Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?
At the McCarthy hearings that history shows were constructed to raise fear and suspicion for political gain;where neighbor testified against neighbor; where accusations flew like feathers before a fan that based on nothing but hear-say, frightened and bullied witnesses were traitors; infiltrators; untrustworthy; un-American… well, in the midst of our dark hour, a Republican, a hero emerged to say, “Enough.”
“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” said Joseph Welch, counsel for the U.S. Army while it was being investigated by Joe McCarthy’s senate committee for communist activities. In open hearing and without warning, McCarthy accused a young lawyer working with Welch of communist ties because of a club he’d belonged to years before. Feeling ambushed, Welch refused to answer any further questions about his young colleague.
When McCarthy kept pressing the accusation that the young man was a communist, Welch interrupted, saying, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad… If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”
When he finished, the room burst into applause. That truth telling and that applause was the beginning of the end of the McCarthy witch-hunts.
On Monday, billionaire Warren Buffet was introducing Hillary Clinton. He echoed Joseph Welch, saying, “I ask Donald Trump: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?‘”
Such is the world we have come to. A man who claims he will ‘make America great again’ is taking us all backward to a time when shameless people with power did shameful things to innocent, powerless people. All the world has now heard of the stirring words of Khizr Khan and seen the pain of his wife, Ghazala, who appeared at the Democratic Convention. Mrs. Khan is still too heartbroken to speak without breaking down, and so her husband spoke of his listening to one of the two people in the entire world who will be the next president of the United States.
They heard Donald Trump, as did we all, say that the answer to stopping radical Islamic terrorist attacks was, “A complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Mr. Khan and his wife were at the Democratic Convention to bear witness to two things: one – that their young, Muslim son, Captain Humayun Khan, was killed by a car bomb while protecting his U.S. troops in Iraq earning a posthumous Bronze Star and Purple Heart. And two – that as an American soldier, their son died protecting the U.S. Constitution and his country. Who wouldn’t demand Trump repudiate his unconstitutional call to ban all Muslims as if you should be treated as a terrorist because of your religion? Who wouldn’t question whether or not Trump had ever read the Constitution their heroic son died for?
You’ve seen Trump’s reaction to this brave family.
