It may be a good week to recall a time when one of America’s most notorious, feared political bullies was brought down by shame. Joseph McCarthy was a little-known junior senator in 1950 when the young demagogue on the make saw Americans primed to fear reds under the bed and sniffed opportunity. Read liberalism for communism and the similarities between then and now are uncanny.

McCarthy portrayed himself as the fearless underdog battling the “weak on communism” coastal establishment, the tireless tormentor of the “traitorous” deep state. He was the master of the shameless, evidence-free big lie, with a talent for feeding sensationalist headlines to the media just before their deadlines. His powerful platform as chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was used to pursue witch-hunts, disregard civil liberties, destroy reputations and shatter lives by intimidation and blacklisting.

It was his appearance before a mass live television audience in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings that marked the public turn against him. The line that went down in political and legal legend came when he accused the army chief counsel Joseph Welch of having a named young communist sympathiser on the firm’s legal staff. An outraged Welch replied: “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

McCarthy’s reputation never recovered from that accusation of indecency.........

© The Irish Times