Started the day with a Letter to the Editor of The Spectator US regarding "Andrew McCabe is the new Joe McCarthy" by Charles Lipson, a political science professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
Dear Sirs,
In Professor’s Lipson’s recent article, "Andrew McCabe is the new Joe McCarthy,” an egregious slander is perpetuated that cries out for correction.
The famous "decency" question asked by Army counsel Joseph Welch -- "Have you left no sense of decency?" -- reverberates through the ages, hounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who died in 1957, age 48, into perpetuity. Few can actually recall the details of the matter. Reader are prompted, Pavlov-style, to conjure a lurid scene of McCarthy's "recklessness" in "outing" some "innocent" person for his Communist Party affiliation..
The whole thing is a demonstrable fraud.
Before the “Army-McCarthy” hearings from which this statement originates began, a young attorney from Joseph Welch's Boston law firm came to Washington to help Army counsel Welch prepare for them. His name was Frederick Fisher. Welch asked Fisher if there was anything in his background that might prove embarrassing to their client, the US Army. Fisher told him that there was something: He had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, which the Attorney General had named the "legal mouthpiece" of the Communist Party. Given that the Army hearings were all matters related to Communist subversion inside the federal government, Welch decided to send Fisher back to Boston and bring in another assistant.
According to the April 16, 1954 edition of the New York Times, Welch confirmed news reports that he had relieved from duty his original second assistant, Frederick G. Fisher, Jr., of his own Boston law office because of admitted previous membership in the National Lawyers Guild, which has been listed by Herbert Brownell, Jr., the Attorney General, as a Communist-front organization.
This New York Times story in which Welch himself confirms Fisher's membership in a Communist front organization appeared six weeks before the Welch-McCarthy "decency" exchange.
It bears restating: In asking his famous question of McCarthy on June 9, 1954, Welch was castigating McCarthy for a lack of "decency" for referencing Communist news about Fisher that Welch was himself the source of for the New York Times on April 16, 1954!
Indeed, it was McCarthy's statement about the New York Times story to an aide -- "Jim [Juliana], will you get the news story to the effect that this man [Fisher] belonged to this Communist front organization?" -- that triggered Welch’s ghastly, immortal reply.
Blacklisted by History by the late M. Stanton Evans reprises the story in full, and includes a reproduction of the New York Times story in question.
"Andrew McCabe is the new Joe McCarthy,” is, to coin a phrase, perpetuating #FakeHistory — which I am sure The Spectator will not wish to be party to.
Sincerely,
Diana West