It’s been a busy week, but on Tuesday a letter to the Victoria Times Colonist caught my eye. Responding to a Sunday column by columnist Jim Hume, the writer attempted to rationalize the witch hunt and kangaroo courts instituted in the United States by Joe McCarthy, actions that ruined lives and careers. Here’s my response, published yesterday in the TC (p. A13) :
Re: “McCarthy had reason to fight communism,” letter, Sept. 21.
The writer credits Joe McCarthy with an ability to see some kind of greater “context” as an excuse for the excesses of his campaign to crush imagined communist sympathies within the United States.
McCarthy saw a “commie” under every bed and set out to burn down the neighbourhood to rid it of the taint.
In psychology parlance, this is known as “shadow projection,” in this case at the state level.
Just as George W. Bush’s more recent unfocused response to terrorism itself resembled a reign of terror, McCarthy tore a page from his Soviet adversaries’ handbook and became himself an “ism” for intolerance and demonization.
Two wrongs have never made a right.
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