The Cold War

Wednesday April 25, 2012

     Well it has finally come...the last full day of class!  This is the last normal day with discussions.  The next time we meet is next Wednesday at Luigi's to hand in our oral history reports, annotated bibliographies, and have some fun!  I am actually hoping that we will have a laser-tag showdown professors versus students!  That would be something to remember!  Anyway, today being the last day in class we discussed Chapter 5 from Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime.  It is actually kind of a bummer that we did not get to talk about the Vietnam War, the 1960s & '70s, or get more into events that are happening today.  The title of this course is "Problems in History" and I think there are several problems that have happened recently that will eventually be history.  Anyway to talk about today's class...
     Robert Hutchins said that, "universities exist for the sake of such inquiry [exploring political options like Communism], that without it they cease to be universities and that such inquiry and hence universities are more necessary now than ever."  Robert Hutchins was an educational philosopher, a dean at Yale Law School, and the president and chancellor of the University of Chicago.  While he was the president of the University of Chicago, he did several things that were controversial, like getting rid of varsity football.  People need to remember that professors in universities are often more liberal than others.  Conservatives believe that universities are indoctrinating America's youth with liberal views.  This battle has been debated over the last several decades.  Even today, people like Rick Santorum think that universities are not good anymore because they do not accomplish the goals of educating people.
     This chapter also talks about the infamous question, "are you now or have you ever been..." when referring to communism.  What many people do not actually understand is that there is a difference in believing in communism and thinking it is a good ideas versus trying to put it into practice.  In fact, communism does sound like a good idea because it offers equality and economic stability to everyone.  However, like many governmental plans, communism looks far better on paper than it does in practice.  This question though, can be manipulated for any reason, such as terrorist organizations, terrorists supporters, Muslims (or any religious group), or even pro-life or pro-choice.  Ever since the beginning of this country, the government has tried to categorize people in order to get a better feeling for who they are and what they want.  There could easily be problems to this.  For example, the government can look at an event like the attack on Pearl Harbor and make the conclusion that all Japanese are a threat to the country.  In reality, it was the Japanese government commanding the attacks.  Another example would be 9/11.  The government could have said that all Muslims are a threat to the country, but learning from the mistakes of the 1940s they did not.  9/11 was not an attack by all Muslims or people from the Middle East, it was an attack from one organization.  This one organization should not be a representation of all the Muslims or people from the Middle East.  The government really needs to understand that placing people into categories can be a bad thing.
     Now onto Joe McCarthy....
     Joe McCarthy was a Republican politician who served as U.S. Senator for Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.  he is known for making claims that there were large numbers of people in the U.S. that were communists spies for Russia.  McCarthy got the public all worked up into a panic and made them believe that there were communists everywhere.  Soon everyone was accusing each other of being communists.  The police often required little or no evidence when making an arrest.  McCarthy also went after people in the government, mainly Democrats.  Many other Republicans called the Democrats communists in order to get their own political gains.  Many of the people who were targeted during this time were those in Hollywood.  These people were often Jewish, gays, and famous actors, writers, and producers.  Antisemitism ran wild during this time and people were fired, arrested, blacklisted, and more.  One funny thing is that Joe McCarthy's right hand man, Roy Cohn, was both gay and Jewish!  Cohn went against people that shared the same beliefs he did in order to be famous and follow the crowd.  Other people who were targeted were those in any civil rights movements and anyone in inter-racial relationships.  Racism against African Americans peaked during this time.  Eventually, McCarthy was brought down by his own machine... McCarthy accused the U.S. Army of communism.  This accusation was one of the major breakdowns of McCarthyism.  In December of 1954 the Senate voted to censure McCarthy (or reprimand him).  McCarthy died in 1957 at the age of 48 from hepatitis.
     We then went on to discuss the McCarran International Security Act of 1950.  This act made it so that any communists had to register with the Attorney General.  It was designed to make it impossible for left wing organizations to function.  Truman actually vetoed this act, even though he hated communists.  This act has often been compared to the Alien & Sedition Acts.
      We also talked about Dorothy Bailey.  Dorothy was suspected and accused of communism.  After this accusation, she had to face a loyalty review board.  During this time it was hard to face your accuser because the person's name was kept anonymous.  This actually violates the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right: to a speedy trial, public trial, judged by an impartial jury, notified of the nature and circumstances of the alleged crime, confront witnesses who will testify against the accused, find witnesses who will speak in favor of the accused, and the right to a lawyer.  Often times, people who were accused of communism were kept in prison for a long time before they were able to go to trial.  In Dorothy's case, she was not allowed to face her accuser or find her own witnesses.  She was basically guilty by association.  Dorothy, like so many others, had her life ruined just by being accused of communism.  After a person was accused (even if they were found not guilty) they could not find a job, their reputation was destroyed, and the person was basically blacklisted.  The example we gave in class was that if someone was accused of being a pedophile and the person was found not guilty the class would still look at that person differently simply because they were accused.  In this day and age, there has to be a substantial amount of evidence against someone to be accused of being a pedophile, so I do believe that people would look at someone differently because of it.  Back in the 1940s and 50s it was a similar thing, even though there didn't need to be any evidence against the accused.  A person would probably rather been accused of being a pedophile back then than being accused of being a communist. 
     Oh how times have changed!  And in some cases, times have not changed so much.  Like I stated earlier, this is the last blog that we have to do for this class.  I must say that I really liked this class!  I have never had a history class where we read the book then discuss it.  Every class that I have had was basically a lecture where the teacher spits information at the students for about two hours.  This class was much more engaging than any other class that I have had and I think that I learned a lot.  The only thing that I would change is that I wish we would have gotten farther in the last book that we read.  This class basically started in the 1800s and went up until the 1950s, but it would have been nice to talk about the several constitutional issues that went on during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movements!  All in all, I think this class was very helpful in opening my eyes to viewing history from a different perspective.  I have never looked at history through the eyes of the Constitution or court cases and this was definitely a new experience for me!