MIckey Mouse is Dead: McCarthyism and Politics
"If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you've got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker."
SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTHY, quoted in James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 393.
"Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between Communistic Atheism and Christianity."
SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTHY
“But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for the lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
HERMANN GÖRING, Commander of the Nazi Luftwaffe.
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."”
EDWARD R. MURROW, "A Report on Joseph R. McCarthy," See it Now (CBS-TV, March 9, 1954)
“There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.”
EDWARD R. MURROW, This I Believe (1951), NPR
"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, reported in The New York Times, Wednesday, April 19, 2006