Frederick Fisher is a name many won’t recognize, but the incident he sparked in 1954 is widely attributed for bringing down one of the biggest political bullies of the last century, Senator Joseph McCarthy. At the time a young attorney with the prestigious Boston firm Hale & Dorr, Mr. Fisher’s one indiscretion was to join the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a left-leaning alternative to the American Bar Association. Never mind that he was a young graduate student at the time and only briefly a member, that association was enough to brand him a “communist” in the eyes of McCarthy.
In the famed McCarthy-Army hearings that would prove to be his undoing, the Wisconsin Senator attempted to use Mr. Fisher’s former association to score political points. The council for the Army, Joseph Welch, was a senior partner at Hale & Dorr and had previously discharged Fisher from his team. He also entered into a gentleman’s agreement with Senator McCarthy that the matter would remain private. In return, Welch would not bring up a controversy involving the draft status of McCarthy’s chief counsel. Neither was relevant to the subject of the hearing.
The hearing was televised live. Welch pressured McCarthy’s chief council for McCarthy’s list of the supposed 130 “subversives” working for the Army. McCarthy countered that Welch should look at his own staff, naming Mr. Fisher, in violation of their agreement. Welch responded, angrily, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” McCarthy, doubled down, continuing his attack on Fisher, to which Welch then uttered those well-known words:
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?
When Welch refused to engage further on the matter and called for the next witness, the audience broke into applause. The viewing public widely concurred and with that, McCarthy’s career was essentially over.
When I hear the former President questioning the racial identity of his opponent, I ask myself, will no one stand up to him and ask, “Have you no decency, sir?” The suggestion that the Vice President has used her racial identity as a ploy to win over voters is not just offensive, it is racist.
When Mr. Trump posts on social media “Barak HUSSEIN Obama”, his middle name in all caps, it has no purpose other than to disparage President Obama as suspect because of his African heritage. Just as when he intentionally mispronounces the first name of the Vice President, it not only shows no decency, it shows total lack of respect for anyone who does not come from a white culture.
When the Trump campaign puts out a meme on X showing a picturesque neighborhood with an American flag over the heading “Your neighborhood under Trump” next to a crowded scene of black and brown faces over the heading “Your neighborhood under Kamala”, that is nothing but blatant racism. Have these people no sense of decency?
Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, is willing to name it for what it is. Said Steele of the refusal of Republican leaders to do the same, “It’s ‘I don’t want to take the heat that comes with calling out your racism, that comes with calling out your ugliness, so I will pretend that’s not what it is’.”
A better warning came from this appeal of a Republican Senator:
“The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed…. Yet to displace [the Democratic administration] with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this Nation. The Nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny—fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear. … Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory. … While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people.”
Those words were spoken on the floor of the Senate by Senator Margaret Chase Smith on June 1, 1950. She was joined by six other Republican Senators, including Oregon’s Wayne Morse (a Republican until 1952), who were responding to the campaign of vitriol from the Senator with no sense of decency, Joseph McCarthy.
It is said those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. So it seems. We can only hope decency will prevail, now as then.
Photo credit: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/trump-is-the-perpetrator-of-mccarthyism-not-its-victim.html. See this link for an excellent comparison of Trump and McCarthy written by Jonathan Chait for the New York magazine in 2017.
Well said and well researched. Thanks, Dan