1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

History speaks. And it repeats. We should listen. And heed. On June 1, 1950, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine stood up against Republican Senator Joe McCarthy, whose ‘communism’ crusade was undermining American democracy. GOP politicians wanted control of the government for the first time since 1933. On February 9, 1950, during a speech to a group in West Virginia, a minor senator from Wisconsin named Joe McCarthy claimed that he had a list of 205 communists working for the State Department. And that the Democrats refused to investigate these “traitors in the government.” Senator Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation, solely for political power. She had seen the effects in her own state. There the faction of the GOP that supported McCarthy had supported the state’s KKK. She and her husband had taken a stand against them. So on June 1, 1950, only four months after McCarthy made his infamous speech in WV, Smith stood up in the Senate to make a short speech. “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.” Senator Smith condemned the leaders in her party who were destroying lives with wild accusations. “Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism.” She pointed out Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles. “Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.” Senator Smith wanted a Republican victory in the upcoming elections. But a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to the nation.” “I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” “I doubt if the Republican party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.” “I do not want to see the Republican party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.” “As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.” “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.” There were two reactions to the speech within the party. McCarthy sneered at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves,” ridiculing six other Republican senators who sided with her. Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support. In the short term, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena and then, when the Korean War broke out, forgotten. But she was right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to the Senate and to the United States of America. Does any of this sound familiar?