Senator Joseph McCarthy
The thing that strikes me about McCarthy is how in the long-run, his own arrogance brought him down.
It's one thing to pontificate among like-minded individuals, where all you get is encouragement for your beliefs - but it's a different thing when done before a whole nation.
As a nation, we squabble, and have always done so even since before our Declaration. It’s this freedom that thwarts those like McCarthy from gaining too much power.
My sense is that despite and because of the fear he generated in the U.S., he was like a rotting Wisconsin apple, just waiting for the moment to be dislodged and to fall to the Earth.
That moment came when Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted McCarthy at what’s now known as the Army-McCarthy hearings: “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
That had been on the minds of many Americans, but hearing them spoken out loud at the televised hearing was essentially the death knell for McCarthyism.
My only caution is to not be lured into the “Us vs. Them” state of mind, for no political party is immune from totalitarian attitudes.
Facebook remark to David E. Booth, Jr. / 2017-11-21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
It's one thing to pontificate among like-minded individuals, where all you get is encouragement for your beliefs - but it's a different thing when done before a whole nation.
As a nation, we squabble, and have always done so even since before our Declaration. It’s this freedom that thwarts those like McCarthy from gaining too much power.
My sense is that despite and because of the fear he generated in the U.S., he was like a rotting Wisconsin apple, just waiting for the moment to be dislodged and to fall to the Earth.
That moment came when Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted McCarthy at what’s now known as the Army-McCarthy hearings: “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
That had been on the minds of many Americans, but hearing them spoken out loud at the televised hearing was essentially the death knell for McCarthyism.
My only caution is to not be lured into the “Us vs. Them” state of mind, for no political party is immune from totalitarian attitudes.
Facebook remark to David E. Booth, Jr. / 2017-11-21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy