Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

OPINION:

With Trump, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Sen. Joseph McCarthy — three men of infamous character and abominable intentions. Three men who came along at a time when fear and anger gripped our lives and directed our hearts and minds. Three men whose time on the public stage created new lows in the chronicle of man’s inhumanity.

A fourth, Donald Trump, may be next on this list of threats to the American way of life.

In 1952, long before a courageous newscaster named Edward R. Murrow stood up to the infamous Red-baiting senator from Wisconsin, my father Hank Greenspun was the lone media voice in the country decrying the un-American activities of “Tailgunner Joe,” also known as Joseph McCarthy.

Hank’s columns were rough and tough and truthful. He stood up to the senator’s demagoguery even when others in his profession were cowed into silence.

I believe, as many others do, that Trump’s divisive rhetoric and unfounded charges against those who oppose him are reminiscent of earlier days when the world went to war and our country went to pieces. It was fear, anger and ignorance that carried evil men to power.

Historians may be tasked with determining whether similar motivations are driving Trump toward the White House. I hope not.

But with the knowledge that history unlearned is history doomed to repeat itself, I am re-publishing some of what my father wrote long before the rest of the country figured out who McCarthy really was and how great a danger to our democracy he had become. Now six decades old, Hank’s insights eerily reflect the trajectory of Donald Trump.

October 25, 1952

People have a right to know the type of persons representing them as their public officials. The American people should know who sit in the halls of the United States Senate and pass laws under which the country is governed.

Decent government can only be obtained from decent legislators. For a government to be moral, the men who make the laws should be moral.

There is a U.S. senator from the state of Wisconsin who is now going around the country speaking for the Republican Party and its candidates for office. … In his speech at War Memorial hall here, McCarthy leveled an attack upon me which caused many people to cheer and a few others to boo. For those who cheered the senator from Wisconsin, I would like them to know the type of person they were applauding.

... Sen. McCarthy is quick to yell communist at anyone who disagrees with him, but the record will show that he was elected by the vote of communists in Milwaukee who were bitterly opposed to his opponent Bob La Follette. While La Follette was preaching the gospel of complete distrust of communism, Joe McCarthy was appealing to the Reds and pinks in Wisconsin with speeches in which he said: “Stalin’s proposal for world disarmament is a great thing, and he must be given credit for being sincere about it.”

McCarthy is quick to impugn the legal ethics of others. The bar commissioners of the state of Wisconsin asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to disbar McCarthy because of his violation of the lawyers’ Code of Ethics. The board perused the evidence and announced: “It is difficult to conceive of any conduct upon the part of a presiding judge (McCarthy was a judge at that time) which would bring judges and courts into greater disrepute and contempt than the conduct of McCarthy … The defendant, by his conduct, chose to defy the rules of ethical conduct prescribed by the Constitution, the laws of the state of Wisconsin, and the members of the profession, in order to gain a selfish personal advantage.”

… This is the man who evoked cheers when he spoke here last Monday night. The most immoral, indecent, and unprincipled scoundrel to ever sit in the United States Senate.