Is McCarthy Subversive?
DECTER, JAMES RORTY AND MOSHE
Senator's activities undermine fundamental bases of American system Is McCarthy Subversive? By James Rorty and Moshe Decter Through a continuous process of clarification and refinement, our...
...But the continuous, brazen, calculated and unprincipled use of falsehood to destroy all opponents and to advance one's own power becomes a serious threat to the functioning of our political processes...
...It is the technique of the kangaroo court...
...The charges of treason were so outrageous that President Eisenhower made no bones about dissociating himself from them...
...But its worst feature is the brazen, mock-heroic manner in which Senator McCarthy conducts and exploits the operation of this "underground...
...Without these restraints, a democratic society is condemned to self-destruction...
...But the Army-McCarthy hearings, in which the Senator himself was a party to the dispute, reflected the extent to which the entire Army establishment, from the Secretary on down, was diverted from its urgent duties and forced to defend itself against his assaults...
...Above all, in its loose use of the charge of treason it is a call to civil disunion and thus a threat to the peace of democratic society...
...It was repudiated the next day...
...Charles Mayo, chief of the Mayo Clinic and an Eisenhower-appointed member of the United States Delegation to the United Nations...
...The hazards of Government service have become formidable, both for those who are in it and for those who might consider it...
...Falsehood even has a certain honored—or at least accepted—position in some of our social and political relations (the white lie, for instance...
...When unreason and lawlessness become extreme, the conservation of society is in danger...
...You subject yourself to such indignities and insults and untruths...
...Is he, in short, a perhaps over-enthusiastic conservative or is he radical subversive...
...The threat that Senator McCarthy poses to our constitutional norms and guarantees is even more insidious than his disruption of Government stability...
...Connors complied the same day...
...An answer has been supplied by Dr...
...In this sense, Senator McCarthy is a radical rather than a conservative, for he poses a threat to the conservative legal and moral values of our society—this despite the support he has received from many who are conservative in their political and economic viewpoints...
...We have seen the effects of the damage he has inflicted, in terms of morale, security procedures, manpower recruitment, and the day-to-day operation of the State Department, the Foreign Service, the Army and the information program...
...The unfounded charge of treason is a call to civil disunion calculated to destroy the opposition...
...For instance, thirty-two men turned down the office of Assistant Secretary of Stale before the thirty-third candidate could be persuaded to accept the important post on February 1, 1950 (eight days before McCarthy's Wheeling speech...
...As Walter Lippmann has cogently remarked, treason is a mortal crime—and a false accusation of treason must surely be a mortal sin against the accused individual and against society...
...One can only speculate on the sensational charges of sabotage and subversion with which McCarthy would have accompanied that investigation, had he been the chairman...
...In committee, on the Senate floor, on the public platform, Senator McCarthy's recourse to unfounded and unsubstantiated accusations and insinuations outrages the basic principles of a conservative system of law and politics...
...The false charge of treason has been introduced by Senator McCarthy at a time of national frustration, of bitterness over the casualties of war...
...it undermines the law and tends to lawlessness...
...Throughout the Government, loyal, competent civil servants—Army officers, propaganda experts, technicians, public-administration officials —are trying to get out as soon as they can, and fewer people than ever are trying to get in...
...Government agencies are finding it difficult to recruit distinguished men of affairs for service in the public interest...
...The crux of McCarthy's challenge to conservatism is his use of the lie...
...It is an even greater outrage because this practice rarely allows the victimized citizen any redress in a court of law or in the public press...
...Such behavior is a direct challenge to the power of the law to protect the rights of citizens...
...The stability of the Foreign Service is gravely affected when there is a drop of 50 per cent in applications for the Service—as was the case in 1953...
...For it is in precisely this area that he descends into flagrant lawlessness...
...When confronted with the revelation that a confidential summary of a top-secret FBI document had been found in his possession, he not only admitted the fact but boasted of it—and he warned that no power on earth could force him to divulge the source of his information...
...With select committee of the United States Senate investigating the behavior of Joseph McCarthy, the key question Americans must answer is this: Is McCarthy trying to preserve established American traditions and institutions, or is he trying to undermine and corrupt the fundamental buses of our system...
...All of these are contrary to the spirit of a Constitution and a society predicated on fair play and due process of law...
...His investigations are characterized by badgering of witnesses, arbitrary and distorted summaries of testimony, loaded questions, unfair innuendoes, and the admission of derogatory testimony and evidence without opportunity for rebuttal...
...But the problem of the stability of Government institutions is not exhausted by the hazards encountered by leading appointive officials like Stevens, Hensel and Mayo...
...But there are other equally telling examples: • During the early stages of his investigation of the International Information Administration, McCarthy called Under-Secretary of State Walter Bedell Smith on the carpet for issuing an administrative memorandum that confirmed certain discretionary rights to employes in dealing with Congressional committees...
...This lawlessness takes two forms: (a) encroachment upon the Executive Branch and usurpation of judicial powers, and (b) abandonment or rejection of the usages of constitutional liberty...
...Contrast any public hearing conducted by Senator McCarthy with the hearing conducted by Senator Richard Russell into the dismissal of General MacArthur...
...But the fact that the Secretary should even have taken into consideration the Senator's reaction is itself indicative of the extent to which McCarthy's power had reached into the Executive Branch...
...The last time the citizens of this country waved the "bloody flag" was during the Reconstruction period—and the nation has not yet recovered from the effects...
...The research for their documented study, McCarthy and the Communists, was sponsored by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom...
...His famous 1954 series of Lincoln Day speeches on "Twenty Years of Treason" were the culmination of a long line of such accusations and insinuations leveled by McCarthy against Democratic administrations and leaders...
...The Senator's investigation of Fort Monmouth is perhaps the most concentrated and striking illustration of his use of deceit, innuendo and falsehood...
...The uses of falsehood in an advanced civilization are many and varied...
...But it is Senator McCarthy's unsubstantiated charges of treason that provide the most startling illustration of his use of falsehood in the assault on the two-party system...
...In this chapter from their forthcoming book, McCarthy and the Communists, James Roily and Moshe Decter attempt to answer this question...
...The stability of the whole Civil Service is jeopardized precisely because of the uncertainty and insecurity engendered by the Senator's irresponsible assaults...
...A government that cannot hold and attract able officials is a government whose effective operation and stability are endangered...
...Few greater threats to the structure of constitutional government can be imagined than this wanton disregard of the separation of powers...
...But the Senator need never deprive himself of his immunity and come forward to face a libel suit in a court of law...
...The very existence of such a network is in itself, as President Eisenhower remarked at the time, a grave threat to the processes of orderly government and democratic concepts of loyalty...
...Assistant Secretary of Defense Hensel, for example, has in an affidavit strongly repudiated Senator McCarthy's attacks on his integrity...
...Unprincipled, unscrupulous political ambition perverts the purposes of a conservative political system because it undermines the restraints imposed by that system...
...Senator McCarthy's appeal to unreason and lawlessness constitutes a threat to the stability of governmental institutions, to the prerogatives of Government, and to the rights of the citizen as guaranteed by the Constitution...
...The lie, as used by McCarthy, subverts reason and consequently upholds unreason...
...If heeded, its ultimate effect would be the destruction of the legal and moral values whose existence and operation depend entirely on public consensus...
...Scientists seek to leave Army employment because of McCarthy's harassment of their colleagues at Fort Monmouth...
...In other words, Senator McCarthy made a normally difficult situation considerably more difficult...
...he has written frequently for such magazines as Commentary, Commonweal and America...
...A survey of McCarthy's activities in the brief period of his committee chairmanship leaves one with a feeling of wonder and amazement at the extent of the successful assaults on the stability of Government institutions...
...It is most graphically illustrated by the situation of the nameless men for whom public service is not a short-term affair but a career...
...Moshe Decter, a political sociologist who is now an encyclopedia editor, was for several years the chief political editor of the English services of the Voice of America...
...In reaction to the Army-McCarthy imbroglio, he said: "It's getting to be a most difficult thing in this country to accept appointment to Government service...
...McCarthy's "deal" with the Greek shipowners stands out as a blatant example of encroachment on Executive Branch prerogatives in the field of foreign affairs...
...The Senator was much displeased and took the memorandum as a direct affront...
...Stable, respected men may think twice and three times —and even then turn down an invitation to serve the Government.* * Even before the McCarthy era, the Government was embarrassed by recruiting difficulties...
...By James Rorty and Moshe Decter Through a continuous process of clarification and refinement, our society has molded a network of institutions—constitutional, legal, political—which embody the restraints of reason and law...
...During the present period of protracted world crisis, with American leadership indispensable to the security and survival of the free world, this nation can surely ill afford another such ordeal...
...It first came to light in the Voice of America hearings and was dramatically confirmed during the special Senate investigation of the Army-McCarthy clash...
...We may never know whether it was the Senator's expressed displeasure that ultimately dissuaded the Secretary from making the move...
...Another amazing example of McCarthy's encroachment on the Executive Branch was this: By November 1953, McCarthy had strengthened his position vis-a-vis the Administration to such an extent that the Secretary of the Army, by his own admission, sought to gauge the Senator's reaction to his contemplated demotion of a general...
...The use of the calculated falsehood in this respect represents the ultimate appeal to unreason...
...It is not unknown in the halls of Congress or, for that matter, in the legislative assemblies of the other democracies...
...The Senator has here used his characteristic technique: to add to the kernel of truth—namely, the grave mistakes and errors of judgment for which Presidents Roosevelt and Truman were responsible—a host of exaggerations, distortions and outright lies...
...Cases are not so much investigated as tried—in a loose, informal way...
...Rorty, New Leader contributor for two decades, is the author of His Master's Voice, Tomorrow's Food and other books...
...The appointment of Scott McLeod, an avowed "McCarthy man," as the State Department's Personnel and Security Officer was taken on all sides as a concession by the Administration to McCarthys views and standards on security matters...
...No other charge is so likely to stir up public passions, and its ultimate effect is to create a wall of suspicion and hatred between one half of the nation and the other...
...The book will be published in both hard- and soft-cover editions by the Beacon Press on August 30...
...What this signified with regard to the practice of all the lesser McLeods throughout the Government became clear in the Army's hasty, ill-considered response to McCarthy's pressures at Fort Monmouth...
...The most insidious illustration of encroachment on the Executive Branch is the extensive penetration of Government agencies by McCarthy's "loyal American underground...
...Senator McCarthy has transformed his investigating subcommittee into an arbitrary, ad hoc court of law...
...It is an equally grave threat to the morale of loyal civil servants...
...In an earlier time of anger, bitterness and passion, a wiser leader had the courage, the magnanimity and the vision to call upon the nation to bind up its wounds—"to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves...
...What can be the effect on such men of Senator McCarthy's hounding of Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens, a leading industrialist, and Assistant Defense Secretary H. Struve Hensel, a prominent attorney and businessman...
...Along similar lines was the Senator's bullying of Bradley Connors, the policy chief of the International Information Administration, culminating in a virtual order to Connors to issue a directive on the handling of Communist and controversial material in overseas libraries...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 33
