]
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Date: 2025-02-22
In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy made a name for himself claiming to be rooting out communist and undesirable elements such as homosexuals in the U.S. government, particularly in the U.S. State Department, He claimed he had a list of over 200 people in the State Department who were members of the Communist Party. In his witch-hunt, McCarthy was supported by Roy Cohn who would one day become the consigliere for Donald Trump. Ironically, Cohn was gay.
McCarthy was chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations which included a Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations. McCarthy used the subcommittee to hold hearings ostensively to identify and rid the government of communists embedded in the ranks of the U.S. State Department. Think of the McCarthy machine on Capitol Hill as the first DOGE, determined not to slash the bureaucracy by alleging government employees are freeloaders and/or redundant but to rid the bureaucracy of alleged enemies of the United States.
Fellow senators and people within the Eisenhower administration were paralyzed by the fear that if they objected to McCarthy’s smear campaign, they would be accused of being a communist sympathizer (or worse), the career kiss of death in the fetid times of the Red Scare. People in and outside of Washington were afraid of crossing McCarthy. No one dared object. No one dared to defend the reputations of men and women McCarthy ruthlessly and dishonestly sacrificed at the altar of his career. No one fought back. McCarthy and Cohn set about destroying reputations and slandering innocent people.
Then one day in 1954, during a subcommittee hearing, McCarthy attacked Fred Fisher, a young Boston lawyer who worked in the same office as Army Counsel Joseph Walsh. At one time, Fisher had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which Attorney General Herbert Brownell called “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party.” McCarthy’s attack on Fisher was similar to the attacks he had made on countless others, spewing accusations as truth without evidence.
Welch rebuked McCarthy for his attack on Fisher, saying "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness."[
When McCarthy continued his attacks on Fisher, Welch had had enough.
“Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild ... 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?”
We are at a moment in American history where Welch’s words have garnered renewed relevance beyond their historical significance. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have launched attacks against government employees, members of the LGBT community and everyone who speaks in opposition to their agenda.
We need a Joseph Welch, someone who will stand up and confront the president and his co-president with the same words Welch used.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir. At long last, have you no sense of decency.”
Those words broke the spell McCarthy and Cohn had over the Senate subcommittee. McCarthy would not be feared again. We need to break the spell that binds us to the fear and paranoia created by Trump and Musk in order to ram their un-American agenda down the throats of Americans.
Is there anyone who will step up and ask, have then no sense of decency.
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