Posted on: Thursday, May 8, 2003
EDITORIAL
Let's hope we don't revisit McCarthy legacy
It's eerily timely that transcripts from Sen. Joseph McCarthy's closed-door hearings to root out communists would be opened now, after being sealed for 50 years.
As one might recall, hundreds of U.S. citizens, including authors, artists, composers, actors, teachers, government bureaucrats and soldiers, were summoned before McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations during the Cold War and interrogated for possible communist links.
Among the accused communist sympathizers were composer Aaron Copland, writer Dashiell Hammett and poet Langston Hughes. While no communist conspiracies were exposed, careers and reputations were ruined and McCarthy's legacy is one of chilling infamy.
"These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget, nor permit to recur," said Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, who led an effort to get the transcripts released.
Indeed, these documents are as relevant today as they were during the Cold War because they remind us how easily hysteria can be whipped up in the face of real or imagined threats.
Which brings us to the Patriot Act, a law ushered through in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to give the government broadened powers to track down terrorists. Aside from giving law enforcement agencies the authority to detain aliens without public acknowledgment, it extends wiretap authority and access to personal information and student and library records.
Authorities have not been shy in using their broadened powers. The highest-ever number of special warrants for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies was requested and obtained last year by government agencies.
The predominant targets have been Arab Americans, South Asians and Muslims. Many have endured FBI visits, airport interrogations, ostracism and suspicious looks from neighbors and co-workers.
Mob intolerance has also hurt such outspoken celebrities as the Dixie Chicks, who have been threatened and whose music has been boycotted and vandalized since one member dared to utter her embarrassment that President Bush is from Texas.
Such developments would make McCarthy proud. To combat his legacy, then, we must protect civil liberties while distinguishing legitimate threats to national security from paranoia.
