Have You No Sense of Decency?

It was an iconic moment.  It was one of those pivots around which history turns.  Most contemporary Americans were not alive at the time, but those of us who were will never forget it.  This was the moment that the air went out of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s balloon.

McCarthy had been riding high.  The self-appointed scourge of domestic communists, for years he had been making wild accusations based on nothing but his hubris.  Even so, official Washington was terrified.  Whose reputation would he sully next?  

This sinister period in American history came to a head in 1954 during the Army-McCarthy hearings.  After the military was charged with lax security, it sought to defend itself and its people in these televised proceedings.  Never before had the public been treated to a spectacle that amounted to a gladiatorial contest.

The army’s chief spokesman was attorney Joseph Welch.  Low key and folksy in style, Welch was not a man to be intimidated.  And so when McCarthy hurled a communist accusation at one of Welch’s associates, there was an immediate rejoinder.

“Senator,” said Welch, “until this moment…I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Let us not assassinate this lad further…. You have done enough.  Have you no sense of decency?”

The nation gasped.  This one instant encapsulated the scurrilous nature of McCarthy’s tactics.  He had no decency.  He was prepared to destroy anyone’s reputation for the sake of self-aggrandizement.  Truth did not matter.  Nor did protecting the nation.  Only intimidation in service of his career did.

Hereafter, McCarthy was suspect.  Democrats hated him because he tied the communist bell around their liberal necks. Republicans hated him because they prided themselves on being upright.  He might have been one of theirs, but he besmirched their sense of honor.

Americans during the 1950’s believed in decency.  There were lines beyond which they would not go.  Not so any longer.  Partisan vitriol has canceled out whatever shreds of civility remain.  Nowadays we are setting new lows hourly.

Diane Feinstein has hitherto been regarded as a doyen of the senate. No one considered her a McCarthy clone. But then she and her fellow Democrats decided it was imperative to hinder Brett Kavanaugh’s march to the Supreme Court. How they managed this was irrelevant. A commitment to integrity would be no impediment.

And so Feinstein, after sitting on the information for months, charged Kavanaugh with a sexual indiscretion while he was a high school student.  His accuser was initially anonymous.  In the name of privacy, she would not come forward.  Eventually other accusers, who had names, but no corroboration of their despicable allegations, joined the chorus.

Once Americans had a right to be confronted by their accusers. Today, vague innuendo will do. Once it was assumed that evidence was necessary to convict.  Today, we are told that we must believe any sexual accusation made by a woman—no matter how grotesque or implausible.  Her gender alone certifies her credibility.

McCarthy waved the communist banner to silence the opposition.  These days, liberals wave the feminist banner to do the same.  What is the difference?  In both cases, we are dealing with opportunism.  In both cases, the issue is political advantage, not reality.

So again I ask, where is the decency?  Is it somehow acceptable to destroy the reputation of a candidate for the Supreme Court?  Does his higher profile justify any lie or distortion of facts that can be pulled out of a hat?

Decency, if it is to make a difference, must be a core value.  If we allow political rancor to destroy our moral compass, who are we?  I know that both parties believe in their own rectitude.  But I remind those on the left that McCarthy too justified attacks on the grounds that he was saving the nation.

Genuine decency requires personal integrity.  If we engage in slander, we need to admit it.  If we indulge in character assassination, we ought to desist.  What makes the current epidemic or recklessness so terrifying is that in infects the Democratic Party from top to bottom. 

Welch’s denunciation brought the entire nation up short.  It shook people into the recognition that something was not right.  Do we retain the same moral clarity?  I, and many others, have begun to wonder.  And it scares us.  

It should scare liberals too because what goes around comes around. When the rule of law is desecrated, we all lose our protections.  Any one of our lives could be ruined on a political whim.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University