An Unholy Mess
Caughey, John W.
'An Unholy Mess' Loyalty and Security: employment tests in the united states, by Ralph S. Brown, Jr. Yale University Press. 524 pp. $6. Reviewed by John W. Caughey The American Communist, Ralph...
...The Louis S. Weiss Fund and Yale University put up money for guides and burden-bearers—half a dozen research assistants in New Haven and several others in the provinces—Los Angeles and Madison, to be precise...
...Recital of what happened is secondary, and the emphasis goes instead to chapter-by-chapter comment and to a conclusion that passes judgment and recommends action...
...At page 340, for example, he examines the familiar argument that the Communist has surrendered his independence of judgment, is committed to the destruction of democratic institutions, is a criminal conspirator, and thereby is disqualified from the teaching profession...
...Reviewed by John W. Caughey The American Communist, Ralph S. Brown remarks in one passage of Loyalty and Security, "is a very wicked animal...
...These are far reaching...
...they would eradicate many of the abominations committed in the name of security...
...On this fundamental Brown seems to me to err disastrously...
...But since there is such widespread agreement that Communists lack the minimum loyalty to qualify for government employment, including teaching, he concedes that for the personnel in these categories it is proper "to have them state that they are not Communists...
...By itself that may sound innocent enough, yet that was precisely what gained fame as the $64 question, and even partial recall should remind that it was the key that unlocked the Pandora's box of suspicion, innuendo, and persecution under the banner of insuring loyalty...
...His judgments are clearcut and he does not hedge...
...At another level, however, Brown thinks and writes as a lawyer...
...Neatly and forcibly he demolishes this familiar argument...
...At one level he is investigator, reporter, analyzer, and logician...
...Notwithstanding all this help and Brown's own assiduous work, the subject proved larger than he could exhaust and more diffuse than could be reported in detail even in a book as stout as this one...
...As commentator Brown is forthright and blunt...
...All these are accorded the anonymity of the confessional—itself a commentary on our times...
...But his comments are at two levels, and these two sets of pronouncements are perceptibly different in tone...
...He quickly demonstrates that none of these assertions is proved or probable as a universal and that the conclusion drawn is not warranted...
...And though he sees through the unreason in the set of the law and the public mind, Brown accommodates many of his specific recommendations to the temper of our times...
...Most of his proposals are to take pressures off the 99.99 per cent of us who are not Communists...
...when one attacks him, he defends himself...
...There in a phrase is the burden of this fat and firmly packed book, which may be thought of as a report on a several-years safari into Darkest America...
...In addition to data on public record Brown got other information from officials and employers who have had a hand in the application of loyalty tests, from attorneys who functioned in the proceedings, and from employees and former employees upon whom the procedures operated...
...In our national ardor to shield ourselves from his concealed—and much overrated—influence, we have made an unholy mess...
...Public opinion likewise is no slave to mere reason...
...Concede the propriety of this question and only hairsplitting stands in the way of test oaths, probes into associations and beliefs, and other searches for clues that might identify the "Communist at heart...
...He works in description and narrative, often very deftly, but these passages are summary and allusive and take for granted that the reader will recall much more about the episodes and the surrounding circumstances...
...He knows that, although evidence and logic may lead to one conclusion, the law, based on "legislative findings," may say just the opposite...
...His book, however, is an irrefutable catalog of the excesses committed in the drive against employment of nonconformists, and it is a stockpile of extraordinarily cogent suggestions for remedial action...
...it may and often does run contrary to reason...
...Brown did not undertake to survey the entire continent but merely assigned himself the task of reviewing the loyalty tests applied as a condition of employment in our era of obsession with security...
Vol. 22 • September 1958 • No. 9
