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throw them out of work and do our best to create the impression that they are subversive and hence dangerous, not only to the state, but also to everybody who comes near them. The result is that every public servant must try to remember every tea party his wife has gone to in the past ten years and endeavor to recall what representatives of which foreign powers she may have met on these occasions. The cloak-and-stiletto work that is now going on will not merely mean that many persons will su¤er for acts that they did not commit, or for acts that were legal when committed, or for no acts at all. Far worse is the end result, which will be that critics, even of the mildest sort, will be frightened into silence. Stupidity and injustice will go unchallenged because no one will dare to speak against them. To persecute people into conformity by the non-legal methods popular today is little better than doing it by purges and pogroms. The dreadful unanimity of tribal selfadoration was characteristic of the Nazi state. It is sedulously fostered in Russia. It is to the last degree un-American. —Robert M. Hutchins was the president of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1945. Freedom’s Most E¤ective Weapon Morris Rubin april 1954 Joe McCarthy has struck repeatedly at the letter and the spirit of our Bill of Rights by using methods of intolerance and intimidation in an e¤ort to create a national climate of hysteria, fear, and suppression. The “ism” added to his name has become a generic symbol of guilt by accusation, character assassination, the big lie, and the repudiation of our country’s traditional devotion to fair play and a fair trial. He has impaired the functioning of some of our most important defense laboratories , and he has battered at the morale of those who administer our country’s program of military defense. He has exercised a decisive inXuence, for the worse, on our civil service and our foreign service. He has left his mark of intolerance on the government, the churches, the schools and colleges, the literature and the press of our country. He has appointed himself a one-man purge squad committed to smearing and destroying those who disagree with him. It is a dangerous error, we are convinced, for the forces of decency in America to fail to regard any man and his “ism” with deep seriousness. His power today comes in 14 part 1 championing civil liberties great measure from our failure to Wght back earlier. The evidence is overwhelming that McCarthyism cannot long survive where the people are given the truth about the character of his “crusade.” —Morris Rubin was the editor of The Progressive from 1940 to 1973. The Manifest Destiny of America Justice William O. Douglas february 1955 We have staked our security, our ability to survive, on freedom of the mind and the conscience. So spoke Je¤erson, Hamilton, and Madison. So say the great majority of us today. That conception of freedom is the most novel principle the world has known. It leaves political and religious discourse unlimited and unrestrained. It leaves the mind free to pursue every problem to the horizon, even though the pursuit may rile a neighbor or stir his ugly prejudices. History has recorded example after example of rulers who decreed what men must think, what cause they could espouse, what views they might embrace. Man’s experience with those laws and practices was a bitter one. The persecutions and oppressions of those early days make up some of the blackest chapters of intolerance. History shows that the main architects of repressive laws were often men of good intentions. Their reasons sometimes had the ring of patriotism to them: protection of the safety of the state against subversive ideas. Their reasons often had overtones of religious fervor: the conviction that the soul of man needed but one faith and creed. Je¤erson, Madison, and Hamilton knew this history. So did the other Founding Fathers. And when it came to drafting our Bill of Rights they took bold action. They placed political and religious controversy beyond the reach of government; and by that act alone they launched on this continent a unique experiment in government. Our Bill of Rights rejects the philosophy that political and religious controversies should be regulated in the public interest. It leaves no room for regulation. The Founding Fathers...

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