Joe Conason: The New McCarthyism
[Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.]
The national madness known as "McCarthyism" began 60 years ago in Wheeling, W.V., when Joseph R. McCarthy held up a scrap of paper that supposedly listed the names of 57 State Department officials he said were actually Communists and traitors.
Eventually, America learned that the Wisconsin Republican's famous list was a fabrication, that he was a liar and a demagogue as well as an alcoholic -- and that his authoritarian appeals to fear were worse than useless in defending our security. But by then, McCarthyism's self-serving and fundamentally unpatriotic promoters had inflicted grave damage on the body politic and international prestige of the United States.
Today, McCarthy's heirs are more slick and glib than he ever was, yet their fundamental methods are the same. When Elizabeth Cheney, William Kristol and their media friends slander Justice Department attorneys as the "al-Qaida 7" and malign the "Department of Jihad," they are engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with McCarthy....
Cheney and Kristol have charged that certain lawyers in the Justice Department represented alleged terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- and that by so doing, those attorneys rendered themselves unfit for government service. "Whose values do they share?" asks an ominous advertisement aired by their front group, known as Keep America Safe. They mean to insinuate that the values of those Justice Department attorneys, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are somehow closer to the jihadism of al-Qaida than to those shared by most Americans....
The career of McCarthy and the specter of McCarthyism ended only when a handful of decent Republicans -- notably including Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush -- joined in a Senate resolution of censure against him and his tactics. Perhaps we have witnessed such a moment of truth this week, when 19 prominent Republican attorneys, including Kenneth Starr and several former Bush Justice and Defense Department appointees, denounced the Keep America Safe smears as shameful, unjust and destructive.
Conservatives can effectively discredit this disgraceful campaign -- and it is their responsibility to do so.
Read entire article at Rasmussen Reports
The national madness known as "McCarthyism" began 60 years ago in Wheeling, W.V., when Joseph R. McCarthy held up a scrap of paper that supposedly listed the names of 57 State Department officials he said were actually Communists and traitors.
Eventually, America learned that the Wisconsin Republican's famous list was a fabrication, that he was a liar and a demagogue as well as an alcoholic -- and that his authoritarian appeals to fear were worse than useless in defending our security. But by then, McCarthyism's self-serving and fundamentally unpatriotic promoters had inflicted grave damage on the body politic and international prestige of the United States.
Today, McCarthy's heirs are more slick and glib than he ever was, yet their fundamental methods are the same. When Elizabeth Cheney, William Kristol and their media friends slander Justice Department attorneys as the "al-Qaida 7" and malign the "Department of Jihad," they are engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with McCarthy....
Cheney and Kristol have charged that certain lawyers in the Justice Department represented alleged terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- and that by so doing, those attorneys rendered themselves unfit for government service. "Whose values do they share?" asks an ominous advertisement aired by their front group, known as Keep America Safe. They mean to insinuate that the values of those Justice Department attorneys, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are somehow closer to the jihadism of al-Qaida than to those shared by most Americans....
The career of McCarthy and the specter of McCarthyism ended only when a handful of decent Republicans -- notably including Prescott Bush, the grandfather of George W. Bush -- joined in a Senate resolution of censure against him and his tactics. Perhaps we have witnessed such a moment of truth this week, when 19 prominent Republican attorneys, including Kenneth Starr and several former Bush Justice and Defense Department appointees, denounced the Keep America Safe smears as shameful, unjust and destructive.
Conservatives can effectively discredit this disgraceful campaign -- and it is their responsibility to do so.