A Nightmare Called McCarthyism - Assignment Example

 A Nightmare Called McCarthyism When Lord Tennyson wrote that “freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent”, he gave full rein to poetic fancy that bore no relation to human history. American history, for instance, shows that absolute freedom is a myth, in that freedom at any point of time is determined by the circumstances and the context in which it is exercised. Of course, the assault on constitutional and civil liberties (that Americans have always cherished) launched by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1940s and the early 1950s in the name of fighting Communists within the United States was the worst, but by no means either the first or the only, aberration that Americans have had to endure. Abridgement of civil liberties had had to be resorted to by the United States administration even during the Civil War in the 1860s, and even later. Many Americans had initially resented deprivation, or curtailment, of their freedoms by Abraham Lincoln, but they got reconciled to it considering the imperatives of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. But McCarthy went berserk in his self-assumed crusade against communists who, he believed till his death shortly after his disgrace, had sneaked into the United States government. Maybe he would have got away with it, or at least got off lightly, if he had not spread his net of suspicion wide enough to include writers, Hollywood celebrities, and even common people; and when McCarthy finally pointed an accusing finger at the United States Army, he met his Waterloo. But by then he had already done irreparable damage to America’s democratic institutions. Little wonder, therefore, that even today McCarthyism is synonymous with crucification of innocent American citizens on the cross of unsubstantiated charges. It is against this background that the book, “Give Me Liberty: An American History” by Eric Foner becomes essential reading. _________________ “McCarthyism is often referred to as the Second Red Scare, as the (first) Red Scare refers to a time in which Americans feared communist influence in the United States from 1917 to 1920.” (Encycle Media; 1990). “Throughout the 1940s and 1950s America was overwhelmed with concerns about the threat of communism growing in Eastern Europe and China. Capitalizing on these concerns, a young senator named Joseph McCarthy made a public accusation that more than 200 ‘card-carrying’ communists had infiltrated the United States Government.” (Miller; 1965) “Though eventually his accusations were proven to be untrue, and he was censured by the Senate for unbecoming conduct, his zealous campaigning ushered in one of the most repressive times in 20th century American politics.” (Miller; 1965) However, “investigation of Hollywood radicals by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 and 1951 was a continuation of pressures first exerted in the late 1930s and early 1940s by the Dies Committee and State Senator Jack Tenney’s California Joint Fact-finding Committee on Un-American Activities.” (Georgakas; 1992). “Between 1948 and 1956, or later, the government was engaged in political repression of the Communist Party, USA, its leadership, and others suspected of being communists. After the allegations that both assistant treasury secretary Harry Dexter White and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisor Alger Hiss were Soviet agents, loyalty tests were required for government and other employment, and lists of ‘subversive’ organizations were maintained.” (SourceWatch; 2008). While the witch-hunt launched by McCarthy against mostly innocent Americans has been both publicized and condemned internationally, its social costs have not received due attention. “Congressional investigations of the 1940s and the 1950s fueled the anti-communist hysteria which eventually led to investment of thousands of billions of dollars in a nuclear arsenal.” (Navasky; 1980). “McCarthy is the Kremlin’s greatest asset,” said President Truman. (“Americans Accused of being communists: 1940-65; http://www.accuse. Com/ htm). In fairness to McCarthy, however, it needs to be said that he labeled as communists everyone from President Roosevelt to Truman, New Deal Liberals, Democrats, the State Department and government officials, the army and some American generals, film stars, Nancy Reagan, university professors, atomic scientists, and many others. (“Americans Accused of being communists: 1940-65”; http://www.accuse.com/htm) “The term ‘McCarthyism’ refers to the actions of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, signifying the extreme anti-communist movement. It became synonymous with witch-hunt, the act of making serious but unsubstantiated charges against people in public life. He had been exploiting the nation’s fear of communism for what many believed to be for his own gain. Americans not only feared the Soviet Union, but they worried that communists were infiltrating the government to overthrow America. McCarthy was the man most responsible for reinforcing such fears.” (Encycle Media; 1990) “There were many innocent victims of McCarthyism, and hundreds were imprisoned; lots of victims were blacklisted, including several actors, and physicists. McCarthy’s witch- hunt began in 1950 when he announced he had a list of 205 known communists employed by the State Department. His charges led years of Senate and House investigations and were responsible for many people losing their jobs; the reputations of the victims of McCarthyism were destroyed and their families were torn apart.”(Encycle Media; 1990) Nemesis overtook McCarthy when he “leveled the same accusations against the American Army; the army was outraged, and the senator was censured.”(Encycle Media; 1990). Deplorable as McCarthy’s conduct and mission have been, does it mean the disgraced senator was the first in American history to have disregarded human rights? “We all declare for liberty, but using the same word we do not all mean the same thing,” said Abraham Lincoln. “Three dimensions of liberty and freedom have been critical in American history: the (contested) meanings of liberty and freedom; the social conditions that made liberty and freedom possible; and the boundaries of liberty and freedom that determined who was entitled to enjoy freedom and who was not.” (Foner; 614-632).”What made America free, and keeps it so, was not any single version of liberty and freedom but the interplay of many visions. Meanings of freedom have changed during the course of American history, and the limits of freedom expanded or contracted in response to social, political, cultural, and economic events.”(Foner; 614-632) How does that explain much that happened during the Civil War? “The attack on Fort Sumter crystallized in Northern minds the direct conflict between freedom and slavery that abolitionists had insisted upon for decades. The (civil) war merged the cause of the slaves and the cause of the country. Nor was Lincoln’s conduct of the war overly high-handed: an ‘intense new nationalism made criticism of the war effort, or of the policies of the Lincoln administration, seem to Republicans equivalent to treason.” (Foner; 524). During the war years, “arbitrary arrested numbered in the thousands. They included opposition newspaper editors, Democratic politicians, individuals who discouraged enlistment in the army, and ordinary civilians like the Chicago man briefly imprisoned for calling the President a ‘damned fool’.” (Foner; 527) Lincoln “twice suspended the write (of habeas corpus) throughout the Union for those accused of ‘disloyal activities’. He had Clement Vallandigham, a Democratic Ohio congressman, “known for his blistering anti-war speeches,” brought up on charges of treason before a military court, and, following his “conviction”, had him deported to the Confederacy. Yet, “Lincoln was not a despot. Most of those arrested were quickly released; the Democratic press continued to flourish, and contested elections were held throughout the war.” (Foner; 528) If Lincoln could be treated with kid gloves, why not his successors? “More than any other individual, Woodrow Wilson articulated the conviction that greater worldwide freedom would follow inevitably from increased American investment and trade abroad. Frequently during the 20th century, this conviction would serve as a mask for American power and self-interest. American involvement in World War I provided the first great test of Wilson’s belief that American power could make the world safe for democracy. Most Progressives embraced the country’s participation in the war, believing that the United States could help to spread Progressive values throughout the world. But rather than bringing Progressivism to other peoples, the war destroyed it at home. The government quickly came to view critics of American involvement not simply as citizens with a different set of opinions but as enemies of the very ideas of democracy and freedom. As a result, the war produced one of the most sweeping repressions of the right to dissent in all of American history.” (Foner; 721) “The war inaugurated the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known. Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1918 at the age of 63 for the ‘crime’ of speaking out publicly against the war. Even after the war’s end, Wilson rejected the advice of his attorney general that he commute Debs’s sentence. It was left to Wilson’s successor, (Republican) Warren G. Harding, to release Debs from prison in 1921.” (Foner; 739-741). “Those who believed that the United States must prepare for possible entry into the war included long-time advocates of a stronger military establishment, like Theodore Roosevelt, and businessmen with close economic ties with Britain, the country’s leading trading partner and the recipient of over 2 billion dollars in wartime loans from American banks. Wilson himself had strong, pro-British sympathies, and viewed Germany as ‘the natural foe of liberty’.” (Foner; 729). What about Pearl Harbor? “Pearl Harbor was a complete and devastating surprise, and though conspiracy theories abound suggesting that Franklin D. Roosevelt knew of the attack, and did nothing to prevent it so as to bring the United States into the war, no credible evidence supports this charge.” (Foner; 856) Footnotes: Americans Accused of being Communists: 1940-65; http://www.accuse.com/htm McCarthyism, 1950s: The Red Scare; Encycle Media; 1990 Miller, Arthur; “McCarthyism”; American Masters; http://www.PBS.Org. Htm Georgakas, Dan; “The Hollywood Blacklist”; from Buhle, Buhle, and Goergakas; ed; “Encyclopedia of American Left”; Urbana and Chicago University of Illinois Press; 1992; http://www.crocker.com/-blklist Foner, Eric; “Give Me Liberty: An American History”; (first edition-Seagull edition; W.W.Norton&Co; November 30, 2005 Read More