In
1954 Senator Joseph McCarthy and his hatchet man Roy Cohn were on TV.
It was the 30th day
of the Army-McCarthy hearings where the despicable McCarthy
was shouting to the hills that he was out to “rid our country
of Communism”.
Joseph
Welch, Chief Counsel for the Army challenged Roy Cohn to provide U.S.
Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. with McCarthy's list of the 130
subversives in defense plants and McCarthy counters the request
by accusing a young lawyer in Welch's own Boston law office as
belonging to the National Lawyers Guild which he claimed was “the
legal mouthpiece of the Communist Party.”
It
was a turning point in the proceedings and I still get chills as
I remember Mr. Welch holding his head in dismay and then quietly
voicing these words:
“Until
this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty
or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the
Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks
to be a brilliant career with us....Little did I dream you could be
so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true
he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to
be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I
fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it
were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do
so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have
to come from someone other than me.”
When
McCarthy tried to renew his attack, Welch interrupted him and uttered
these words,“Senator,
may we not drop this? ... Let us not assassinate this lad further,
Senator. You've done enough. Have
you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of
decency?”
It
was the beginning of the end for McCarthy but his untruths and hatred
had already ruined the lives of countless American citizens and it's
no surprise that his trusted legal advice came from the equally
corrupt Roy Cohn. (Yes, the same man who befriended and advised
Trump... the same one that Trump has been known to say, "Where
is my Roy Cohn when I need him?)
Is
there no one with the GUTS to be our Joseph Welch ?
I am not sure whether most of the party loves him or whether they are scared witless.
ReplyDeleteMost of those who ceased to support him, simply cut and ran.
ReplyDeleteVery few and I hope they create a replacement party for the Republican fiasco
ReplyDelete