Rehabilitating Sen. McCarthy

Roger Scruton’s column (“McCarthy Was Right on the Red Menace,” Column Right, Commentary, Dec. 27) extolling Sen. Joseph McCarthy as being a “great American patriot” who warned us of communism, and was proven right by that system’s collapse, is so fallacious it deserves comment.

Yes, people who were previously branded as agents of imperialism or enemies of the people are now being “rehabilitated” in communist countries, but for the most part these were people who opposed that particular system’s Establishment or the evils that system spawned, or who bore allegiance to the ideals of the governments which preceded communism. Such resurrections in those countries, however, do not constitute grounds for doing the same in this country for McCarthy.

What McCarthy did was far more odious. False accusations. Unproven innuendo. Guilt by association, and without due process. Blacklists. These were McCarthy’s tools, and his undoing.

McCarthy came to be vilified, not because he antagonized the “Establishment Sovietologists” who opposed him on principle or the liberals and--to paraphrase McCarthy’s own red-baiting tactics--”fellow-travelers” in general, but by the majority of the American populace who breathed a sigh of relief when his demise as a political demagogue was presaged by someone having the audacity to question during his own Senate hearings, “Have you no decency, sir?”

McCarthy attempted to subvert the basic ideals of an existing system. He cannot be, nor should he be, “rehabilitated.”

HOWARD GETHING

Glendale