At Long Last, Have You Left No Sense of Decency?

By Lawrence W. White MD


In June 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was investigating the US Army, claiming Communist infiltration of the Defense Department. Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney , was the lead counsel for the US Army. On the 30th day of the hearings, Senator McCarthy brought up the irrelevant fact that a junior associate at Welch's law firm had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, an organization labeled by J. Edgar Hoover as a Communist front group.


Welch tried to stop McCarthy, but the Senator pressed on, continuing his shameful tirade against a young attorney in Welch’s firm. In the reruns on the late news we could see Roy Cohn, the lead counsel on the committee and no model of virtue, shaking his head at McCarthy, trying to stop him.


All of us of a certain age remember Welch's eloquent response. Welch implored "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 a pivotal moment, a turning point in the reckless career of Senator McCarthy. After that his star fell and he died of the effects of alcohol abuse a few years later.


We are in the midst of another such moment of indecency. Rep Gabriella Giffords, shot through the brain, lies in a coma in a Tucson hospital. Nineteen others have been shot by a 22 year old homicidal killer. Six have died, including a 9 year old girl and a Republican judge.


This is a tragedy that has no clear cause other than the deranged mind of Jared Loughner. Events like this are random, unpredictable and fortunately rare in the US, unlike other parts of the world. When President Kennedy was assassinated, there was talk of a climate of hate in Dallas. Yet the nation came together in mourning, and I do not recall any finger pointing. Likewise for the killings of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.


Today an unseemly eagerness to use this calamity to score political points against their opponents has seized several pundits and news outlets. (Fortunately this does not include President Obama, nor the leadership of the Democratic party). Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the editorialists at the New York Times, and many others, insist that we hold Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and all those who criticized the Obama health care plan, responsible for this tragedy. This is despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence pointing to speech uttered by political candidates or their acolytes as influencing this man.


Strong feelings and language are a normal part of political activity. Important business is at stake; issues like the Health Care Bill impact on peoples’ lives and citizens have a right to get angry,


Further, contrary to the conventional wisdom, this is nothing new. John Steele Gordon, writing in the Wall Street Journal, traces the history of hateful remarks by political adversaries, going back to the beginning of our Republic. Speech has not always been used in a genteel manner. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln were all either propagators or targets of speech every bit as vitriolic as that used today. But the critical point is that there is absolutely no evidence that any of this hate filled language has had any effect on political violence in this country.


In the beginnings of our nation, the founding fathers structured our government to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in the hands of any one man or group. As a result, those competing for pieces of power are unable to use the devices of tyranny, such as a personal police force or army. The happy result is that they appeal to their fellow citizens using language, and such language will often become vitriolic. And when it gets nasty, it can be labeled as wrong. But it sure beats the alternative that we see elsewhere in which tyranny prevails, and looking the wrong way at the man in power can land you in jail or worse. .


Many news organizations attributed the shooting spree to a target map issued by Sarah Palin's political committee. Yet, people use metaphors like this all the time, including in business and sports. Charles Krauthammer has pointed out that “Everyone uses warlike metaphors in describing politics. When Barack Obama said at a 2008 fundraiser in Philadelphia, ‘If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,’ he was hardly inciting violence. Why? Because fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power - military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents”.


So why the reaction? George Will explains it in part; "A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first."


Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard writes: “The resulting stories are often incoherent with reporters and commentators acknowledging that Loughner did not appear to have been driven primarily by politics but nonetheless offering vague indictments of political rhetoric on the right. So rather than actual reporting we have lots of "simmering" and "swirling" in "a climate of hatred and fear" or "today's inflamed political environment."


David Brooks, usually unflappable, has exhibited unusual anger over these charges. Writing in the New York Times, he refers to “ the accusations that political factors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl -- are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness. ………. the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”


According to Charles Krauthammer “Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence. ….Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.”


And so we have another moment, 56 years later, in which we can ask of Krugman, of Olbermann, and of their fellow travelers who have sought political advantage over the bodies of the dead and wounded, at long last have you no sense of decency?