Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A new 'scare,' a new witch hunt


By PAT MURPHY

The last time Washington panicked about an ideology overwhelming the United States, we were dragged into the abominable era of McCarthyism, so named for the alcoholic Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy who wildly charged that more than 200 communists were ensconced in high government jobs.

McCarthy was thoroughly discredited when he provided no proof. Colleagues censured him for reckless, demagogic slanders. McCarthy died, broken, at 48 of alcoholism.

Communism didn't take over the United States. It never enlisted an army of fellow travelers. And the Red Scare that McCarthy fear mongered was sheer claptrap of an often publicly soused ne'er-do-well that permanently enshrined McCarthyism as a synonym for unscrupulous accusations of disloyalty.

Prepare yourself: Washington is gearing up for yet another full-scale investigation into beliefs that hand-wringing congressmen claim threaten the nation, complete with threats of contempt for witnesses who refuse to answer questions. How soon we forget about the crazed Hollywood blacklisting of those who refused to say whether they were communists.

"The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act" has all the makings of the extremist police state measures George W. Bush and Dick Cheney panicked Congress into accepting in the name of protecting Americans. Remember the vote authorizing his madcap war in Iraq that supporters now regret?

Oddly, even Democrats remorseful about supporting other harsh Bush-Cheney measures are clambering to enact this bill, an absolute certainty to trample on constitutional liberties and just as certainly a license to reach the foregone conclusion that Muslims and Islam are radical threats.

Laughably, the Justice Department would be required to guarantee constitutional behavior of the investigating commission created by this legislation. Duh. Justice has been the principal facilitator of Bush-Cheney refusals to honor anti-torture Geneva Conventions and the notorious White House eavesdropping on Americans.

What, pray, will Washington do if investigations deem a group "radical"?

Ban their existence? Prevent them from meeting? Prohibit their publications? Muzzle members from speaking? Jail supporters?

This is the proverbial slippery slope. The term "radical" easily applies to the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, the Jewish Defense League and weekend civilian militias childishly threatening to take over the government, plus literally hundreds of other harmless groups tolerated under the First Amendment's free-speech clause but which flag-waving politicians would criminalize as "radical."

This reckless witch-hunt will be highly regretted in years to come as 21st-century McCarthyism.

Congress should heed the retrospective warnings of Sens. Susan Collins and Carl Levin about the McCarthy era—"a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur."




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