During the televised Army-McCarthy Senate hearings in 1954, the nation sat riveted as anti-McCarthy attorney Joseph Welch admitted a lawyer in his firm had once been a member of a communist-front organization. Nevertheless, he excoriated McCarthy for exposing the ‘young lad’s’ indiscretion of many years before: “We know about it, Senator…. [but] have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Americans agreed with Welch that it was not proper to unfairly smear an opponent. When the Army-McCarthy hearings were over, so was McCarthy. That was then.
Today’s Democratic Party, once the target of Republican investigations under the McCarthy, now seems to have forgotten both him and his tactics. They’ve recently not only embraced the worst of McCarthyism, they’ve surpassed him. After Trump Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was denied service at a Washington restaurant, Rep. Maxine Waters encouraged all Democrats to get in the face of any Republican supporter of Trump. “If you see anyone from that {Trump} cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents.”
Likewise, Dem. Senator Cory Booker gave an address where he encouraged his audience to be more aggressive, to “go to the Hill today…[and] please, get up in the face of some Congress people.” Kamala Harris—who bailed out looters and arsonists during last summer’s riots—said the Black Lives Matter rioters “would not and should not” stop rioting. She was speaking of riots that had already took too many innocent lives, injured hundreds of police officers, caused $2 trillion in damages to a score of cities, used lasers and pre-arranged piles of bricks to permanently blind and injure federal officers, and saw activists attempt to burn down a federal courthouse with personnel still inside. Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) said on nationwide television “to take on Trump, you have to punch him in the face.” Joaquin Castro (D-TX) was only one of several liberals who have doxed private citizens who were key fundraisers for President Trump for the purpose of making their lives miserable.
Nor was the January 6th Capitol riot the first time officers were injured or killed defending federal property. Violent demonstrations in Washington this past summer saw BLM activists injure 60 Secret Service Agents who were protecting the White House. Protestors destroyed automobiles and businesses, threw bricks, bottles, rocks, fireworks and bodily fluids at the officers, and send 11 agents to local hospitals. While protecting the Oakland Federal Courthouse, one federal agent was murdered and another wounded while BLM protests took place only blocks away. Among the numerous examples of Trump supporters being assaulted by leftists, the worst attack took place against Republican Congressmen in 2017 while practicing for their annual charity baseball game. Over 100 shots were exchanged for ten minutes, killing the gunman and wounding four others, including House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise.
In September 2018, over 200 arrests were made during the confirmation hearing on Justice Kavanaugh. Leftist demonstrators attacked and pounded on the doors to the Supreme Court chamber and continually disrupted the Senate hearings themselves. In March 2020 Supreme Court Justice Roberts had to admonish Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his incendiary speech to pro-abortion activists and his personal warning to Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch “…you will pay the price, you will not know what hit you.” In August 2019, shots were fired into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in San Antonio, nearly hitting two officers and marking the fourth attack upon the agency that month. In Tacoma, an ICE Office was firebombed and the armed, leftist Antifa terrorist killed.
Nor are violent demonstrations the only way Democrats attack conservatives. Just as liberals once accused McCarthy of smearing opponents, House Speaker Pelosi has compared federal agents protecting a federal courthouse in Portland as Nazi “storm troopers.” Majority Whip James Clyburn agreed, saying the Trump administration “seem[s] to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities on local communities.” Just days after Republicans stripped Steve King of his committee assignments and condemned his rhetoric, Democrats promoted Ilhan Omar to the important Foreign Relations Committee—despite repeated anti-Semitic comments. Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib rallied her supporters against President Trump by saying on open microphone “we’re gonna impeach the mother____.”
Moreover, like the blacklists of the McCarthy era, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats are now calling for compiling lists of “Trump sycophants” so they can be “held accountable” when they try to return to private life. Going beyond the tactics of McCarthy, Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown have called for the expulsion of their colleagues Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz for simply objecting to the certification of some electoral votes—something Democratic Senators themselves have done three times since 2001. As McCarthy was accused of the ‘big lie’—that communists had infiltrated high positions in our government—Joe Biden has similarly likened the claims of Hawley, Cruz, Trump and others that Trump won re-election to the “big lie” tactics of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. He implied that their “lies” led to the Capitol Riot of January 6 giving even more voice to calls to expel any Republican legislator who dared vote against contested electoral votes.
Far from ‘healing’ the nation following a bitter presidential campaign where questions still abound about its integrity, today’s Democratic Party continues to heap incendiary comments upon all opposition. These roughshod tactics, popular with their base and the mainstream media, will do little to dispel the anxiety of 75 million Americans who feel they are victims of the New McCarthyism. Such tactics didn’t work in the 1950s. Whether they will in 2021 remains to be seen.
Fort Myers
The writer has been a social studies educator, founder of Rho Kappa—the National Social Studies Honor Society--and a former elementary school principal. He may be reached at JSBovee@aol.com.
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