Dear Victor Davis Hanson,
You suggest in your syndicated
column, “Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time,” that we “ask Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the same question once posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy
by U.S. Army head-counsel Joseph N. Welch: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last, have you left no sense of decency?’”
First, I would like to ask you
a question: Are you aware of the context of Welch’s showboating remarks?
M. Stanton Evans did the
spadework in “Blacklisted by History,” his groundbreaking – no, orbit-reversing
– book about the late Sen. McCarthy, who died in 1957. The book devastates the
fact-devoid conventional wisdom (including the “no decency” fable) on McCarthy
and reconstructs an evidence-based record. A very different person emerges from
Evans’ research: a political leader who – alas for the purveyors of “court
history” – in no way resembles the execrable Harry Reid.
Yes, Welch theatrically
denounced McCarthy at a June 1954 Senate hearing for outing Welch’s assistant
Frederick Fisher as a former member of a Communist front, the National Lawyers
Guild. But weeks earlier, on April 16, 1954, Welch himself outed Fisher –
confirming that he’d relieved Fisher from duty over his previous front
membership – in the pages of the New York Times! ……To Read More….
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