I disagree. This is a Catholic school and McCaskill’s position on abortion is entirely relevant. Although I’m sure many of the parents at this school do send their kids there of academic and/or status reasons, the main mission of Catholic education is the teaching of the faith. What message does it send to the students if their commencement address comes from someone who undermines a basic value of that faith? Incidentally, I find it intellectually lazy when people throw around words like “McCarthyism”. The government isn’t taking away McCaskill’s livelihood based on her associations.
One would think that McCarthyism was the most awful catastrophe in our history. And what was it really all about? Just the inability of a besotted senator to substantiate his charges, which historically were true, that the Communist Party had infiltrated the United States Government in significant numbers. Many more had infiltrated the colleges and universities, and many who were not Communists were Marxists who were uselful tools of the Communists. Others had infiltrated the media, and to this day Hollywood cannot admit that Communists were Communists and that Communism was a danger to our system of government. Joe McCarthy probably wrecked the lives of a few thousand people, rightly or wrongly, and drove thousands more underground. But if one realizes, as Ronald Regan came to realize, that we weren’t just fighting a war of ideas but a real war against an alien enemy.