When Edward R. Murrow trained his camera on Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954, he did more than expose one man’s abuse of power. He showed America the cost of silence and the danger of personal and national submission to fascist behavior.

By then, McCarthy’s crusade against “un-American activity” had already wrecked thousands of lives. Actors, writers, professors, musicians and civil servants were dragged before committees and accused without evidence. Broadway productions collapsed when directors or playwrights were blacklisted. Professors lost tenure for attending the wrong meeting decades earlier.

Hollywood careers ended overnight. Families uprooted. Reputations left in ashes. The fear was real. Livelihoods were crushed under political abuse.

Murrow broke the spell. His calm, deliberate broadcast reminded Americans that dissent is not disloyalty, and fear cannot be the foundation of freedom.

It was a journalist, not a politician, who said what had to be said. With Murrow’s courage, McCarthy’s grip began to crack.

Seventy years later, another figure uses different tools, but the gut check feels the same. Donald Trump doesn’t chair hearings or wave lists of communists. He works through........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal