Editorial
By • February 28, 2011
We have all been accused of something we did not do or being something that we are not. I have often been accused of being arrogant, but it is that I am focused. My father, told me as a young man that when I decided to do what it was that I wanted to do in life, that I should learn everything that could be learned about the subject. Then I was told to never stop learning – always striving to learn more until I became an expert.
While experience is simply doing the same thing over and over no matter if it is right or wrong, having knowledge of a thing and continuing the learning process as a lifelong quest, means that you have a better chance of always doing the right thing.
And so I am focused on attaining knowledge of every task that I undertake so that I might do my best – even if accused of others as being arrogant. I am not now nor have I ever been what others think of me.
It is possible that focus without real knowledge can backfire.
On February 9, 1950, Joseph Raymond McCarthy, a relatively obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin, announced during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that he has in his hand a list of 205 communists who have infiltrated the U.S. State Department. The unsubstantiated declaration, which was little more than a publicity stunt, suddenly thrust Senator McCarthy into the national spotlight.
Asked to reveal the names on the list, the reckless and opportunistic senator named officials he determined guilty by association, such as Owen Lattimore, an expert on Chinese culture and affairs who had advised the State Department. McCarthy described Lattimore as the “top Russian spy” in America.
These and other equally shocking accusations prompted the Senate to form a special committee, headed by Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, to investigate the matter. The committee found little to substantiate McCarthy’s charges, but McCarthy nevertheless touched a nerve in the U.S. public, and during the next two years he made increasingly sensational charges, even attacking President Harry S. Truman’s respected former secretary of state, George C. Marshall.
In 1953, a newly Republican Congress appointed McCarthy chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of Governmental Operations, and “McCarthyism” reached a fevered pitch. In widely publicized hearings, McCarthy bullied defendants under cross-examination with unlawful and damaging accusations, destroying the reputations of hundreds of innocent citizens and officials.
In the early months of 1954, McCarthy, who had already lost the support of much of his party because of his bullying tactics, finally overreached himself when he took on the U.S. Army. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed for an investigation of McCarthy’s conduct, and the televised hearings exposed the senator as a reckless and excessive tyrant who never produced proper documentation for any of his charges. In December, the Senate voted to condemn him for misconduct. By the time of his death from alcoholism in 1957, the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy in Congress was negligible.
McCarthy did not have any knowledge when he started his quest. He spent five years asking questions of others that he either believed to be guilty or he did it to boost his own image by making himself greater than others. Believe what you will, but either way when the dust cleared, we found that McCarthy was wrong. His acts ripped the U.S. apart and destroyed many fine people.
I was a lad of only 9 years old when McCarthy attacked the U.S. Army, but I was becoming increasingly aware that McCarthy was not what he claimed to be. When McCarthy was condemned for misconduct, I learned an important lesson.
Never an accuser be!
I have attempted to cast off many accusations made by others, but the one that I have worked the hardest at is that no one will ever say that I have not always done my best.
