Now, Obey is a confused sort who apparently thinks that because a civilian group criticized a general in a newspaper ad they are the equivalent of McCarthy using the coercive constitutional power of the US Senate to smear the Army as being riddled with communists. That's ridiculous, of course. The principle right minded Americans hold against McCarthyism is the use of government power to suppress dissent.
Time and again, we fundamentally misread our own history, and misuse analogy in order to end up at an absurd juncture. Digby quotes Edward R. Murrow, who famously stood up to the junior senator from Wisconsin:
His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
Consider that quote in light of the flap regarding Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia. It takes a Global War on Terra to get us to the point where we are afraid of ideas. Rick Perlstein wrote a tremendous piece in Common Sense titled "Bed-wetter Nation" in which he very effectively contrasts the nation that faced a true global menace in 1959 with the nation that we've become under this fear mongering administration. You should really read the entire piece, it shows just how far we've come from our senses.
Interestingly, though, the fear seems to have reached even the highest levels:
UPDATE: Uh-Oh. The Big Dog is pissed about the feigned outrage of the right.
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