Addition to The Weavers Blog

Shortly after publishing my The Weavers--Erik Darling RIP blog, I received the following E-mail (used by permission) from my friend Jim Morrison in Munster, Indiana. Jim and I go back many years. We met over 40 years ago when we were both teaching in Aberdeen, Washington and have been friends ever since.

Jim wrote: "I tried to answer the blog, but it is so limiting that it would not accept this story that also needs to be told.

We have been and remain great friends, colleagues and politically compatible a great percentage of the time. That would be a rarity these days considering we were purveyors of the arts and teaching. Being a singer/musician I, of course, also remember and sang many of these artist's works. It does take me back.

However, I am also taken back to that McCarthy era. My uncle, Dr. Hubert Coffey, was a professor of clinical psychology and a pioneer in the field of group therapy and dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was most assuredly a Democrat; not a Communist by any stretch. However, he refused to sign a loyalty oath McCarthy tried to impose, considering it a breach of freedom if not just plain infantile. He was one of a few who had the courage to stand up to McCarthy and the price he paid was to temporarily leave California for a position at Cambridge University. He later returned to teach until his death.

I remain a staunch economic conservative, and I suspect we differ only on a very few social issues. Nonetheless, to those of us who had family or friends wrongfully accused and unfairly affected by this Lenin-like paranoia and hysteria, this remains a sad moment in our history.

Unfortunately, being so limited in characters (300) by the rules, I could not get a meaningful response to your readers. I understand, but that is too bad. All truth needs to be recalled."

Jim, you are correct, "all truth needs to be recalled," and I appreciate your comments.

As my friend accurately points out, many academics were also victims of this 1950s period. Just as those in the entertainment industry paid the price for their personal beliefs, many in academia also paid dearly. That was a disgrace. Today, I see a pattern occurring, not really unlike that 1950s period. Of course, there is no committee of Congress behind the situation today; it is much more subtle, including not hiring in the entertainment industry and having your name and beliefs besmirched and ridiculed on college and university campuses, in television shows, and in newsprint by the mainstream media if you happen to be a conservative. The result is the same today for conservative entertainers, writers, and academics as it was in the 1950s for those on the left--employment and personal reputation suffer. This is not a pretty picture, and in the land of free speech, the free exchange of ideas should be available. I find it sad that conservatives did not defend those under attack on the left who were not in sensitive government positions during the 1950s and that those on the left do not defend conservatives under attack today. I am reminded that someone said of the Hitler years, "I did not speak out when the Nazis came for the Communists, I did not object when they came for the homosexuals, I did not object when they came for the disabled, I did not object when they came for the Jews, and when they came for me, there was no one left to defend me." Yea, I know these are not the exact words, but you get my point.

I still have no serious problems with the Senate committee headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy; it investigated Communist influence in the government and the Army. That is why Presidents Truman and Eisenhower disliked him so much and why Ike was instrumental in his downfall. M. Stanton Evans' Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Joseph McCarthy (2007), the most recent book on this era, is an informative read. However, I would be remiss if I did not also point out that the work of Senator McCarthy is almost always confused (and maybe deliberately by the press) with that of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC or HCUA). Senator McCarthy had no direct involvement with this committee; he was a member of the Senate not the House. The HCUA was the committee responsible for the Hollywood Blacklist and more than likely the suffering of academics during the period, not Joseph McCarthy. "Googleing" this committee for information on it, its activities, and the results of its work is enlightening. I would further recommend reading Ayn Rand's HUAC testimony of October 20, 1947 available at www.google.com by entering "Ayn Rand's October 20, 1947 testimony before HUAC."

I am well aware of those "loyalty oaths" Jim mentioned. I had to sign one when I first started teaching in the state of Washington in 1962. However, when I returned to employment in Aberdeen, Washington following graduate school at The University of Arizona in 1967, the things had disappeared. How they originated I am not sure, but I suspect they were not directly related to McCarthy but rather to the work of the HUAC. Regardless of how they originated, loyalty oaths in public schools, universities, or government were not something McCarthy could have required; instead, the various states and institutions involved required them. There was something onerous and invasive about them certainly, except when they were and are required in sensitive government positions.

The excesses and individual suffering and pain resulting from the hysteria of the 1950s era "remain a sad moment in our history."

Copyright 2008 by Don Emerson