A COMMUNICATION
495
vindictiveness, a callousness, a
flair
for vulgar publicity that
is
decidedly
unpleasant; and frequently there is reason to suspect that their passion–
ate detestation of Communism
is
in part simulated, and that they have
ulterior motives of a political kind. The net result of their activity has
been, on the whole, bad; they so disgrace the American scene as to
lend a veneer of veracity to groundless Communist accusations about the
sort of country America is. Yet-of what use is it to appeal to Liberty
against them? It
is
their ineluctable liberty to express their emotional
repugnance to Communism, Communists, pro-Communists, and non–
anti-Communists, and, so long as they libel no one, there is nothing
to be done about the fact that their methods are deplorable-except
to try to get the public to recognize now deplorable they are. Their
actions do not transgress the canons of liberty, but they do violate the
canons of charity, humanity, and-often-intelligence. To persuade
people to be charitable and humane is no inviting chore; but no one in
his right senses ever declared that virtue was easily come by.
(3) What is urged for the Communist in the name of Liberty is
often a disguised demand for Equality-his "right" to a job, for exam–
ple. That the Fair Employment Practices Acts in recent years were
limitations on the
liberty
of the business class, its freedom to hire and
fire, in favor of a greater approach to
equality
for other groups
(Negroes, Jews, etc.), should be plain, though one suspects it isn't. Now,
a society will want to restrict the liberty of an employer in order to
allow for the job equality of Negroes when it is convinced that the color
of a man's skin has no bearing upon his character and moral and social
worth. What the present general discrimination in the employment of
Communists signifies is that the climate of opinion more highly values
the liberty of an employer--even if he only makes grade B movies–
than the claim to job equality of a Communist, because it has a low
estimate of the character and moral worth of Communists. To change
this opinion, one would have to assert what was asserted in demanding
an FEPC in New York State: that these particular claimants merit
equality of treatment, that it is to the benefit of society that they
develop their potentialities to the full, etc., etc.-all patently fantastic
propositions
if
one tries to apply them to Communists.
With respect to the punishment of opinion by law rather than by
social disapproval, the problem is much simpler, provided we safely
hurdle the ambiguity in the word "opinion." Obviously, no one's private
and unuttered opinions are within the reach of the law, and it is a
mark of the basic insanity of the totalitarian regimes that they think the
