A stirring defense of McCarthyism. Not sure Randall quite realizes everything he’s implicitly condoning, which easily covers the Hollywood Ten blacklist and openly political firings as well as having people remove your books from libraries and burn them.
I always wonder how these people would have reacted to, say, firing people for criticizing the military intervention in Iraq. Sigh, from “McCarthyism” to “consequences” in a few short years.
McCarthy, some people are surprised to learn, never actually jailed anyone for advocating or subscribing to any particular viewpoint and neither did the House UnAmerican Activities Commission (unlike FDR, whose engaged in mass arrests of war protesters, along with indefinite detentions for many people of Asian extraction). They mostly just pulled people suspected of Communist sympathies in front of their respective bodies, harangued them, and suggested they should be fired, particularly if they worked in sensitive government or media positions.
Of course, today all right-thinking people agree McCarthy was a thug for suppressing an ideology that murdered 100M people, while having a position on the definition of marriage is reasonable grounds for being fired.
Comments
6 responses to “Free Speech”
joe mcarthy destroyed lives and hurt this country the army-mccarthy hearings look it up! The house un-american activities committee was the most un-american thing this country ever produced. you going to defend donald sterling or adolph hitler next?
Hollywood Blacklist:
Some third-rate hacks had trouble finding work for a few years.
You know I can’t remember this much insanity sprouting from the blogs when the Dixie Chicks where given the boot after making comments about G. W. Bush at a concert. Then, everyone thought that it was their fans right to say “enough!” and boot them off the stage. Then, the whole idea that “free speech does not equal free from consequences” was all the rage.
In the 50s and 60s you could destroy someone just by whispering that they were gay. When Chely Wright came out as a lesbian a few years ago, the country-music industry and fan-base dropped her like a hot potato. (Not exactly an adjunct of the Progressive Lefty movement.)
If a CEO of a major corporation was outed as racist, the board of that corporation might remove that CEO – as damaging to the company.
What was horrible about McCarthy & Co. is that they WERE operating as part of the government. That and the American people at that time were a bunch of sheeple that would do anything their government said to do – like fire communists, put Asian-Americans into concentration camps, etc. Whether or not they still are sheeple is an open question.
How many movies did Charlton Heston make after he took over at the NRA? Not counting the 1 he made with Arnold S? Are there conservatives in Hollywood? Are they as vocal politically as their liberal counterparts?
What treatment did the Left offer Condoleezza Rice when she became the first African-American Secretary of State? It wasn’t pretty.
The Republican party has been pandering to the “We Hate Gays” crowd forever. At one time, in the not too distant past, putting a “no gay marriage” state amendment on the ballot was sure-fire way to get out the vote. Seems to have stopped working for them lately. (The amendment passed and Obama one the state in at least 1 instance.) That strategy isn’t directed at a hated individual, but at a hated class of people. (Sounds a bit like the Communist Scare of the 50s and McCarthy – don’t you think? I could offer other comparisons about targeting hated classes of people for political gain.)
All sides of the Political Debate seek to silence their critics. The Left and Right. Think about political ads that might say something like “Soft on Crime.” “Weak on Defense.” “Not a friend of Israel.” or that talk about Character, Decisiveness, etc. They also tend to try and paint their opponents in an unflattering light. Democracy is messy.
McCarthyism is a matter of people shouting from the rooftops they’re afraid to speak above a whisper.
I may still be being slow here, but I am not seeing how Randall is condoning what you say he is condoning.
” Thinks federal gov. cannot make a law against X ” != ” Condones X. ”
There is more to life than federal laws. There are state, local, laws. There are infinite means of community ordering at every level. Suppressive, violent, benign, peaceful, etc. methods.
The idea is to find alternative means to fixing your problems to calling in the fed. gov. to fix them, whenever possible. Which the founders seemed to hope would be most of the time.
Limiting the fed. gov. (e.g. via the Constitution) does not guarantee liberty. It only accomplishes liberty with respect to the fed. gov. There’s still plenty of fighting for freedom to be done after that.
It’s one thing to stop buying a product or listening to somebody yammering nonsense. It’s also one thing for a business to cut ties with a controversial figure.
It is a completely different thing to have an organized mass movement of thought control. Where every deviation from the orthodoxy will result in the end of your career and life’s work.
Free speech is about more than just the government. It’s a societal pressure as well. The society we live in no longer values free speech, only political correctness. It isn’t going to be long before enough people are comfortable with these mob tactics that they become institutionalized. In other countries, they already are, just ask Mark Steyn and others.