I read once where William James said, “I don’t sing because I’m
happy; I’m happy because I sing.” Do feelings follow actions? I don’t know. James
is called “the father of modern psychology,” so there may be some truth in it.
Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust noted how finding
beauty in a sunset, while in a German concentration camp, helped some Jewish prisoners
survive while others succumbed.
I do remember, personally, that as America drifted into a
national state of nihilism that culminated in the Vietnam War, folk-music
enjoyed a brief but emotionally charged revival in an attempt to prolong our descent
into madness.
And let us not forget that Steve Martin once reminded us that
one simply cannot frown and play the banjo simultaneously. I know that's true.
What does this all have to do with the price of Scotch?
Well, I’m old enough to remember seeing, on television, the culmination of one
of America’s other darkest periods. Actually, at the time I just thought it was
just a bunch of old white men, half in uniforms, sitting around talking and disrupting
the morning television programs.
It was, of course, the so-called “Army-McCarthy Hearings.” They
would lead us out of one of America’s most awful national disgraces.
Known now simply as the “McCarthy Era,” that was a time that
the American Spirit was hijacked by a man born absent of any normal sense of
goodness or righteousness. It was if a malfunctioning gene had destroyed in him
any modicum of empathy or morality. Many Americans revered him for reasons of their own, although he destroyed lives as casually as we might swat a gnat. It was a dark time.
It was a time when this man captured the support of enough
Americans, through lies innuendos, braggadocio, threats, and manipulation of
the press to chip away at the very foundations of our experiment in democracy.
It was a time when otherwise patriotic Americans allowed a
charlatan to disparage the most cherished individuals and institutions of
America, calling General George Marshall a traitor and claiming that the United
States Army was riddled with Communist spies.
It was a time when a heartless demon redefined what was proper
and fitting behavior on the part of elected officials.
It was a time when bad was called good and a malignant
political parasite was called a patriot.
It was a time when our country watched with bemused silence,
until one great man said to this Joseph McCarthy, “You've done enough. Have you
no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Senator.”
That’s all it took. One brave man among millions of Americans. A
man named Joseph N. Welch slew the seemingly unstoppable demon, by singing the truth. In doing so, he saved hundreds of lives from being destroyed.
Hundreds of others had already been, in sham hearings. Those hearings, in fact, were held
in committee rooms in the very capitol of our nation. It was to our everlasting
shame, indeed a time of dark days.
Men who had stormed the beaches at Normandy and Iwo Jima, along
with the families who had sacrificed to support them, had stood outside those committee
room doors and refused to enter.
Why bring this up now? After all, I had not, at the time,
reached the political version of what my up-bringers called “The Age of
Accountability.” (That’s a religious term invented to help dampen a child’s primal
fear of facing eternity in a fiery pit of unimaginable agony for rejecting the
belief of its elders).
I have always known, however, that if I had been of age
while those dreadful, spirit-killing hearings were happening, even if I didn’t
have a singing voice, I would have rushed in, at the top of my voice, to save
our country.
 |
Planning how to cut food stamps?
I don't think so. |
