At long last, have you no sense of shrillness?

[womzilla]

James Wolcott, author of Attack Poodles:

Now at this point a certain type of liberal will quote Joseph Welch's famous question to Joe McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Liberals of a certain age love quoting that stirring heroic retort. When Anthony Lewis was a Times columnist, he used to quote it every other week it seemed, and I saw Richard Cohen pull a Joseph Welch a few columns ago.

But I won't. The question is no longer worth raising, even rhetorically. Because we know the answer.

They have no decency. Not a sliver, not a shred. Look at how Max Cleland has been treated, look at how George Soros has been smeared as some sort of Jewish intriguer who oozed his way out of Nazi Germany by Tony Blankley* and a drug kingpin by Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, look at--oh, we know what the examples are.

. . . .

Do you really think that Rush and Newt and Dick Cheney and the rest of them regret that they didn't serve in Vietnam, that they didn't do their part for a war they supported and whose cause they still think was just? . . .

They have no conscience, they have no decency, so let's stop fake-pretending that they do.

Nils Bohr, I believe, once said of quantum physics that if you think you comprehend it, you don't understand it. I believe that if you think it's possible to be a decent person and support the current Republican party, you don't understand what you're supporting.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

I believe that if you think it's possible to be a decent person and support the current Republican party, you don't understand what you're supporting.

if you could come to minnesota and explain that to my parents, i'd appreciate it.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I would think that the James Wolcott piece says it better than I would. I have garnered back-handed compliments for my writing from my political enemies in the past, but Wolcott nails the point with a high-powered gun here and it might not be possible to improve it.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Well done, although I'd rephrase the last sentence thusly: If you're a decent person, and you support the current Republican party, you don't understand what you're supporting. If the election were held today a majority of Americans would probably vote for Bush, and I'm unwilling to say they're not decent people. Some of them are bigots, some of them are millennial wackos, but most of them don't know who they're voting for, or what the consequences will be...

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I think the Republican response would be "the time for decency ended on 9/11", and then they'd sneer like Cheney sneered when (mis)quoting Kerry saying he wanted a "sensitive war".

Then they'd probably work in something about flip-flopping.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

They have no conscience, they have no decency, so let's stop fake-pretending that they do.

I have long since stopped fake-pretending that they do. I want them to stop fake-pretending that they do, hopeless though that may be.

Enlightening Senator McCarthy on Pixies

[(Anonymous)]

Niels Bohr spelled his name with an "e," the Sparrow began pedantically.

As you know, I e-mailed former Senator Dole taking him to task for saying that Senator Kerry's medals reflected an insufficiently bloody shirt. In it, I quoted Joseph Welch's "have you sense of decency" remark, and perhaps that -- rather than summing up Dole as "a mean-spirited Kansas Republican" -- is why I haven't had a response.

"I swear, Libby," he growled, "if I have to read those words one more time, I'll break Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment and start talking really ill of my fellow Republicans, starting with Woody, that no-good offspring of the SOB who lied about my record in '88..."

What helped get McCarthy in 1954 was the relatively new medium of television. Politicians today know how to use it too well to get caught, alas.

When the Governor of California mentioned that Richard Nixon made him a Republican in 1968 at the Convention, there were cheers. Can you see Tail-Gunner Joe enjoying a similar rehabilitation outside of lesser works of William F. Buckley and John Dos Passos?

Re: Enlightening Senator McCarthy on Pixies

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Ann Coulter is working on that very thing.

Woody Allen Said in "Radio Days"

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

"I never forget that New Year's Eve when Aunt Bea awakened me to watch 1944 come in. I've never forgotten any of those people or any of the voices we would hear on the radio. Though the truth is, with the passing of each New Year's Eve, those voices do seem to grow dimmer and dimmer."

I think the problem lies in the passage of time.
For those of us close enough to remember the events of the "McCarthy Era" and the Viet Nam "Police Action" the past grows dimmer and dimmer.
The great majority of Americans have no interest in history.
Frankly, they don't even scream that "It Can't happen here!" because most of them don't even understand the concept.

Re: Woody Allen Said in "Radio Days"

[trinker.livejournal.com]

-sigh-

I am younger than the McCarthy era by more than a bit, and too young to remember Vietnam.

But I have always, always known that it could happen here, and that it would happen because decent people would not believe they were seeing the beginnings.

[wizwom.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, one cannot call the Democrats "decent", either.

However, there are scattered Decent people throughout both parties. Unfortunately, there is an attitude that "the ends justify the means" when it comes to national politics. They get entranced by the power or something.