I wonder how many of my readers are old enough to remember — or have at least learned about — the infamous McCarthy Hearings of the early 1950s. I was just a kid, but I vividly recall sitting in front of our black-and-white TV, fascinated by the spectacle and simultaneously terrified at the idea that our country might be massively infiltrated by . . . GASP! . . . communists.

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s paranoia-driven crusade did incalculable damage to the lives of countless innocent people. As the Republican Senator from Wisconsin, his party, which led the Senate, allowed him to continue the closed-door hearings of his “Red Scare” campaign because they reflected badly on the Democratic Truman administration.

But finally, on June 9, 1954, with Republican Dwight Eisenhower in the White House, the Senate — and Americans as a whole — had had quite enough of Joe McCarthy. And he sealed his own fate when he decided to take on the U.S. Army, declaring it to be “soft” on communism and opening hearings into the matter.

The attorney representing the Army was one Joseph N. Welch, who brilliantly attacked and debunked every one of McCarthy’s charges, sending the already unbalanced Senator into rage after rage. Finally, when in a moment of desperation McCarthy accused a member of Welch’s firm of being involved with an organization considered to be a “legal arm of the Communist Party,” Welch had had enough.

Staring McCarthy in the eye, he said:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

– Source: “This Day In History,” History.com, June 9, 2026.

Joseph McCarthy’s career ended in disgrace. Following official condemnation by the Senate for contempt against his colleagues, he managed to retain his office, but descended into alcoholism and died in 1957.

*. *. *

The United States, and the world as a whole, was a different place in 1954. There was an innate sense of decency that we had grown up with, and that had been firmly embedded in us during the recently hard-won Second World War. All it took then to bring down a hateful, destructive, egomaniacal tyrant were ten words that have become famous in the annals of our country’s illustrious history:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

. . . words that we would do well to remember today.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/9/26