James M. Redwine

Red Scare

Wise Fools Needed

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Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible was a metaphor for the dangers of the McCarthyism era. Senator Joseph McCarthy wielded virtually unchecked power using Red Scare tactics. Governments, the news media and the public devoured allegations that Soviet Communists had infiltrated American culture and the only solution was to excise the traitors. Thousands of careers were ruined as was the social standing of countless loyal citizens by innuendo. Senator McCarthy’s most powerful weapon was fear. Freedom of speech could have been America’s best defense, but fear of being painted with McCarthyism’s red brush kept truth at bay. As with many dangerous social problems, America’s solution had already been provided by our 18th century Founders, scholars and historians who had studied thousands of years of great civilizations that had destroyed themselves through hubris and stifled debate. Freedom of Speech is not just a shield, it is also a democratic society’s most powerful sword. To concede this ultimate right is to voluntarily disarm.

Our Constitution was crafted by human beings who were steeped in the lessons of civilizations that had been forged on an anvil of free speech but had declined when truth could or would no longer confront power. Our Founders knew their history, especially that of the brilliant ancient Greeks who realized:

“…democracy insisted on complete freedom of speech, and thought it well to mock the personalities and
air the burning problems of the moment.”

Charles A. Robinson, Jr.
In his Introduction to
An Anthology of Greek Drama (1949)

From Sophocles’ twenty-five-hundred-year-old Oedipus the King to Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) Macbeth and other countless examples from civilizations of old to modern times, we have warnings that leaders who do not heed voices cautioning against hubris can bring down great societies. A common theme in both monarchial government and literature for thousands of years is that of the Wise Fool who, without fear of repercussions, both whispers in the emperor’s ear and speaks truth to his or her face.  In the plays of ancient Greece this role was often played by the chorus which would presage the harm a ruler’s pride was going to bring about later if he did not heed the warnings or if the populace did not replace the ruler. This is the ultimate in free expression. However, often times those in power surround themselves not with “Wise Fools” who tell them unwelcome truth, but with fearful fools who cling to power through sycophantic flattery.

When the victims of Salem, Massachusetts were executed in 1692-1693, it was not because they were witches but because superstition, personal grudges, prejudices, ignorance or religion trumped truth. In the McCarthy era, the Red Scare did not put America in peril, the fear of it did. The cure then as always is Freedom of Expression. The disease of misguided or corrupt power is best cured by a free flow of ideas and most exacerbated by silence, or worse, capitulation. When even our universities cower into silence before threats of our government, the rotting of our moral core as a free people has taken root. We have the recent example of the 1950’s to awaken us to what silence in the face of government power run amok can wreak on our democracy. History is littered with the rubble of previously once great societies that have committed the sin of lassitude in the face of ignorance.

The voices of campus protesters in the 1960’s and 1970’s helped bring America back from the precipice during the Viet Nam War era much as the courage of those such as Arthur Miller, who refused to be silenced, did during the 1950’s Red Scare. One might ask where the prophetic and courageous Greek chorus and wise fools are today as our government sends our soldiers into our streets?

Mom Knows Best

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Tom Nichols is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. In his opinion piece of August 15, 2022, Nichols asserted the United States is living in a “new era of political violence.” Nichols compared our current political climate to America’s Civil War and declared:

“Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.”

Of course, Nichols, as all of us do, meant those ideas he disagreed with. He wrote his article as a warning against “the random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes.”

While I believe Nichols falls victim to the kind of incitement to political violence he warns the rest of us to avoid, I agree with him that much of our poisonous political atmosphere is both created and exacerbated by “instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio.”

When I try to glean news from Facebook, MSNBC, CNN, FOX News and even sometimes NPR and the regular commercial news outlets, I spend a lot of my time hearing the echo of my Mother’s sage advice, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all.”

In our current political discourse it seems almost every discussion has to first set forth the commentator’s pro or anti Trump diatribe then morph into the “real news.”  I keep trying, with little success, to block out the opening statements as I wait for any significant new facts.

This atmosphere of dueling slings and arrows, some of which are more than mere rhetoric, is the “political violence” Nichols refers to. People committing random acts of physical violence against complete strangers for no reason other than to attempt to give some meaning to their uninteresting lives. And as many of us have suffered through the discomfort, or worse, of political conversations with our friends and family these last few years, it is not just random strangers who have accosted one another with Nichols’ “New Era of Political Violence”. Long-time friendships and relationships have often suffered due to competing political views.

A large contributor to the current “Era of Bad Feeling” is the tendency to classify those who do not share our political views as holding “half-baked” or “wacky” ideas because, in Nichols’ view, they suffer from “a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives.” The sense I get from our current political in-fighting reminds me of the McCarthy Era from the 1950’s when Senator Joe McCarthy held hearings that ruined countless lives with accusations of Communistic leanings among American citizens. Sure, eventually we, as a democracy, saw through the “Red Scare” but it was too late to save many good citizens.

It feels to me now as those Red Baiting times felt. We seem to go immediately to anger when the “other side” speaks its views. Perhaps we could learn from our history instead of repeating it. As Mom would have said, “Just because someone sees things from their viewpoint doesn’t make them wrong. And just because someone else voices an opinion opposed to ours doesn’t mean they are bad.” It kind of goes back to that old advice, “If it ain’t good, don’t say it.”

That does not apply to real news, only personal character assassination. We need our democracy to have unfettered access to information about many subjects. That is, we need facts to make good decisions. What we do not need is vituperative personal attacks masquerading as evidence.