McCarthyism and Lincolnism
April 26, 2001

by Joe Sobran

     Old liberals still recall "the McCarthy era" 
with shudders, as they recall the way Wisconsin's 
Senator Joseph McCarthy smeared innocent people 
with baseless charges of Communism, ruining lives 
and careers with abandon. That's the way the story 
is usually told, anyway. We still use the word 
"McCarthyism" for reckless assaults on freedom of 
speech and thought.

     Can anyone name McCarthy's victims? How many 
were there, really? And were they all innocent?

     The truth is that McCarthy did very little 
damage. He did make some wild overstatements, but 
he was dealing specifically with the problem of 
Communist infiltration of the federal government. 
During Franklin Roosevelt's administration, the 
Soviet Union was welcomed as an ally of the United 
States, and the bloody tyrant Joseph Stalin was 
affectionately nicknamed "Uncle Joe." American 
Communists and sympathizers eagerly moved into 
government jobs; at least two Soviet agents -- 
Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White -- had 
Roosevelt's ear.

     McCarthy wasn't interested in persecuting 
people in private life; his purpose was to get 
Stalin's little helpers out of the U.S. Government. 
And he did strike fear into the hearts of liberals 
who, taking their lead from Roosevelt himself, had 
been guilty of flirting with Communism.

     Despite liberal hysteria about McCarthy's 
"hysteria," there was nothing for ordinary people 
to be hysterical about. Civil liberties were safe; 
there were few false or arbitrary arrests; McCarthy 
had little power to hurt anyone if he had wanted 
to.

     The average educated American -- that is to 
say, each of us, in his dull and passive moments -- 
would be startled to learn that Abraham Lincoln was 
a greater menace to civil liberties than the 
infamous McCarthy. Lincoln's most recent 
biographer, David Herbert Donald, observes that the 
four years of Lincoln's presidency saw "greater 
infringements on individual liberties than in any 
other period in American history."

     Lincoln's most notable transgression was his 
suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus, an 
emergency measure that enabled the government to 
make thousands of arbitrary arrests -- without 
charges, without trials. Since the Constitution 
lists the power to suspend habeas corpus among the 
powers of Congress, Lincoln was usurping a 
legislative prerogative. McCarthy never did 
anything approaching this.

     Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Lincoln's 
act was in violation of the Constitution. Lincoln, 
said Taney, was exercising executive, legislative, 
and judicial powers simultaneously -- that is, 
acting as a dictator, not as a constitutional 
executive.

     Lincoln ignored Taney's ruling, continued the 
arbitrary arrests, and even wrote an order to 
arrest Taney himself -- one of the most high-handed 
acts of any American president. McCarthy never did 
or could have wielded such power.

     When Maryland's state legislature rejected 
Lincoln's request for troops, supplies, and money, 
condemning his war as "unconstitutional," Lincoln 
ordered the arrest of 31 of the legislators, along 
with the mayor of Baltimore and a Maryland 
congressman. He installed a puppet government in 
the state for the duration of the war. So much for 
"government of the people, by the people, for the 
people." In the course of the war thousands of 
critics of the government were jailed and hundreds 
of newspapers were shut down. Northerners who 
objected to the war on the Confederacy were smeared 
as "Copperheads" and "traitors." All these measures 
were far beyond the capacity, or the aspirations, 
of McCarthy.

     It was Abraham Lincoln, not Joseph McCarthy, 
who conducted a "reign of terror," with thousands 
of real victims. So why do liberals still use 
McCarthy, not Lincoln, as a symbol of political 
repression? Shouldn't they warn us against 
"Lincolnism"?

     Ah, but McCarthy was fighting for a 
"reactionary" cause -- anti-Communism. And Lincoln 
was fighting for "progressive" causes -- strong 
centralized government and (later) the abolition of 
slavery. If you crack down on liberty for what 
liberals consider "progressive" reasons, your sins 
are forgiven. That's also why liberals forgave 
Stalin so much. As Lenin said, you can't make an 
omelette without breaking some eggs.

     Lincoln once argued that it might be necessary 
to violate part of the Constitution in order to 
save the whole. By that reasoning, a man who is 
sworn to uphold the Constitution could justify 
violating 99 per cent of it.

     Joe McCarthy had no need of such arguments, 
because he never found it "necessary" to violate 
anyone's constitutional rights.

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