McCarthyism

What do you all think of McCarthy? Good guy? Bad guy? What do you think of Ann Coulter's defense of him in her book Treason? Was he really as vicious as everyone says? Did he really destroy people's lives?

Post 1

Friday, April 16, 2004 - 7:53am

I think Ayn Rand herself is best placed to speak here, and as I understand from her voluntary testimony to the HUAC, she believed there was a need to investigate communism in America - and she did, not least in Atlas Shrugged - but by no means in the way that McCarthy devised.
She believed that the activities of McCarthy as far as the HUAC was concerned were "futile", and that the HUAC was a "dubious undertaking," primarily because the enquiries would only reveal that communists existed and were present in the movie industry - which is hardly a revelation. The enquiries would never do what Rand saw it as her task to do, which would be to investigate and account for the ideological basis of communism.
My own perspective is quite similar - McCarthy's intention was likely honourable, but his methods were suspect, and "McCarthyism" has come to indicate shoddy reasoning, guilt-by-association, and a lack of respect for freedom of speech - which are contrary to the principles of Objectivism.

Some interesting quotations:
"Try to imagine what it is like if you are in constant terror from morning till night and at night you are waiting for the doorbell to ring, where you are afraid of anything and everybody, living in a country where human life is nothing, less than nothing, and you know it,"
Ayn Rand, as HUAC witness.

"The principle of free speech requires ... that we do not pass laws forbidding [Communists] to speak. But the principle of free speech ... does not imply that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our own destruction at our own expense."
Ayn Rand

Post 2

Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 1:53am

Thanks for the reply. Ann Coulter often points out that McCarthy, being a senator, had nothing to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Is that true?

Post 3

Saturday, April 17, 2004 - 5:39am

Whilst it is true that the HUAC was set up in 1938, years before "McCarthyism" - originally, I believe, to investigate Nazi infiltrators - Senator McCarthy, as an anti-communist crusader, and head of the HUAC equivalent Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, was and is essentially a rallying figure to the cause of rooting out communists in government service, and, by extension, American society.

He served on the HUAC hearings - not in an official capacity, but in a consultative role - at the request of Martin Dies and Richard Nixon, who headed the committee during the bulk of the 1950s.

Post 4

Thursday, June 2, 2005 - 8:20pm

The Constitution defines how the Federal government will operate. The Federal government is only one aspect of American society. It is possible to be a loyal American, a true patriot, and to oppose the government. We Objectivists understand that. It goes back to the status of the Quakers in Pennsylvania. According to U.S. military protocol, no flag is allowed to fly higher than the American flag -- with one exception: the chaplain's flag. One of the essential distinguishing characteristics that defines America is that we allow conscience to overrule law. We are a revolutionary nation -- but we are not a mob. We appealed to a Higher Authority, to a natural law more general and less questionable than the laws of men. The leaders of Shays's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Southern Rebellion all escaped the noose -- a miracle in most other nations. The Civil Rights movement dramatized the political inequalities still lingering in the structure of government by breaking the law (riding in the front of the bus) and by forcibly obeying it (integrating the public schools).

So, too, do Objectivists pick and choose the laws they will break and obey. Venerating the Constitution, Objectivists fail to appreciate that the Income Tax is the law of the land, duly voted on and ratified after open discussion in a free society. (The graduated income tax is the reason why the top one-fifth of income producers pay 63% of the taxes. The other 80% of us pay just over one-third of what it costs to operate our Republic.) Objectivists call the Income Tax a "contradiction" in the Constitution, arguing from an appeal to a higher natural law that supposedly endows each of us with an inalienable right to both unlimited wealth and unlimited government protection of that wealth at no extra cost.

So, if you oppose the Income Tax and if you evade it on principle and if you advocate that others do, also, are you a patriot, appealing to a higher law, or are you a gangster?

Claiming that communists wanted to betray America to the USSR is one way to say that communists wanted to create an industrial democracy that guarantees food, clothing, and shelter to everyone.

At a convention of Young Americans for Freedom, about 1967 or so, an old guy told us that America could be restored and saved if we closed the doorts to "foreign ideas." Thinking of Ayn Rand's having been born in Russia, I started to say something, but one of the other guys hit the nail on the head with "That sounds like a pretty foreign idea."

Democratic government requires the dualist faith in, and fear of, the common man. Communists or the Ku Klux Klan or Jacques Cartier will popularize their insidious ideas and the next thing you know, factories will be run by ignorant white people wearing expensive watches.

Whether you couch it as a "war of ideas" or a "marketplace of ideas" the fact is that ideas exist in the minds of individuals. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins theorizes that ideas take on lives of their own -- he calls them "memes." The spread from mind to mind, replicating, evolving, mutating, apparently independent of the will of the host. Have you never spoken a denunciation of an idea that you can see taking root in the mind of the listener now that you have enunciated it? You cannot eradicate an idea by repeating it.

Post 5

Thursday, June 2, 2005 - 10:03pm

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Michael E. Marotta said: �Venerating the Constitution, Objectivists fail to appreciate that the Income Tax is the law of the land, duly voted on and ratified after open discussion in a free society.�

The OPINIONS of those on this list who profess they know the facts continue to astound me. One would think that Objectivists are those who don�t fake reality, but unsupported beliefs continue to permeate this forum. When you�re done spewing this nonsense, you might consider doing some research: http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/ and getting the facts: http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/cybermerchant/Scripts/default.asp.

Sorry to burst your bubble but, contrary to popular opinion, we do not live in a �free society.� The reason?

�Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? ...We want them broken... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.� -- Dr. Floyd Ferris, Atlas Shrugged

- B.

P.S. � You can�t �venerate� the Constitution if you don�t know it. You might consider reading the three taxing clauses of the Constitution. If you�re not willing to do all of the research required to understand the three taxing clauses, here�s a good summary: http://www.paynoincometax.com/pdf/memorandum_taxes_not_traceable_to_constitution.pdf.

�Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.� -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (Sound familiar? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

www.loveisearned.com

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Post 6

Friday, June 3, 2005 - 7:39am