"Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
These were the words of army lawyer Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy on June 9, 1954.
They could just as easily be the words many Americans have today for Senator John McCain.
Whatever credit McCain earned through his decades of public service has run out. Everyone tiptoeing around, trying to show the deference due a senior statesman, should at this point, give up. The statesman is gone, and in his place is a gross caricature of America at its worst: a slandering bully, assigning guilt by association just as McCarthy did a half-century ago.
Who ruined more lives, McCarthy or Bill Ayers? McCarthy and his band of witchhunters destroyed hundreds of careers, damaged the army and the State Department for decades to come, and turned thousands of Americans into informants against their friends and colleagues. The Weather Underground damaged property but had few human casualties. The long lens of history has revealed McCarthy as a destructive force fueled by alcohol and bitterness. The same lens has given Ayers the chance to redeem himself as a contributor to the advancement of American intellectual discourse.
Senator Obama and Bill Ayers have crossed paths as neighbors, fellow educators, and yes, as fellow liberals. For Governor Palin to equate that with "palling around with terrorists"--and for McCain to stand by and encourage it--is as reprehensible as the smears against another promising Harvard Law graduate that prompted Joseph Welch's famous remarks.
Have you no sense of decency, Senator McCain?
