Customer Reviews

No Sense of Decency: The Army-McCarthy Hearings: A Demagogue Falls and Television Takes Charge of American Politics

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In the Spring of 1954, Senator Joe McCarthy was one of the most feared men in Washington. In the Summer of 1954, McCarthy had lost his power and no one was afraid of him. What happened in between was the Army-McCarthy hearings and why the hearings changed everything was because they were on TV. For thirty-six days, America got to see Joe McCarthy and what they saw they didn't like. His fall from grace in the eyes of America gave the Senate the nerve to censure him.

This is the story of those hearings but more it is the story of how television changed the world. The book starts with an introduction to McCarthy and how he came to power by using accusations of communism without actually finding any communists. It also introduces us to how early television covered the news and how the first televised Congressional hearings (the Kefauver organized crime hearings) changed how the public viewed Congress. But all this leads to a detailed look at the Army-McCarthy hearings and how McCarthy's massive ego led to his downfall.

The book is very well written by a journalist turned historian. Far from a dry historical outlook, the book is written as a fascinating, fast moving (less than 300 pages) view of a few short months of American history. Shogan then ties those events to today showing how TV news has and hasn't changed through Vietnam, Watergate, and 9/11. I can recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.

The famous and damning words directed to Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency?" were not spoken by Robert Welch, as stated in the product review, but by Joseph N. Welch. Robert Welch was a far-right conservative who founded the John Birch Society. Joseph N. Welch, a life-long Republican, was a partner at Hale and Door law firm in Boston.

Ultimately, Joseph McCarthy turned out to be right. You can see the names and the deeds openly in John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason. McCarthy was squelched and smeared, the insiders kept their game gong, every president since Wilson has kept Communists (or Mae Brussell called them Nazi's) in the inner circles of VIP positions, regardless of party affiliation and they have succeeded, they have destroyed our country (our very world)and today, the public looks around and says "What happened?" We have been asleep. Another good one is None Dare Call It Education, (Stormer)and another is En Route To Global Occupation (Gary Kah). Finally, bringing it together, disregarding party labels because those are distractions, The World's Last Dictator by Kinman, shows us what the grand plan is, was and is hurtling toward. The goals are almost complete and the world is almost ready to accept her antichrist.

The hearing in which Mr. Welch uttered his famous "have you no sense of decency?" phrase was actually an investigation into whether Sen. McCarthy had put undue pressure on the Army to get preferable treatment for his recently-drafted assistant David Schine. Welch was not a hero in this. He gay-baited McCarthy's other assistant, Roy Cohn and generally acted like a thug towards McCarthy during his cross-examination. He ridiculed McCarthy's assertion that the US government was riddled with Soviet spies (which we now know from declassified FBI Venona cables and recently-release KGB documents was absolutely true). The "have you no decency" soliloquy came when McCarthy, in an effort to defend himself against Welch's snearing gay-baiting attacks, pointed out that Welch's law firm employed an attorney named Fred Fisher who had worked for a Communist-party affiliated legal foundation. Welch acted shocked and horrified that McCarthy had revealed this fact in the committee hearing, prompting his famous line. However, Welch himself had already publicized the fact by telling the whole story about Fisher to the New York Times a month earlier. Welch himself had outed his young associate as a Communist sympathizer, not McCarthy. Welch's outrage over McCarthy's revelation was completely disingenuous, to say the least. Joseph Welch was no hero. He and liberal Communist-sympathizing ilk did immeasurable damage to the security of the US during a very dangerous period of the Cold War. Fawning and misleading hagiographies such as this book don't deserve a spot on anyone's bookshelf.