Freedom's Most Effective Weapon - Brief Article

Progressive, The, Jan, 1999 by Morris Rubin

This issue of The Progressive is devoted entirely to presenting a documented report of the public record of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

Our purpose is two-fold: 1) to provide the people of the United States with the factual background to help them evaluate the public statements and actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin; and 2) to make available to our friends of the free world authentic materials which will enable them to gain a clearer perspective of the meaning of McCarthyism and the extent to which it is at war with the finest traditions of Americanism....

McCarthy has struck repeatedly at the letter and the spirit of our Bill of Rights by using methods of intolerance and intimidation in an effort to create a national climate of hysteria, fear, and suppression.

The "ism" added to his name has become a generic symbol of guilt by accusation, character assassination, the big lie, and the repudiation of our country's traditional devotion to fair play and a fair trial.

He has impaired the functioning of some of our most important defense laboratories, and he has battered at the morale of those who administer our country's program of military defense.

He has exercised a decisive influence, for the worse, on our civil service and our foreign service.

He has left his mark of intolerance on the government, the churches, the schools and colleges, the literature and the press of our country.

He has appointed himself a one-man purge squad committed to smearing and destroying those who disagree with him, and he has proclaimed to the country that he and his methods are to be the dominant issue in the political campaign of 1954.

It is in this last field of political action that the problem is most immediate, because Senator McCarthy has announced that he plans to campaign in a number of states this year for the purpose of defeating Senators who have refused to embrace his policies. This, of course, is his privilege, just as it is the privilege of those who find his ways repugnant to fight back by exposing his record....

The great hope of the professional demagogue is to avoid public exposure while he plies his trade of creating hysteria, capitalizing on people's fears, and diverting public attention from basic problems with side-show stunts. We are convinced ... that the most effective weapon against McCarthyism, as, indeed, against Communism, or any other counterfeit philosophy, is the truth.

April 1954

Morris Rubin was Editor of The Progressive 1940-1973. The April 1954 issue, "McCarthy: A Documented Record," was by far the single biggest seller in the magazine's history, and it played a part in McCarthy's downfall.