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    The Amazing Endurance of Remarkable Words

    Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness. . . Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. . .Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?   Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings, June 9, 1954


    My mother and I were watching the hearings on our small black-and-white TV set that summer day in 1954--the day Joseph Welch calmly but forcefully challenged Joe Mccarthy's hold on the depths of the baseless paranoia both Washington and Main Street had been wallowing in for almost a decade.  I was sixteen years old but I've never forgotten the sound of Joseph Welch's voice--the mix of rage and sorrow as he spoke those words.

    Something big happened then, and I'm remembering the look of amazement on my mother's face and my own feelings--of absolute joy and shuddering fear--when Welch finished talking.  The hearing room erupted into wild cheering.  Within minutes the room had emptied, every reporter rushing out to file the story.  I didn't know until I read it recently that afterward McCarthy looked around the near-empty room, threw up his hands and said, "What did I do?"  Within days the Senate voted to take his power away and, for all intents, he was done.

    There are some who will always believe that Joseph Welch's words were what brought down McCarthy, stopping those meaningless, hateful hearings once and for all.  The fact is, for many years before there had been scores of people at work trying to expose the insanity of McCarthy's crusade against Communism--"The enemy within" that had all along been essentially toothless. (In 1952 Jack Anderson and Ronald May wrote "McCarthy: The Man, The Senator, the "Ism", spelling out his tactics, exposing his lies, and warning of the consequences if he wasn't stopped.)

    Edward R. Murrow's "See it Now" program on March 9, 1954, broadcast three months before the Welch/McCarthy blow-up, was made up entirely of  footage and quotes by Sen. McCarthy himself--more damning than any second-hand account could have been.  On that same day, President Eisenhower  wrote a letter to a friend  criticizing McCarthy's approach (later telling an aide that McCarthy was a "pimple on the path to progress").

    But what we remember today are Joseph Welch's words, used as a kind of shorthand to put a stamp on Joe McCarthy's downfall.

     Throughout our history, we've given certain quotes almost magical attributes in order to condense and clarify the stories behind them.  We want to believe that all it took was a single utterance and--poof!--life changed.

    When Lincoln delivered his speech at Gettysburg in 1863, he said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. . ."  He was wrong, of course.  Nearly every schoolkid learned "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. . ."   I thought for years that it was the speech that ended the Civil War, and, by rights, it should have.  The speech contained phrases of such heartbreaking beauty, it should have ended any signs of conflict.  In fact, the war went on for more than two years--the final battles fought many months after Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. 

     
    In 1933, when FDR told the country during his first Inaugural speech, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", there was plenty to fear that was much more tangible, but it was exactly what he needed to say at exactly that moment.  Did that one sentence ease the pain of the years to come?  No.  But it's a sentence etched into the American psyche, pulled out as needed, even now.

    In 1961, John. F. Kennedy said in his Inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."   Fifty years later, we're still repeating those words, hoping everyone else is listening.

    In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his "I have a dream" speech.  The entire speech is quotable, but he ended with these words:
    . . .When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
                    Free at last! Free at last!
                    Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

    The speech was widely covered (and was recently called the top American speech of the 20th Century), but racial inequality didn't end on that August day.  Some would say it hasn't ended yet.

    In June, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and shouted "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  Fully half our nation still believes that's all it took to tear down that wall, magically  ending the Cold War and easing any remaining misery.

     
      Magic words.  Enduring words that live on through generations, through the shudderings of history, pristine and precise, owned by their creators without fear of creative editing or plagiarism. 

    I thought about these words and their ultimate impact last week as I watched and listened at different times throughout the day to Sen. Bernie Sanders standing at a Senate podium delivering his 8 1/2 hour marathon speech, knowing in his heart of hearts that the end result would be the same, with or without his mighty efforts.  As I listened, enthralled and grateful (wishing my mom could have been there), I wondered which of his words, if any, would be the magic words still resonating generations from now. 

    Bernie Sanders is a plain-spoken Vermont man.  His words are rarely lush or even memorable.  I do not swoon when I hear Bernie speak.  I sit up and take notice.  Bernie had facts, he had figures, he had charts, he had tragic, poignant stories told to him by real people.  He repeated himself and apologized for it.  He wasn't reaching for the perfect sound bite. 

    So will it be these lines that end up in Notable Quotes?
      
    Eighty percent of all income in recent years has gone to the top 1 percent. The richer people become much richer, the middle class shrinks. Millions of Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.   That is not apparently enough for our friends at the top who have a religious ferocity in terms of greed. They need more, more. It is similar to an addiction. Fifty million is not enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough; they need 1 billion. One billion is not enough. I am not quite sure how much they need. When will it stop?
    Or these?
    If there is anything we can say about the American people, we work hard. We, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other country, industrialized country, on Earth. We are not a lazy people. We are a hard-working people. If the jobs are there, people will take them. If people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that is what they will do. But we have to rebuild this economy. We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work.
    Or maybe these:
    We all have our share of addictions. But I would hope that these people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars will look around them and say: There is something more important in life than the richest people becoming richer when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Maybe they will understand that they are Americans, part of a great nation which is in trouble today. Maybe they have to go back to the Bible, whatever they believe in, and understand there is virtue in sharing, in reaching out; that you can't get it all.
       I think this is an issue we have to stay on and stay on and stay on. This greed, this reckless, uncontrollable greed is almost like a disease which is hurting this country terribly. How can anybody be proud to say they are a multimillionaire and are getting a huge tax break and one-quarter of the kids in this country are on food stamps? How can one be proud of that? I don't know.
    This is good:
    I think one simple thing we have to do is tell the crooks on Wall Street--and I use that word advisedly--history will prove that they knew what they were doing. They were dishonest. The business model is fraudulent. There are honest people who occasionally make a mistake, but there are other businesses that are based on fraud and assume they are never going to get caught. When they do get caught, the penalty they have to pay is so little that it is worth it because they end up getting caught 1 out of 10 times, but they make a whole lot of money, and then they pay a fine and somebody goes to jail--very rarely, though--for a year. That is what you are seeing on Wall Street.
     And this:
      So it seems to me we have to defeat this proposal, and that in defeating this, we are going to tell the American people there are at least some of us here who understand what our jobs and obligations are; that is, that we are supposed to represent them, the middle class of the country, and not just wealthy campaign contributors or bow to the interests of the lobbyists who are all over this place.

     

     Bernie Sanders, fortified with nothing more than a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee, stood on principal last week and spent an entire day talking to his colleagues, talking to the American people, talking to anyone who would listen.  He stood at a podium, never leaving for even a bathroom break, and talked until he could barely get the words out, until he could barely stand.  He wasn't filibustering; there wasn't anything yet to filibuster.  He was giving it all he had, because he believed purely, strongly, that giving a tax break extension to the top one or two percent of income earners was the absolute wrong thing to do.
    You might not have known it if you were simply watching mainstream media that day, but the internet universe was erupting, exploding--passing messages all day long about Sen. Sanders and the fact that he was still speaking.  Twitter overloaded a couple of times (the top hashmark being #FiliBernie) even into the next day, as quotes from his speech were relayed.
    It was one of those moments.  I half expected Bernie to finish with the words of Joseph Welch:   Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?  Because if anyone knows from decency, it's Bernie Sanders.
     
    (Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices here.)
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    Comments

    Thank you so much for this, Ramona. It is eloquent and a great reminder of what we're up against.

    Nicely said. As someone who remembers Welch's words, do you have any sense that we're near a similar inflection point in politics? I'd like to believe so, but my cynicism refuses to let me.


    No, unfortunately.  It took years of everyone standing around twiddling their thumbs before McCarthy finally went over the line with the Army and did himself in.  We seem to be at that same point today--there is nothing that is bad enough for real action.  So we all suffer, some more than others.

    It's not that there aren't voices to be heard, it's that they're not the voices with the power.


    Excellent post Ramona. Thanks for this.


    And how ironic that it took a Socialist to give a bunch of of us Dems such a thrill, and remind us how it should be done. 


    Good point, stardust.  Look how long it took so many to even admit to being liberal.  No guts there.


    Great post, Ramona. This is how out of the loop I have become - hadnt even heard of the speech happening. he is indeed a noble character, but tilting at windmills, I'm afraid. 


    Thanks.  I guess any brave act can be seen as tilting at windmills unless it's a victory.  It has to start somewhere. :)


    I get your meaning, Deadman -- that Sanders is fighting a noble battle he's bound to lose -- but the metaphor is wrong. Don Quixote fought the windmills because he imagined them to be evil knights. Sanders sees very clearly the nature of the forces he's fighting. He calls them evil because that's just what they are.


    Thanks very much, Ramona. We need to focus on those politicians who actually feel obligated to speak and work on our behalf. I'd vote for a Sanders/Pelosi or a Pelosi/Sanders ticket tomorrow.... so long as Howard Dean was guaranteed a place in the cabinet, in charge of HCR.


    Yes, Wendy, there are so few of them.  They need our support for sure.  Sanders and Pelosi would be v-e-r-r-y interesting!  And yes, Howard Dean's talents need to be given some clout.  So many good minds out there just standing at the sidelines waiting to be called.


    I will do anything to stop this from happening!

    Will you filibuster?

    I will do anything in my power to prevent it!

    Will you filibuster?

    I will do anything I can to stop it!

    Will you filibuster?

     I am committed to stopping this.

    Will you filibuster?

    We'll have to see about that.


    Noted.  But he did do something.  That's more than any of the others.


    Thanks very much, Ramona.  I had not seen any of Senator Sanders' remarks so am grateful to you for pulling these highlights.

    When the curtain was pulled and the great, all-powerful, almighty Wizard of Oz was exposed as just a frightened man, it made for a compelling moment in that movie.  The first time I saw a videotape of Welch's remarks to McCarthy I felt a chill down my spine.  It was as though Welch had just decided he wasn't going to let all the naysayers tell him it would do no good, and probably harm, to attack Joe McCarthy.  Those words he spoke, and the gravitas with which he spoke them, showed what a head and a heart working together could do.  It was as though, for just one moment, all of the trappings of the high-drama Senate hearings disappeared, and what was left was one human being going straight to the soul of another and absolutely shaming him for the bully and the coward that he was. 

    It was electrifying for me to see that that could actually happen, that the little person at the witness table could do that to the all-powerful, almighty Senator McCarthy, could just shrink him down to size and place him in that small little place in hell where the bullies of this world every once in awhile get sent when they are stood up to.  For all to see.  With nothing more than the moral force of words powerfully and eloquently uttered. 

    Words can be a very powerful thing.  You are right, Ramona.

    Oh, and one other thing: Bernie Sanders is a hero. 


    If I could rec your comment, I would!  Beautiful.  That's it, exactly.  Thank you.


    Bernie made me weep. Really! I get his email regularly. If I had any money I would send it to him regularly and I am sure richer folks do.

    There was a sweet episode on West Wing that focussed on an elderly senator filibustering his own party and his own President. This reminded me of that.

    All of the filibustering and/or cloture performed by the repubs lazily cannot match the drama that Bernie brought to the floor. That is for sure.

    We are arriving at a new era where some guy named Issa and some gal named Bachmann are going to claim that there are 213 terrorists working in the WH, that there are traitors residing in the Congress and that certain newspaper editors should be imprisoned.

    This stuff never goes away!


    I felt like crying, too, DD.  Some would say it was futile, knowing how the vote was going to go down anyway, but he did what he felt he had to do, and it really was heroic.

    No airs about him.  He's a man of the people and he's proud of it.  We sorely need more of that.


    Oh, and about Issa and Bachmann.  I dread to see what happens next year when they become committee heads.  Damn those Dems, anyway.  They gave it all away.


    Sen. Sanders was born Sept. 9, 1941, in Brooklyn, N.Y. He moved to Vermont at age 23 or 24.

    With all due respect to the content posted here, to describe him as a "plain spoken Vermont man," is a bit ludicrous. That's talk usually reserved for the likes of Calvin Coolidge, aka "Silent Cal."

    By Vermont standards - and this is not at all a commentary on his politics - Bernie Sanders is a very talkative, very long-winded, uses lots of "big words" in an accent clearly not from Vermont but right at home razzing the underachieving Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field circa 1941 (the year Bernie was born).

    If that constitutes a "plain spoken Vermont man" then most Vermonters will have to re-evaluate their self-image.

     


    No offense, intended, Vermonter.  In fact, just the opposite.  I'm from Michigan.  We value "plain speaking" as meaningful words not couched in rhetoric or hyperbole.  It has nothing to do with the number of syllables in a word, but rather suggests honesty and integrity to me. 

    The fact that he is a legislator from Vermont simply cements that notion. Vermont has a reputation for individualism, and Bernie certainly fits the bill.  Sorry if you thought I meant otherwise.

     


    I hang around Vermont from time to time. What do you think about what Bernie said? Will he make a third party run?

    And do you agree with Robert Frost that a real Yankee is someone who eats pie for breakfast?

    And, what year is your Subaru?


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