you've done enough. have you no sense of decency,sir,at long last?have you left no sense of decency?

[unblock]

sometimes things that haven't needed to be said for years need to be said again.


as usual, the right-wingers have changed the topic and created impossible standards for any suggestion that they modify their own behavior.

we have asked them to tone down their violent rhetoric, we have asked them to be more civil and respectful of people and ideas with which they disagree.

they have responded with a demand that we PROVE that their rhetoric was DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for putting those bullets into all those victims. at issue is not merely that the standard by which they chose to judge themselves is nearly impossible to meet, and moreover is mitigated by shooter's personal responsibility and muddled by the his particular mental defects. at issue is the fact that they shifted the standard at all, away from the personal and collective responsibility THEY bear for creating an uncivil, disrespectful, undignified, and INDECENT environment for political discussion, where the people they simply disagree with are branded as anti-american traitors who hate their country, its heritage and its people.

once upon a time there was a concept of the loyal opposition. people of all political stripes allowed that no matter how much they disagreed with their political rivals, they never doubted, or at least they never expressed any doubt, that their opponent was a loyal american with the coutry's best interests at heart; they merely disagreed about how to achieve the best for the country.

such a notion seems naive and quaint these days. not because some of the more vocal extremists on the right have embraced the toxic talk of violence, and not because the rest of the right wing and republican establishment has repeatedly refused to repudiate such rhetoric.

no. it is because they have long lost any sense of decency. they could drop the violent rhetoric tonight and the problem would still poison our national discourse for the balance of a generation.

until they treat their opponents with as americans with america's best interests at heart, who merely don't agree with them on the route to making this nation the best america that it can be, we need to hold them to a standard they have long forgotten.

the standard of decency.

and so i say to the republican politicians, conservative commentators, right-wing pundits, and conflict-glorifying media moguls, what was once said to another republican who had simply gone too far:




you've done enough. have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? have you left no sense of decency?

[leftstreet]

1. It's an indecent country. No healthcare, no jobs, homeless people, dying seniors

No one gives a shit

Expecting for-profit pundits and politicians to be decent about anything is hopeless.
There's no money in decency

Heh, nice OP though

[Lorien]

2. There are plenty of us who give a shit, but not enough getting off their asses to DO

anything about it. Two actions would reverse our course:

REAL election reform. Limit campaign spending. Money does NOT equal speech. If a candidate can't run an effective campaign on a tight budget, they can't run a city, State or Country on a tight budget either.

Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. Democracy cannot exist when only one group owns the bullhorn. Again, money does NOT equal free speech.

[unblock]

3. in fact, money is demonstrably the OPPOSITE of free speech

heavy private funding of political campaigns serves mostly to cause opponenents to drop out early or not even start a campaign in the first place. money serves to LIMIT campaigns to campaigns of well-funded poltical machines and entrenched interests.

money serves mostly to silence voices of third parties and the interests of those without great wealth.


but even the fairness doctrine is flawed if one side cannot share the stage with common decency. it's still a toxic environment if one side says, "i think everyone is entitled to reasonable health care" and the other side says, "you're a traitor and if brown can't stop you, a browning can!"

[some guy]

4. I think

this worked once, and the Republican party decided then, they would never let this sort thing dissuade them again.

So, no, they have no sense of decency. It's counter-productive to their goals.

[unblock]

5. it's not meant to dissuade them. i don't think mccarthy ever apologized or changed.

but it did discredit him and cause him to lose clout.

in other words, it's meant to appeal to those watching to demand a more civil tone and to not support those who insist on an indecent tone.


but you're right, decency may run counter to too many goals these days. people want profit and entertainment, bread and circuses. they care little for considered and civil political debate.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. McCarthy was brought down by a journalist, Ed Murrow of CBS. And Joseph Welch.

Ed Murrow bluntly told the country that McCarthy was dangerous.

What Joseph Welch actually said, from Wikipedia:

On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, McCarthy accused Fred Fisher, one of the junior attorneys at Welch's law firm, of associating while in law school with the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a group which J. Edgar Hoover sought to have the U.S. Attorney General designate as a Communist front organization. Welch dismissed Fisher's association with the NLG as a youthful indiscretion and attacked McCarthy for naming the young man before a nationwide television audience without prior warning or previous agreement to do so:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think that I am a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

When McCarthy tried to renew his attack, Welch interrupted him:

Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
McCarthy tried to ask Welch another question about Fisher, and Welch cut him off:

Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me and could ask – could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have seen fit to bring it out. And if there is a God in Heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness.

The gallery erupted in applause.
---------------

There was a famous Herblock cartoon of Joseph McCarthy struggling in a spider web and yelling, "I can't do this to me!!"
Joseph McCarthy died of alcoholism in 1957.

[unblock]

7. yup. a classic, and one of the few times someone really stood up to a right-wing bully.

or at least, one of the few times standing up to a right-wing bully got favorable press....

[truedelphi]

8. Great Op, and thank you for it.

I was watching "US vs John Lennon" and during that movie, Nixon was shown addressing the American people.

After eight years of Bush/Cheney/Rove, and then two years of President "We Need to be So Sensitive to the Other Side that We Can't Really Say Much," I was struck at how moderate Nixon was. At one point he was even saying that he could understand the need for debate on the issue of the Vietnam War.


What a contrast it was to Bush's "You are either with us or against us," or Obama's need to appear as a master of bipartisanship and appeasement.

[unblock]

9. it's a very sad statement to realize that nixon was our last liberal president.

that's mostly a snarky comment, of course, and true, he was a paranoid and criminal nutcase, and his foreign policy certainly wasn't liberal, and all the red-baiting didn't seem very leftist, but he was all over the map domestically.

but think about it. could the epa be CREATED in today's climate? would clinton have even tried it, or gotten it through congress?
could wage and price controls be imposed? wait, the GOVERNMENT SET PRICES? isn't that a commie policy??

in any event, politics has shifted so much to the right that based on the standards of nixon's times, carter was a conservative democrat. clinton was and obama is a moderate republican. certainly he's to the right of nelson rockefeller, for instance. and the actual republican presidents we've had were all lunatic fringe right-wingers.


watergate wouldn't barely make the papers these days. were he president in today's environment, he would never have resigned. there would be no need because the whole republican party would have dismissed it as a joke, they would have branded woodward and bernstein as partisan hacks and found some way to claim democrats do it too. and anyone suggesting he resign would be called a traitor for criticizing the president while we're at war.