A REVIVAL OF OLD-FASHIONED AMERICANISM
A Revival of Old-Fashioned Americanism IT HAS BECOME increasingly clear in recent years that the branch of our government most removed from the people has become the staunchest champion of the...
...What strikes us, in the context of "fighting communism," is the simple fact that not even the Cominform could have conceived of an action more designed to help the Communists and hurt America...
...The objective of perpetuating a doubtful system of secret informers likely to bear upon the innocent as well as upon the guilty . . . cannot justify an abandonment here of the ancient standards of due process...
...It came in the fourth month of the fourth year of the Eisenhower Administration—or just in time to serve as a campaign tract for Mr...
...More striking, though, was the fact that there was nothing new in it...
...Month after month the federal judiciary restores fragments of freedom chipped away by the other two coordinate branches of government...
...The courts' ringing affirmation of the Bill of Rights is all the more striking when contrasted with the ragged records of the executive and legislative branches...
...The privilege . . . would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury...
...Eisenhower's bid for reelection...
...the record has been made...
...In the field of civil liberties, much of the repression of recent years finds its origin in a genuine fear of communism, whipped to fever pitch by political quacks...
...This opinion struck a mortal blow at the government's practice of using secret informers or "faceless tale-bearers" who make charges, often unsupported, and are never called upon to prove their accusations or face the accused...
...Many anti-Communist European and Asian commentators expressed precisely the same sentiment voiced.by Patrick Murphy Malin, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, when he said: "The issues raised by Communist tyranny are real and pervasive, but this method of political attack smacks more of Communist totalitarianism than American democracy...
...It was the executive branch of our government, operating through the Bureau of Internal Revenue, that swooped down on the Communist Party and its official organ, the Daily Worker and padlocked their offices because of non-payment of income taxes...
...Slochower was summarily fired in 1952 simply because he claimed the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by a Senate Judiciary subcommittee whether he had been a member of the Communist Party in 1940 and 1941...
...It matters not whether the plea results from mistake, inadvertence or legal advice conscientiously given, whether wisely or unwisely...
...When the executive and legislative branches accept and act on the reaffirmation of first principles as they emerge in court decisions on civil liberties and civil rights, we shall make ourselves a stronger and healthier nation, and in that process of rebuilding equip ourselves far more effectively than we are now for the showdown of our century—the struggle of competitive coexistence with communism...
...Recently, Attorney General Herbert Brownell submitted, with great fanfare, a six-point civil rights program...
...Similarly, Representative Ezekiel C. Gathings, Arkansas Democrat, introduced the raw files of 70 individuals connected with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People into the Congressional Record...
...Court of Appeals in San Francisco...
...The Court did not affirm the right of Communists to hold teaching posts, or any other job...
...The materials used against him came from the raw, unevaluated files of the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...Recently, Hulan E. Jack, president of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City, spoke up against racial segregation at Loyola University of the South in New Orleans...
...More significant than this case, in our judgment, is the extent to which the executive department of government has only lately retreated in the face of an eight-months old decision by the U.S...
...Here it is Congress, paralyzed by the Southern Democrats, that bars the way to progress...
...The Court of Appeals ruled that program unconstitutional because the accused seamen were not told the source of the charges against them...
...Ill It is in standing against tactics of this character, so abhorrent to the American spirit of freedom and fair play, that the federal judiciary is playing a wholesome and decisive role...
...For it left as the last word on the subject these ringing, old-fashioned American principles of justice and decency: "It may be assumed that our decision will remove from the investigative agencies to some degree a certain kind of information and that, in the future, some persons will be deterred from carrying some of these tales to the investigating authorities...
...Jack is a Negro, a Catholic, and a leader of considerable stature, but he was promptly labeled a subversive and a Communist sympathizer...
...In the area of civil rights, for example, the Supreme Court has wiped out the legal sanction for segregation in the schools, but neither the President nor Congress has displayed a faintly comparable courage in measuring up to their responsibilities in the same or related fields...
...We don't here argue the obvious fact that the government's action represented a clear-cut attack on freedom of the press...
...The time has not come when we have to abandon a system of liberty for one modeled on that of the Communists...
...One of the vaunted reforms of Congressional investigative procedures is supposed to prohibit the public release of the raw material from the unevaluated files of persons whose loyalty has been under inquiry...
...it did insist on the right of every person, whatever his beliefs, to have a notice, hearing, and opportunity to explain under "due process of law...
...Each report carried the pious notation that it should not be "construed as representing the results of the investigation or findings of this Committee...
...They were released, in violation of the reform rule, at the demand of Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi...
...II Overnight the Worker had something much more to its liking—"fascist" suppression of the press...
...This action by the executive branch was matched by equally indefensible conduct on the part of the legislative wing during this past month...
...It is unbelievable that the result will prevent able officials from procuring proof . . . but surely it is better that these agencies suffer from handicap than that the citizens of a freedom-loving country shall be denied that which has always been considered their birthright...
...The case involved the Coast Guard's security program...
...In a five to four decision, the Court voided the New York City requirement which provides for the automatic dismissal of any municipal officer or employe who invokes the privilege of the Fifth Amendment...
...And much more significant, in the struggle for world opinion, was the frontpage prominence given the picture of powerful Uncle Sam, symbol of 160,-000,000 Americans, fearfully cracking down on the Daily Worker, with its pitiful circulation of 8,000...
...Harry Slochower, a teacher of German and literature at New York City's Brooklyn College for 27 years...
...every provision in the Brownell program has been introduced in Congress, and is now pending there, with no prospect at all of passage...
...And he concluded his presentation of the material with this dishonest statement: "The facts speak for themselves...
...No consideration is given to such factors as the subject matter of the questions, the remoteness of the period to which they are directed, or justification for exercise of the privilege...
...Consider, for instance, the Supreme Court's recent decision in the case of Dr...
...The Daily Worker was sweating profusely at that very moment trying to rationalize the newest Moscow flip-flop on Stalin...
...It is no idle hope, it seems to us, to reckon that if the present trend in the courts continues, we may yet regain much of the ground we lost in this dizzy decade of believing we could whip communism by emulating some of its most repugnant characteristics...
...But consider how self-defeating such a runaway fear can become...
...The heavy hand of the statute falls alike on all who exercise their constitutional privilege, the full enjoyment of which every person is entitled to receive...
...It is a matter of public record that the somewhat comparable security risk program directed at government employes has been used to victimize perfectly innocent men...
...Forty full pages of small type were required to present the unevaluated gossip and charges...
...There can be no successful contradiction of these affiliations by these individual members of the Association...
...These files often contain malicious gossip, half-truths, and downright falsehoods...
...The majority opinion struck a decisive blow for freedom under constitutional guarantees when it said: "We must condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person's constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment...
...Clearly this represented a major strategic retreat for the executive department...
...The Department of Justice decided only last month not to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court...
...IV Here, in the branch of government farthest removed from the people, is something remarkably akin to the people's philosophy...
...But, in introducing the raw files, Ezekiel Gathings said: "Here is the record...
...Furthermore, in considering the public interest in the preservation of a system under which unidentified informers are encouraged to make unchallengeable statements about their neighbors, it is not amiss to bear in mind whether or not we must look forward to a day when substantially everyone will have to contemplate the possibility that his neighbors are being encouraged to make reports to the FBI about what he says, what he reads, and what meetings he attends...
...nor do we have space to detail the shabby procedures invoked...
...Indeed it may well be that in the long run nothing but beneficial results will come from the lessening of such tale-bearing...
...A Revival of Old-Fashioned Americanism IT HAS BECOME increasingly clear in recent years that the branch of our government most removed from the people has become the staunchest champion of the people's liberties...
...In practical effect, the questions asked are taken as confessed and made the basis of discharge...
Vol. 20 • May 1956 • No. 5
