Religious McCarthyism

Wine Skins ^ | 2005 | Keith Roberts

[Quix]

I'd love to see those.

Thanks.

[Alex Murphy]

I also wish those with more significant first hand experience being part of church splits and crashes would be more candid about their experiences.

I've been through three myself (two splits and a crash, all involving the same congregation/pastor). What would you like to know?

[Quix]

I have found in my own personal experiences of many types in life . . . that it's often edifying

to note, discuss, explore

what the individuals learned about the other side

and

what the individuals learned about themselves.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: McCarthyism and swiftboating -- and many times, "neo-con."

My reply is not germane to the tenor of the posted article but using any of these words as pejorative words is annoying.

As far as I remember the 1950s the CP/USA first used McCarthyism.

As far as I have read the New Left first used "neo-con" as a sarcastic condemnation of the betrayers of the self-described intellectual 1960s "Bring it all down, man" revolution. The traditional, patriotic Party is gone -- we now have (sorry, but I saw this the other day and like it), Pelosi galore.

Swiftboating came from the haters of John O'Neill -- I still remember something as frightening as any horror movie. To wit, Lawerence O'Donnell's repeated guttural growling "Liar" as though a demon refused to give up and vacate his body.

All lack substance and depend deeply upon distortions and emotion.

I have a better perjorative word: Watergating.

Doesn't mean Nixon, et al. did no wrong -- it simply asks the question, "Hey MSM! LBJ bugged Goldwater, where were you guys? The Democrats' Dick Tuck played dirty tricks too. Where were you guys?. . . ."

[Quix]

I agree with your points.

Thanks.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

McCarthy became a pariah because he fell into a trap common to people who become passionate about an agenda.

Some times "the medium is the [real] message," and the medium denies the nominal message. That is illustrated by a story by the B&W TV standup comic Herb Shriner:

A man walked up to my sister in the lobby of a hotel once and handed her a note. It read, 'You are the only woman I have ever loved. Please come to me in room 216.'

She wasn't sure it was sincere, though - it was mimeographed!

(For those of you in Rio Linda, a mimeograph was the kind of duplicating machine people used before there were Xerox machines. The markings it produced on paper were a distintive blue color).

In the spirit of Shriner's joke, Leslie Fiedler in 1954 captured the essence of the smear perpetrated on (not by) Joe McCarthy thusly:

From one end of the country to another rings the cry, 'I am cowed! I am afraid to speak out!', and the even louder response, 'Look, he is cowed! He is afraid to speak out.'

You cannot, after all, scream on nationwide TV that you are afraid to speak out, without having the medium of the message drown out the nominal message. If you are so afraid to speak, how come you're on TV speaking??? If you tried to speak out like that on TV in Iraq under Saddam, you would go into the plastic shredder before you got near a TV broadcast studio. Allowing Saddam appologists to point out that you never heard anyone complain. And that Saddam got essentially all of the (public, not secret) ballot.

Yet it is just this sort of "proof" that liberals rely on to convince people that McCarthy was censoring people for no reason. But mostly, they depend on not having to prove their smears. Ann documented this thoroughly in Treason - but although she was able to get a book tour, she was always "balanced" by a liberal critic as well as the "neutral" moderator who was in fact as liberal as the "balancing" critic.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

Great reply! Thanks!

(Yes, I remember Herb Shriner.)

[Quix]

Great points.

THanks.

[RedRover]

Herb Shriner bump.

[Prov3456]

Self-ping for later.

[shield]

Exactly. The left is shameful.

Ann Coulter could be the modern day McCarthy. Boy, do we ever need one.