Cantor Defends Bachmann: Anti-Muslim Witch Hunt Is ‘About Security’
What a weaselly response. Ugh.
Mr. Cantor would do well to review the history of McCarthyism and note how concerns “about the security of the country” turned out back then (added emphasis mine):
[…] At times, the anti-internationalist aspect of McCarthyist literature took on an anti-Jewish tone. (See flier at right: Rabbi Spitz in the American Hebrew, March 1, 1946 :”American Jews must come to grips with our contemporary anti-Semites; we must fill our insane asylums with anti-Semitic lunatics.”) Such viewpoints led to major collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.
William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of the influential conservative political magazine National Review, wrote a defense of McCarthy, McCarthy and his Enemies, in which he asserted that “McCarthyism … is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.”
In addition, as Richard Rovere points out, many ordinary Americans became convinced that there must be “no smoke without fire” and lent their support to McCarthyism. In January 1954, a Gallup poll found that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion of the senator. Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the United States, commented that if the United States Bill of Rights had been put to a vote it probably would have been defeated.
