JOSEPH McCARTHY

by William H. Benson

July 29, 1999

     A dog which decides to bite its own hindquarters runs in a circle until it finally drops exhausted, even though you would think it knows better.  History contains examples of this strange behavior–the Spanish Inquistion, the Salem witch trials, Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution, and 45 years ago America endured the Wisconsin Senator, Joseph McCarthy.

     To grab headlines, to intimidate both the weak and the powerful, and to deliberately stir up trouble, no one did it better than McCarthy.  The Cold War atmosphere was one of suspicion and of frustration.  In 1949 China fell to the Communists.  The Korean War ended in a stalemate.  Karl Fuchs and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg delivered the Atomic Bomb’s secret to the Soviet Union.  Communism held Eastern Europe in a tight grip.  A preposterus conspiracy theory that the federal government was rife with spies and about to take over the world terrified the citizens.

     Into this fear-filled environment strode Joseph McCarthy.  One of his favorite tactics was to wave a document, announcing “I have in my hand” a list, usually furnished confidentially by some patriot in the government, “whose name I shall never reveal,” containing the name to ten, fifty, or two hundred “card-carrying Communists in the Department of State.”  However, audiences were never given a chance to look at the list.

     He accused by name hundreds of government and college employees, businessmen, and even ministers of being communists or soft on communism, and their characters were tainted.  Samuel Eliot Morrison, the historian, wrote, “Actually, not one of the hundreds of ‘subversives’ accused by McCarthy as being in the state department was found guilty after investigation or trial.”

     McCarthy was cruel.  He was greedy.  He relished the power and the hurt his accusations produced.  People jumped.  He did nothing for his state.  He was one of the most colossal liars in our nation’s history, for he did not believe the things he was saying.  Un-truths and half-truths spread like wildfire about him.  According to Morrison, nobody who did not live through the early 1950’s will ever believe what a storm and a fury McCarthyism unleashed.

     Truman fought back when accused of hiring communists.  Young politicians like JFK hedged.  But President Eisenhower wavered saying, “I won’t get in the gutter with that guy!”  Truman later criticized Ike when he wrote, “I think the ugliest and dumbest thing that Eisenhower did . . . was the cowardly way he ducked the whole question of McCarthyism even when good, decent people around him were being hurt more and more by that awful and horrible man.”

     Finally, McCarthy accused the Army of communist infiltration, and the Army fought back.  The Senate hearings in April, May, and June of 1954 were televised, and McCarthy came across as an ignorant bully.  At one point he even accused the Army’s legal team of hiring communists.  The Army’s attorney asked, “Senator, have you no decency?”  Public support for McCarthy’s purge and his spectacular demagoguery melted away.

     On July 30, 1954 the Senate introduced a resolution against Senator McCarthy for conduct unbecoming a Senator, and in December the Senate voted to condemn the Wisconsin Senator.  With his power stripped from him and thoroughly discredited, his witch hunt ended.

      But what about all those he had ruined–what of their lives and careers?  I am sure they never forgot McCarthy’s stinging accusation, for emotion is the glue that causes memory to stick.  As for McCarthy, three years after the Army hearings in 1957 at the age of 48, like a tragic Shakespearean character, he dropped dead.  The dog released its bite on its own haunches and it dropped exhausted by the wasted effort.

THE BATTLE AT SUMMIT SPRINGS        

by William H. Benson   

July 15, 1999 

      All of the great conflicts fought on North American soil hold a certain fascination and enchantment, but the Indian Wars are especially appealing, even though only a few hundred people were ever killed in all the Indian battles combined.  But it was a winner-takes-all kind of conflict, each side, brave and courageous, fighting for what they knew and believed was right.  Places like Sand Creek, Beecher Island, Rosebud, and the Little Big Horn still enthrall even the most casual student.

      Probably the Battle at Summit Springs is the least well known, but the consequences for the Native North American after this battle were most gloomy; it effectively crushed his way of life on the High Plains and relegated him and his families permanently to the reservation.  All that remains today at Summit Springs 130 years later is a handful of markers hidden among the sagebrush and grasses, all surrounded by green steel posts and barbed wire.  It lies on the Logan/Washington county line about ten miles east of Atwood, Colorado. 

     May 30, 1869 was a pleasant Sunday that turned very ugly when Tall Bull and his band of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers attacked the German and Danish settlements along the Spillman Creek in central Kansas.  Maria Weichel, a 20-year-old recent German immigrant, watched terror-stricken as her husband George was killed and then mutilated.  Susanna Alderice, 28 years old, also watched in horror as the savages executed her three oldest children: 7-year-old John, 4-year-old Willis, and 2-year-old Frank.  The Dog Soldiers then put both women on horses, thus beginning their ride through hell that ended forty-two days, exactly six weeks, later at Summit Springs.

     The women were repeatedly violated.  They were abused, tortured, whipped, beaten.  They were forced to put up and tear down the lodges.  They cooked.  Tall Bull’s squaw made Susanna her personal slave. Life reverted into an ugliness that was unbearable.

     Tall Bull and his band of 84 lodges and about 500 people escaped west but held up at Summit Springs because it was surrounded on three sides by sandy hills.  The spring provided water.  There, the Cavalry, led by Brevet Major General Eugene Carr, found them on a hot Sunday, July 11.  Astride exhausted and thirsty horses, the armed soldiers swept through the camp at about three o’clock.  The battle was one-sided.  Fifty-two Indians were killed that afternoon, including Tall Bull, but only two white people suffered injuries.  Maria Weichel was shot, but a rib deflected the bullet.  She lived.  But when Tall Bull’s squaw discovered they were being attacked, she tomahawked Susanna Alderice in the forehead.  She died.

     Later that afternoon a summer thunderstorm mixed with hail pounded the battle site and the fleeing Cheyenne Indians.  Inside one of the lodges out of the storm, the cavalry’s physician, Dr. Louis Tesson, examined and found both women in pitiful condition–pregnant, scratched, scraped, burnt, and emaciated.  Carefully, he bandaged Maria’s breast wound and then turned his attention to Susanna.  He dressed Susanna’s deadly head wound, bathed her body, brushed her hair, and layed her in a clean buffalo robe.  Soldiers stood guard all that night outside while she lay inside, at last in peace.

     Col. Ray G. Sparks, the army historian, wrote, “An officer read the burial service in a broken voice–in a silence that could be felt.  Susanna in her warm buffalo robe, was tenderly wrapped about with a new lodge skin, then gently lowered into her grave.

     “Full traditional military honors were accorded her.  Three volleys were fired over her grave, then the sad, haunting notes of taps sang clear and distinct over the wind-swept prairie, to be lost, finally to all but God, as is Susanna’s lonely grave.”

     That same morning the torch was put to the lodges, and then the cavalry unit headed north to Fort Sedgwick.  There, Maria Weichel married her hospital steward and was released from the hospital on August 4.  All trace of her whereabouts afterwards was lost.

THOMAS PAINE

by William H. Benson

July 1, 1999 

     A revolt against the existing government done with the hope of a new and potentially better government defines a revolution.  The English Colonists on the Atlantic seaboard of the North American continent in the mid-18th century were the pioneers in the business of revolution.  Up to that time virtually no colony had successfully revolted against a European power, and the consequences for a failed revolution against Great Britain’s King was death.  Revolution was treason.

     But the Colonists were weary of dealing with King George III who was separated from the colonies by an ocean.  Virginia and Massachusetts especially, but also the other eleven colonies, had relished colonial self-rule for two and a half centuries with a minimum of interference from the King’s reach.  However, by 1776 King George’s rules and edicts had frustrated and even angered these proud colonial Englishmen who only incidentally happened to live in an American colony.  They believed that they knew best how to govern themselves.

      What should they do?  To revolt was criminal, and they certainly did not have sufficient power to change the King nor his policies.  War seemed imminent.  It was in the midst of this indecisive moment that the final break with England came.  In January of 1776 an Englishman, who had arrived in America only a year before, published his thoughts on what should be done.  Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense.  About 150,000 copies were sold in a few months, arousing the Colonists.

      Paine was one of those rare individuals who thought deeply about the issues and then said what he though without regard for the way things actually were.  At this time he said that the Colonists did not need a king, that they were Americans first and not Englishmen.  They should revolt.  He called George III a “royal brute” and declared, “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned ruffians who ever lived.”  Respect for the king had been bred into most Americans almost as strongly as respect for God, but now Paine, an eloquent propagandist, called for the abolishment of all royalty.

      He wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

      The Colonists read Paine’s words and rightfully concluded that they should revolt and construct a new American government.  Whispered in secret before, the idea of Independence was now openly discussed.  And so they did revolt, and they declared their independence from King George III eight months later.

       Thomas Paine’s words captured the Colonists’ minds and every American generation since then.  It was he who struck the match and ignited the fuse of a firecracker (the idea that people should rule themselves and not be ruled) that still lights up the night sky across the globe for all to see– the Fourth of July or America’s Day of Independence.

WATERGATE

by William H. Benson

June 17, 1999 

     The “long national nightmare” began on June 17, 1972 as a bungled third-rate burglary into the Democratic National Party’s sixth floor suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C.  Captured in the act was the Plumbers Gang–James McCord and four others who were following  orders given by White House aides, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.  Eventually, Liddy, Hunt, and McCord went to prison, and a spokesman for the White House said there “was absolutely no evidence that others were involved” in either the break-in or the coverup.

     How much did President Nixon and his White House staff really know about the break-in, and more importantly, the coverup?  That became the question asked by Congress and the American public for months.  Nixon lied repeatedly.  (The words still sound today so cruel, and yet it accurately described his actions.)  He claimed he knew nothing of the break-in nor of the coverup until many months afterwords.  But two reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post with Ben Bradlee’s and Katherine Graham’s approval kept “following the money” and listening to an unidentified White House source, code named “Deep Throat”, and finally the truth came out.

     On June 25, 1973, one year after the break-in, John Dean, a former White House counsel, testified to the Senate Committee that President Nixon had participated in the Watergate coverup for as long as eight months, and he had warned Nixon that covering up the truth was “a cancer growing on the Presidency.”  Dean implicated Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon’s righthand men, as the two prime orchestrators of the coverup.  Three weeks later Alexander Butterfield revealed to the Senate that Nixon had secretly recorded conversations in the Oval Office.  Congress suspected that those tapes would constitute incriminating evidence, ie. a “smoking gun.”

     For a year Nixon stubbornly refused to surrender the actual tapes, choosing instead to submit an edited version without the missing 18 1/2 minutes of a key conversation Nixon had had with Haldeman.  In a session with reporters, Nixon lashed out, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.  Well, I’m not a crook!”  On July 30, 1974 the Supreme Court by an 8 to 0 vote said Nixon must turn over the actual tapes.

     He did so, and the tapes proved that six days after the break-in he had ordered a halt to the investigation–an act constituting obstruction of justice.  Knowing that he had no support in either the House nor in the Senate to avoid impeachment, on the evening of August 8, he resigned the Presidency, and six weeks later President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, a highly debatable act.

     The Founding Fathers in the Constitution stated that “high crimes and misdemeanors” were impeachable offenses by a President, and it was around this phrase that much of Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999 revolved.  Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers failed to clearly define those terms.  However, Congress believed in 1974 that what Nixon and his collegues had done fell within that category.  But what really disgusted the American public was Watergate’s shabbiness: leaving payoff money in phone booths, the filthy language Nixon used in the Oval Office, the stonewalling, the hypocritical lying, and the bullheaded refusal to release the tapes. 

     Will there be other Watergates?  There have been, and there will be.  Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  If freedom and the Bill of Rights are to have any meaning and be retained by this nation’s citizenry, the public must continually prepare themselves to face with resolve and willpower repeated Watergates–“long national nighmares”. 

TIANANMEN SQUARE

by William H. Benson

June 3, 1999 

     U.S. relations with the Communist Red Chinese once again are strained, the typical situation  for Mao Tse Tung’s revolutionary Red Chinese government, now in its fiftieth year.  Three weeks ago three NATO bombs slammed into the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing four and wounding twenty others.  In response, thousands of protesters in Beijing turned out the next day chanting, “Down with American imperialists!” and “NATO Nazis!”  And then there is the mysterious case of the suspected Los Alamos spy–Wen Ho Lee, who the FBI alleges may have traded nuclear secrets to the Red Chinese government.

     This week on the fourth marks the tenth anniversary of the Tinananmen Square massacre, and a week ago a dissident in China urged his fellow Chinese to light candles in memory of those killed in 1989.  He was promptly arrested and now faces possible time in a labor camp for his suggestion.  This year the Chinese leaders are especially anxious to ensure that the tenth anniversary of the crackdown passes without incident.

     It begain on April 15, 1989 when Hu Yaobang died.  Hu had joined the Red Party in the 1940’s and then in the 1980’s had become the general secretary of the Communist Party.  In part, because of his fondness and respect for learning and his unease with Communist dogma, Hu was forced out on June 16, 1987.  Then, he died, and the entire nation grieved his passing. 

     The Chinese public by a mistaken and vague hope had believed that someday Hu would return to power to promote political reform in China, but by his passing, all hope of that had been dashed.  Only the Gang of Old retained an iron-fist control.  Sadness and resentment rose.

     Finally, on April 22, 1989, 200,000 students gathered to grieve in Tiananmen Square, and there they and thousands of others stayed for the next 44 days.  They demanded a re-evaluation of Hu Yaobang’s achievements and to allow freedom of the press.  The Square turned filthy with litter.  It stank.  The students fashioned a 33-feet-high paper-mache Statue of Liberty, a Goddess of Democracy.  Some students fasted, and ambulances rushed in and back out carting off the ill.

      Deng Xiaoping, the undisputed head of the country, bided his time.  During the first few weeks, his military oscilated, refusing to strike out at the protesters.  Wang Weilin, the one person the whole world now remembers, stood in front of a whole line of tanks and defied them to run over him.  The tanks stopped, and armed soldiers refused to shoot.

      The students paraded one banner which said, “Deng Xiaoping, your mind is muddled, step down and go play bridge!”

      Then, on June 4th, Deng Xiaoping struck.  The soldiers opened fire, and the tanks rolled over the students.  The free-flowing blood turned the Square more “red” than ever.  The massacre killed an estimated three thousand people.  Then, in the following weeks, the soldiers pulled students from their college dorm rooms to face imprisonment and execution.

     Can one find fault with these students?  For perhaps being foolhardy?  For demanding too much?  For failing to act as a cohesive body willing to negotiate with the leaders?  For taking to the streets without clear objectives and backup contingency plans?  For a lack of level-headed thinking?  And for having an idealistic revolutionary mindset without the discipline of a pragmatic workable new government as an alternative?  One should answer “yes” to all those questions. 

       Afterall, as one commentary pointed out, the Statue of Liberty standing in New York’s harbor holds up a torch of liberty in her right hand and a lawbook in her left, next to her side.  The Founding Fathers understood that freedom cannot exist apart from a body of laws.  The Chinese students’ Goddess of Democracy had both hands lifting up that torch of liberty, but that lawbook was conspicuous by its absence.

FRANK SINATRA 

     The Voice was pure and pitch perfect.  His stage presence was always the best.  He knew when to breath and when not to, when to hold back and when to move ahead of the beat, and when to bridge the lines and phrases–anything to WOW the audience.  He had that innate instinct for the truth of the lyrics and the uncanny ability to implant the emotions of those lyrics into the listener’s mind.  The audiences loved Frank Sinatra.

     His biographer wrote, “He almost always knows exactly what songs are right for his voice, for his moood, for his life at the time.”  Sinatra had a way, particularly with ballads, of using his own experiences to get at a song’s emotional core.  Jeanne Martin, Dean’s ex-wife, said, “Frank’s taste was exquisite.  He only sang the great songs from the great writers.  Dean didn’t want that.  Dean just wanted to be funny.  Frank lived for the music.”

     So he sang the superior songs like, “Strangers in the Night”, “All the Way”, “That’s Life”, “It Was a Very Good Year”, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, “New York, New York”, and then the big hit–“My Way”, which became his signature song.

     In the late 30’s and the 40’s Frank sang with the big bands–first with Harry James and then with Tommy Dorsey.  In 1939 Harry James told one inquiring reporter, “The kid’s name is Sinatra.  He considers himself the greatest voice in the business.  Get that!  No one’s ever heard of him.  He’s never had a hit record.  he looks like a wet rag.  But he says he is the greatest.”  This kid eventually went solo and left Harry James and Tommy Dorsey and the other big band leaders far behind as he achieved extraordinary stardom and wealth in music and film.

     Besides being born with sizeable musical talent, Frank was a man of passion, the kind of guy who refused to just let life pass him by.  He had the courage to take on the world in the way he did.  His biographer wrote, “He truly lived his life with passion, for the sake of passion.  In search of it.  In the moment of it.  All of it.”

      The passion pushed him high, but to those around him who supported him and helped him, he could be so petty, unforgiving, and trivial.  Constantly he used people and then tossed them aside, especially the wives and the countless number of women.  He was all passion and very little prudence.

     He grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, the only son of Martin and Dolly Sinatra.  He quit high school at age 16, and to placate his father went to work in the shipyards.  He quit that to pursue a singing career.  He quit the Hoboken Four, just on the verge of success.  His father Marty called him a quitter, and repeatedly for years afterwords shouted that demoralizing name at him again and again: quitter.  And whenever his life took a different direction, his mother would say, “You ready to go to work now, Mr. Smarty Pants?  Mr. Big-Shot Singer.  So, you a star yet?”  The pain of his parent’s ridicule stuck with him all his life and drove him on to new heights.  “My dad stepped on my dream,” he said years later.

     Frank was totally determined to show them and everyone else that he was the best and that he would become the biggest star ever.  When it happened, his attitude was, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.” 

     “And now, the end is near; And so I face the final curtain.  My friend, I’ll say it clear, I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.  I’ve lived a life that’s full.  I’ve traveled each and ev’ry highway; But, more, much more than this, I did it my way.”

      No single American could sing that song with as much true meaning as did Frank Sinatra.  One year ago, on May 14th, he died of a heart attack in Los Angeles.