Decency

“He has no decency.” The words of Khizr Khan talking about Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention. Khan is the father of Captain Humayun Khan who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khan was calling out Trump for his discrimination and ranting against Muslims. He accused Trump of never sacrificing anything for his country, and being a bigoted bully. With the passion that can only can come from the soul of a parent who has lost a child, Khan had the courage to stand up to the man who has appealed to our worst instincts. Khan said Trump has “a dark heart”.

Khan’s use of the word “decency” brought back memories of another American who stood up to a bully with a dark heart and fed the fear of Communism in the 1950s. Attorney Joseph Welsh represented the US Army in what was called the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.  Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin was on a witch hunt for communists he said were in the State Department and the US Army. Being accused of being a communist in the 1950s could be devastating to someone’s life and career. Welsh worked at the prestigious Boston law firm of Hale & Dorr. He had a young associate named Fred Fisher who he wanted to work with him on the McCarthy hearings. Welsh asked Fisher if their was anything in his background that could hurt him if McCarthy went after him. Fisher said he belonged the Lawyers’ Guild for a few months while in law school. The Guild was a progressive public interest association of lawyers founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association. Members felt the Bar Association was too conservative and exclusionary. McCarthy accused the Lawyers’ Guild of being a communist front organization.

Welsh told Fisher to go back to Boston, and chose another associate to work with him in an effort to save Fisher any embarrassment or false accusation. McCarthy knew this, and even though there was no need to name Fisher at the nationally televised hearings, McCarthy did. Welsh was outraged. He called McCarthy out. After a heated exchange, Welsh looked right at McCarthy and said, “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” It was beginning of the end for McCarthy.

Welsh was the second man to stand up to McCarthy, and he wasn’t as widely known and respected as CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. Just three months before Welsh’s encounter with McCarthy, Murrow laid out a case against McCarthy’s demagoguery using the senator’s own words on his program “See It Now”. Murrow than took McCarthy down, “No one familiar with history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful…but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly….This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibility.”

Welsh and Murrow were widely praised for their courage. McCarthy shut down his committee hearings about a month after Welsh’s testimony. He lost what support he had in the country. In December, 1954, he was censured by the US Senate. He died two years later of alcohol poisoning. He was 48.

This brings us back to Mr. Khan who had the courage of a Welsh and Murrow to say enough to Donald Trump. The leaders of  the Republican party, that Trump is tearing apart more with each passing day, cower and equivocate. History will not be kind to those who didn’t have the decency to stand up to someone they know is wrong and hateful.