John Birch Society

Alternate history is a sub-genre of science fiction.

But, your point is well taken. The old criminal McCarthy would have been as ruthless as Stalin had he the opportunity.

I agree that he has lived his life in fear. Why else would he be such a staunch supporter of bearing arms? The level of his support is almost cartoonish.

In fact, a couple of times today, I thought of this thread and of David's extremism, his total absence of a sense of history and the nature of commentary. I wondered whether his persona here is just a long, loud, demented joke.

McCarthy is consistently on the list of most hated Americans.

And many have suggested that with the death of communism, capitalism will also die.

He is only a criminal in your hateful mind,
because of his wonderful treatment of commies.
McCarthy was GOOD, and u are bad.





David

David wrote:

Congress was constitutionally delegated power:
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper
for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers. . ." (Article 1 Section 8).
Congress has decided that it needs eyes and ears
to decide what laws to pass, ergo: the power to investigate,
attended by the power of subpoena.


------------------------

That sounds like this hyper-strict constructionist approves of lax interpretation when it suits him.

In the same post, David continued with this:

Johnson had no authority to declare war, tho he did have authority to move
the Armed Forces and have them execute his military orders.
Johnson 's declaring war on poverty in a speech was a legal nullity,
tho Congress enacted some of his domestic programs, none of which
invoked the war power.

-----------------

Johnson's war on poverty was a metaphor and not a legal nullity.

One on One with Joe McCarthy

by WILLIAM MANDEL

In 1953 the countryside seen from a train window between Washington and New York was still chiefly pastoral. But in March the bare branches of the trees, the dark brown of the fields, the black of the asphalt roads, and the cold gray of the sky, deepened by early nightfall, corresponded to the mood of the nation: gloomy and fearful.

I felt the same way. I should have been elated. I had gone to Washington in response to a subpoena from Sen. Joe McCarthy and had been determined to do as much as any single person could to destroy him. Now, convinced that I had damaged the senator severely, I was scared. I was sure he knew that he had lost, and badly. This was borne out by a personal attack on me in his newspaper column five weeks later.

I had had no doubt before being called, and even less after confronting him personally on consecutive days, that his was truly a fascist mentality. And fascists use physical violence to dispose of their opponents. He was immensely powerful, having brought the State Department to its knees and having already attacked the former head of the country's armed forces, Gen. Marshall. Prime Minister Clement Atlee of England said to Parliament that year that he sometimes wondered whether it was Gen. Eisenhower or Joe McCarthy who was president of the United States.

Back in New York that evening, I learned that the most sensational parts of my attack on him had been carried on national TV news, in addition to the complete live coverage during the day. Later, NBC pre-empted its very popular radio show, "Music At Midnight," to rebroadcast forty-five minutes of my testimony. The next day words of mine were front-page news in the New York Times, which wrote: "Mr. McCarthy reddened at times." Time Magazine wrote: "The week's most agitated performance came from a blazing-eyed New York advertising copywriter." It is a mark of the times that Time chose to identify me not as a scholar subpoenaed because a book of his was in the State Department's Overseas Libraries, the target of McCarthy's investigation, but by the work to which I had to turn for a livelihood after I was blacklisted.

I went into work the day after the hearing, and my employer at a Madison Avenue advertising agency told me to stay home for a few weeks, and that my salary would continue. When I got home, a telegram had arrived from a fellow-employee with whom I had never had any association except at work. It read: "Dear Bill. The following is my telephone number Plaza 35198. The following is my address 153 East 51st St. If I can be of any service to you please call. Anna Santoro."

I began receiving letters from total strangers who had gotten my address from media reports as well as from acquaintances. Most reflected enthusiasm that someone had finally taken McCarthy down. A few were antagonistic. One, signed by a woman with a Ukrainian name in Chicago, was sent to me care of the McCarthy Committee, which dutifully forwarded it. It contained a very interesting sentence: "You can see there is a temptation to get violent with your type of people." It was not a stupid letter, and had some very pertinent things to say about lack of civil liberties in the Soviet Union, the country my sinful book had dealt with.

A man in Richmond, Indiana hoped I wouldn't lose my job, and wanted to write my employer. I provided the firm's address. He did write and send me a carbon copy. In a large, bold, sweeping, almost 19th-century hand, he made a particularly fine statement about the nature of the fight against McCarthyism. He wrote that I had defended my: "basic American privilege of writing books and putting into them what he feels is the objective truth, as he sees it. To me this attitude (freedom to think and speak), plus the bravery and courage to defend it, constitutes the true American way of life...that the authors of our Constitution and Bill of Rights envisioned." The man also hoped that my "way of making a living would not suffer."

A lot of good it did me. My employer canvassed all his clients -- Parke-Davis, then the major drug manufacturer, Parkside Laboratories, Heublein, which was nonmusical -- and asked whether I should be fired. None supported doing that, but neither did they urge my retention. They wanted no problems with McCarthy. Who knows what he might investigate next? After my month's paid leave, I was fired and paid another month's salary as severance pay, although I had been there only a year. Conscience money.

My main satisfaction lies in what I know I did for people in what Lillian Hellman dubbed "the scoundrel time." From Shreveport, Louisiana, a Jack Hooper wrote me: "Any time that I become depressed, due to the operations of the Nazi Fascist McCarthy Committee, I play your record and truly get a 'lift'." I had made an LP from an excellent wire recording a friend had made from the NBC rebroadcast. Ordinary citizens did not yet possess tape recorders.

Those who heard the proceedings or read the news stories had no way of knowing what went on in my heart and mind in preparing for it. When I was handed the subpoena by a process server who rang my doorbell at about noon on a Saturday, I was packing an overnight bag in preparation for a lecture that evening at a synagogue in New Haven. I had been invited to speak by the rabbi who married Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. The subpoena demanded that I appear on Monday at 2 p.m. How was I to find a lawyer in Washington from New York City on a Saturday afternoon? I was lucky. I had a lawyer uncle who knew the right man in Washington.

I weighed the alternatives: should I go to New Haven to carry out my speaking engagement? The purpose of such subpoenas was to silence the people to whom they were served. I went to New Haven, spoke, came home, and spent Sunday making notes. With a wife and three young children, six, eight, and thirteen, I wanted to avoid a contempt citation and jail sentence. Every additional person who went to jail added to the atmosphere of fear of McCarthy himself and McCarthyism practices. So did everyone who stayed out of jail by caving in. I wanted to discredit McCarthy and yet avoid imprisonment.

I knew that the hearing would be televised. I was perfectly aware and, from his behavior, so was he, that this was theater. My job was to be the dignified scholar, which I was, and prosecutor when I got a chance. The senator knew that people were very dubious about his methods, and wanted to look and sound judicial.

I feared that my lawyer's office would be bugged, because he had represented many "unfriendly witnesses," as we were called. Therefore I wrote out my questions in clear longhand and handed them to him instead of stating them out loud. I asked whether I could query McCarthy about the relative size of his savings and salary, which I did in the public hearing, to good effect. My list of possible challenges to him continued: Why did you defend Nazis who murdered U.S. prisoners of war? Why do you want war with China?

I could not refuse to answer a question if it flowed logically from my own answer to a previous question. This would be a chess game. I had to avoid checkmate -- being put in a position where I would have to name other individuals or go to jail for refusing to do so.

I was called as one of the witnesses on the first day of an investigation into how books by bad people like me and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who was subpoenaed to appear on the same day, found their way into U.S. Embassy Information Office libraries overseas. DuBois' attorney, former Congressman Vito Marcantonio, who had cast the sole vote against the Korean War, called McCarthy's chief counsel, Roy Cohn, beforehand and asked: "Do you really want the whole Negro population down on the neck of the committee?" DuBois' subpoena was withdrawn.

My barely teenage daughter and her boyfriend of the same age had their own personal FBI tail, presumably on the assumption that they might lead them to the boy's father, whom the Communist Party had sent underground when it was made illegal by the McCarran and Smith acts and trials of its national and state leaders. This terror had serious effects upon Phyllis and Keith, her husband-to-be, all their lives.

Prior to my McCarthy hearing, a telephone caller identified himself as an FBI agent and asked me to come down to see them. I said no. They made further attempts to see me, at home. The fright it caused in our children was expressed in irrational fears for years to come, requiring a period of hospitalization for one of them.

I take great pleasure in the fact that I have written this piece at the request of my daughter. She wants no repetition of the McCarthy era under the Patriot Act and Homeland Security today.

HOW coud u possibly know?? U are a fake mindreader, a charlatan,
but actually, I was a little concerned, ill-at-ease,
for a few weeks after arriving in Arizona when I was 8,
because (unarmed) I sensed that I 'd have trouble in defending my house,
if I ever had to (tho that never became necessary).

When I came into possession of a small framed .38 caliber revolver, a few weeks later,
I was invested with a sense of serentiy and security that has abided in me ever since.
(Years later, I upgraded to a .44 for better stopping power.)

That did not include a sense of security from the commies.
I knew that my small arms coud not defend from the communist armies,
and I feared that the liberals woud undermine American defenses,
so that we 'd lose, but communism rotted from within and died,
under Reagan-Bush when Reagan ran their economy into the ground
with an arms race. Their secret police coud not steal American secrets
fast enuf to survive, thanks be unto Ronald Reagan,
and thanks be unto Joe McCarthy before him. I wish that I coud
shake their hands warmly and embrace them both as we dance on the grave of communism and spit on it.







One of several reasons is that it promotes a sense of self-reliance for one 's existence,
with rejection of the collective, exalting INDIVIDUALISM,
laissez faire free enterprize and hedonism.






Marx & Ulyanov woud agree with u, Plain.
Will u admit that your defintion of history
is anything that will make communism look good??

You communist mind is merely in a state of turmoil.
Truely, now, admit it:
the day that communism died was the most horrible day
of your life, right ?

That is an honor to be PROUD of,
to have the hatred of bad Americans like u, Plain.
I am sure that Good Old Tailgunner Joe, woud disdain and reject your approval.





David

Well, that shows how rong commies can BE, since communism is dead
and capitalism ( the economic laws of nature, supply & demand in an environment of freedom ) is still alive.
HOORAAAAYYYYYY !!!!!





David

Well, the power of subpoena already long existed before
communism became a problem, so we continued to use.
What did u expect ?





David

Being only a metaphor ( we agree on that )
obviously it was a legal nullity, otherwise we 'd have been in a state of war.

(As Jackie Vernon put it: "I threw a hand grenade at a beggar.")





David

1) In what sense, then, was the "war on communism" not a metaphor? In what sense was it not a "legal nullity"?

2) I notice with interest that you are justifying Congress's subpoena power with the "necessary and proper" clause. As it happens, the current Congress that Obamacare is necessary and proper to provide for the general welfare of the United States. May I suggest a bargain here? You accept that Obamacare is constitutional, I accept that Congress's subpoena power is, at least in principle, constitutional. Do we have a deal?

From Marx & Lenin, orthodox communist doctrine was that
communism was a system of WORLD government
and that the world must be conquered and held in subjection
by military force to accept communism.

The red star that was above the Kremlin
symbolized the continents of the world
to be conquered and the color represented the blood
that was to be shed in the future of this conquest.

Thay were very willing to annihilate the rich and the middle classes.
Indeed, in Cambodia, the Reds murdered anyone found wearing eyeglasses,
or a wristwatch, as being representative of too much riches.
Thay coud be radical, and be sadistic; thay were.
Their intelligence operatives, secret police, NKVD et seq,
were very deadly, almost Ninja-like. My impression was that
thay were more deft than the CIA (but call me "paranoid").
Anyway, in addition to subversion, the Reds fought occasional
wars (e.g., Korea, Viet Nam), sometimes including revolutions,
e.g., China, Cuba: thay were generating an earnest effort,
fanatical effort, to conquer the world and to murder the decent
people, after each Red military success, and to enslave
the rest of the population.

This was the Third World War; ofen A/K/A: the "Cold War".
There was nothing metaforical about it; it was too real.





Unlike the nazis, who openly declared war upon us,
the commies waged war upon us as covertly as possible,
tho as I said, there were a few open wars.

Anyway, there never came a time that Congress declared war on
communism, as distinct from when it did declare war on nazism.
Hence, as to the nazis, it was a legal fact that we were at war,
duly recorded in the Congressional Record; not so qua the commies.
We cannot point to any date that war was declared upon communism,
but of course the 3rd World War was well funded by Congress
to the tune of billions of $$ per year; maybe trillions of $$ all told,
in addition to many 1000s of casualties of American soldiers
in the open wars that were incidental to the broader Third World War.
Is that explanation satisfactory?
I surmize that u and I both lived thru these times, Thomas.
It surprizes me that u raise such an elementary question.






I did so in the belief (perhaps, in error) that the authority of Congress
to issue subpoenas was unchallenged and accepted by everyone.
It did not occur to me that this was a matter of controversy.
Perhaps this may be attributed to the failing memory of old age,
but I do not remember that this particular challenge was asserted
against either Sen. McCarthy or HUAC.
I fail to remember any great controversy in the 1950s
over whether or not Congress had the power of subpoena.
Perhaps it is just my poor memory,
but I do not remember a dispute in the 1950s over whether
Congress can investigate. Maybe it happened, and I just forgot.
Do YOU remember a dispute of this nature at that time, Thomas?

Surely, there were OTHER investigations; remember those of Estes Kefauver ?
Thay got a huge amount of press coverage.
AGAIN, I do not remember anyone saying that Congress shoud
mind its own business; it has NO power to investigate,
nor any subpoena power. I just don 't remember that argument
being raised; maybe u do.

I can conceive of a plausible (?) argument
that Congress has jurisdiction to regulate interstate commerce.
In order to KNOW what it is that Congress has before it
to regulate, it must find out; hence, it is "necessary and proper"
for Congress to enact a law to compel attendance of factual witnesses.




Your remarks sweep very, very broadly
and include too many things in a tacit, clandestine jumble there,
that we must separate.
Neither use of the language "general welfare" as it appears
in the Preamble, nor in Article I Section 8, can be taken to
confer a grant of jurisdiction upon Congress to do whatever it
feels like, if only it alleges that it does so "in the general welfare";
if it DID, then Congress wud become an unlimited
oligarchy that was free to suspend elections, retaining the
incumbents indefinitely at large multiples of salary,
in the "general welfare."

The Preamble is only aspirational,
not operative to create new jurisdiction.
The sentence employing those words in Article I Section 8
only grant Congress the power to COLLECT TAXES,
whose revenues will thereafter be used in the general welfare.
The grant of power is ONLY TO COLLECT TAXES;
this limitation is the reason that we do not have a permanent
congressional oligarchy. Indeed, the Congressmen coud even
make their seats hereditable for their sons, if thay had only
to declare that an act was in the "general welfare" in order
to render it legitimate. In other words, if u read those words
to the effect that u encourage, Thomas, thay 'd be a grant
of unlimited power, including the power
to end democracy, end elections, if such be declared
to be done in the "general welfare."




No deal.

I don't think your argument would have persuaded an American judge that America was at war with communism.


No, I don't. It was before my time. Indeed, this discussion is persuading me to read more about McCarthyism and its constitutional implications. So far, all I can do is read the constitution and use my text comprehension.

On that basis, I can see that it's "necessary and proper" for Congress to know the reality to which its laws apply. I can see that it can create research arms like the CBO, and invite people to hearings. But the power to summon witnesses, compel testimonies from them, hold them in contempt if they stay silent, write blacklists that practically condemn companies not to hire them, etc., is obviously a judicial power, and is therefore vested in the judicacy. Given how sensitive you are to judicial encroachments on legislative powers, I'm surprised you're so cavalier about encroachments in the opposite direction.

Not really. It does not establish that America was ever in a state of war with communism in any legally relevant sense. Therefore your allegation that we shouldn't so prissy about the rights of communists in McCarthy-era America fails to satisfy.


... and all Congress does if you choose not to buy health insurance is to collect a tax from you.

While I would like to say that a well-researched, well-written work of fiction on a successful Joe McCarthy might open eyes. I just read a statement by one of the right wing screed masters of this forum on another thread as to how eye-opening both 1984 and Brave New World are. Funny. Those books are part of the reason why I became a liberal.

Thanks for the compliment! I have worked my entire life for justice, so your disapproval of me means that I am succeeding. I am about to write a letter to the editor of how duped and misguided the 9/12 movement is.