CORRESPONDENCE
MqCARTHYISM
Slits:
In the March-April 1953 issue of
Partisan Review
Mr. Schlesinger por–
trayed me as one who consents "to
Ipread
his ecclesiastical mantle over
Senator McCarthy." For some hun–
dreds of readers of the
Review,
who
never heard of me before, this must
be
the final word on my character.
The only thing that matters here is
whether or not Mr. Schlesinger spoke
the truth.
The offending item is my article in
The Christian Century
for November
26, 1952. Mr. Schlesinger has every
right to disagree with my diagnosis of
McCarthy as a phenomenon in Amer–
ican politics. He has no right, in the
light of the evidence, to suggest that
I felt that McCarthy was "really jus–
tified." My view of the character of
McCarthy is identical with that of
most American liberals. Mr. Schles–
inger and I do differ on the cure of
McCarthy. But when I try to explain
the cause of McCarthy, I am not try–
ing
to justify McCarthy. Causality is a
category in mechanics, and justification
is
a category in ethics. I assume that
no intelligent historian would confuse
the two.
For the rest, my performance in
civil liberties is a matter of public
record. It is well known both on the
East Coast and on the West Coast
that I spearheaded the movement by
Protestant theologians to defend the
faculty of the University of California
in the affair of the loyalty oath. Also
my record as Dean of the Faculty at
Occidental College and then as Dean
at the Pacific School of Religion will
show that, far from "scurrying for
cover" when civil liberties were in
question, I fought for those liberties
in the pulpit, in the press, and in com–
mittee by whatever means were at
hand.
Since Mr. Schlesinger and I both
pretend to the scholar's passion for
361
truth, suppose that we put the issue
between us to a test. Let there be
set up an Honor Court consisting of
Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr and of the edi–
tors of this
Review,
Mr. Phillips and
Mr. Rahv. Let them examine the evi–
dence. Then let them decide who is
smearing whom. Is it I who wish to
spread my mantle over Senator Mc–
Carthy, or is it Mr. Schlesinger who
wishes to spread Senator McCarthy's
mantle over himself?
New York City
SIRs:
Robert E. Fitch
Dr. Fitch asserts that his view of
the character of McCarthy is the same
as mine. But surely McCarthy's char–
acter is not the issue; the issue is
rather McCarthy's methods and his
influence. And, in any case, if Dr.
Fitch's view of McCarthy's character
is the same as mine, he effectively
concealed the fact in his
Christian Cen–
tury
article. In that article, Dr. Fitch's
reservations about McCarthy consisted
mainly in saying that McCarthy some–
times hit below the belt, like President
Truman, and that he was no worse
than a dozen Democratic "purveyors of
racial prejudice," presumably like Sen–
ator Sparkman. My feeling about Mc–
Carthy, I fear, is far less genial. And
Dr. Fitch's tolerant unconcern about
McCarthy stands in astonishing con–
trast to the venom and malignancy
with which in his article he pursued
that apparently far more dangerous
type, the liberal intellectual.
For in his article Dr. Fitch de–
clared-not as a matter of what other
people think, but as a matter of what
he thinks himself-that the liberal in–
tellectual committed "treason," and
that this wa$ no less "treason" if
"not altogether
[!]
of a sort that can
be recognized in a court of law." What
did this treason consist of? According
to Dr. Fitch, this treason consisted of
"a whole tradition of scholarship and
philosophy"-in particular, the accept–
ance of such evil (and presumably un–
American) doctrines as "positivism"
and "ethical relativism." Such "trea–
son"-and I must repeat that "treason"
