Variations on a theme

Alinsky and McCarthy

Leftist charges that someone is aping the late Wisconsin senator, who died in 1957, is a recurring accusation in American politics. The charge of "McCarthyism!" is the left-wingers' favorite tactic for silencing anyone with the temerity to express views they consider anathema. Leftists, however, often practice what they pretend to oppose: reckless, unsubstantiated charges against those they fear, including ad hominem attacks, character assassination, and guilt-by-association.

King of Fearmongers

There is something disconcerting about a private organization spending years monitoring someone who had never committed a serious crime, and something equally disconcerting about trying to connect a rock band to a murder rampage, no matter how racist or otherwise unappetizing the band’s lyrics might have been. Furthermore, it is odd that an organization that characterizes itself as being devoted to civil rights—a phrase that connotes the struggles of individuals to assert their rights against a tyrannical government—devotes its energies to tracking the activities of people who are insufficiently respectful of the government: Obama-loathers, opponents of gun control, politically incorrect metalheads, grandmothers who stash canned goods in their basements because they are certain that the government is about to suspend the Constitution and that anarchy will ensue. Don’t such stances, as long as they fall short of directly inciting violence, fall under the First Amendment’s free-speech protections? When I posed this question to Potok, he replied: “When we list these groups, we’re not predicting that they’ll commit violence. We say very explicitly that we’re listing them solely on the basis of their ideology. We’re foursquare behind the First Amendment. We believe these people can say all these things, but we’re going to call them out. We have never suggested restricting any kind of free speech.”

Goring the correct ox

True confession time. I have no idea what McCarthyism is.

Not the Man and the Era. That i understand. I've read the biographies and the histories. The "Ism", though, that is a problem. It is ill-defined: a buzzword for political attacks instead of a term with concrete meaning. Often it is just short hand for "stuff i don't like."

One reason for my confusion is the hypocritical ambivalence that anti-McCarthyites display toward McCarthy's tactics. When Joe does it, it is evidence of his wanton depravity. When others do it, however, the tactics often pass without condemnation. Almost never are they described as harbingers of a new dark age.

What is McCarthyism? (Part two)

Another component of the "Red Scare hysteria" was the activity of private watchdog groups that tracked and publicized the activities of communists and fellow-travelers. Public exposure frequently resulted in lost jobs, etc.

Conventional wisdom holds that there are two reasons why this public witch-hunting was a bad idea. 1. People should not lose their jobs simply because they held unpopular political beliefs. 2. The private watchdogs frequently tarnished innocent people through guilt by association.

Let's say we accept the conventional wisdom: private sector watchdogs were harmful to civic life and are a stain on our history.

Well, then, what should we make of the Southern Poverty Law Center? They are quick to engage in tactics favored by the red hunters-- guilt by association, name-calling in lieu of rational argument , hyping threats to raise money. Their targets, like many targets of HUAC, have no role in government.

Why, then, is the SPCL treated as a reliable source by the MSM? If the McCarthy-era was so bad, why repeat its methods today?

Chilladelphia

Nutter is entitled to his opinion. What the mayor is not entitled to do is go after others for expressing theirs. In February, The Weekly Standard published “The Sensitivity Apparat,” chronicling the chilling growth and activism of state and local “human rights” or “civil rights” commissions around the country, which have been imposing fines and threatening ordinary citizens for such crimes as expressing Christian moral views or publicly making jokes about politicians. With that in mind, here is the conclusion to Nutter’s letter:

I therefore request that the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations . . . consider specifically whether Philadelphia magazine and the writer, Bob Huber, are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission in light of the potentially inflammatory effect and the reckless endangerment to Philadelphia’s racial relations possibly caused by the essay’s unsubstantiated assertions.

Rachel Maddow endorses the Hollywood blacklist