From Diana West:
I decided to revisit the censure chapter of Blacklisted by History to refresh my memory on the details of the infamous Senate proceeding in late 1954 against Sen. McCarthy. Why study a political procedure that took place over sixty years ago? Aren’t there more pressing matters to study? One might think.
However, the evil totems that rise from McCarthy’s political grave, carved from “censure,” “decency” and the other matters, still cast dark shadows over contemporary politics — and especially over our capacity to understand contemporary politics. For example, just this past week, after Sen. Harry Reid asserted to CNN that he had no regrets about lying on the floor of the Senate in 2012 about Mitt Romney not paying his taxes — “Romney didn’t win, did he?” — some of the media, appropriately repelled, sought to place the former Senate majority leader’s unethical and reeking bravado into context. In practically one voice, they explained Harry Reid’s conduct by invoking Joseph McCarthy. From CNN to Fox News, from Huffington Post to the Boston Herald, Reid’s behavior drew variants of the only epithet commonly deemed to be low enough: “McCarthyite.”
Under the headline “Liberals Are the New McCarthyites — and They’re Proud of it,” National Review’s John Fund opened an essay along similar lines by invoking the McCarthy censure:
He writes:
It was just over 60 years ago that the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy were repudiated when he was censured by the Senate in December 1954. Ever since then, McCarthyism — the reckless hurling of accusations at adversaries so as to destroy their reputations — has been considered one of the lowest forms of political behavior and one liberals love to crusade against.
Fund does get the time frame right. Let’s see about the rest.
Read the rest of the story at DianaWest.net.