I have mentioned before that she was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee when it went “on the road” to hold hearings. One of my cousins recently located this transcript from the hearing, held in June of 1956, when I was two years old. I’ll offer a few excerpts (there are many typos) and comments.
The first witness, Dr. Sol Londe, was my pediatrician. When I was 20, and he was 70, he made a difficult but correct diagnosis that I had Crohn’s Disease.
Dr. Londe invoked the 5th amendment at the hearing. My mother took a different approach.
I will tell you anything that you want to know about myself and my activities, anything you want to know. I have nothing to conceal. I engaged in no criminal or no illegal activity.
But I am not a tattletale, and I don’t want to snitch on anybody.
. . .The witness is directed to answer. And, as other witnesses have been advised, we are not directing you to answer the question in the spirit of a threat but for the reason that the committee is not satisfied and does not accept your response to the question, and for the further reason advising you of the possibility of the dangers of contempt proceedings.
(The witness confers with her counsel.)
Mrs. Klixg. Mr. Tavenner, my la\y\’er advises me that the question of exposure of other individuals simply for the case of exposure is not a settled question in law, and until it is a settled fiuestion m^^ con-science would prevent me from tattling on other people.
[Her lawyer then refers to the Watkins case, which the Supreme Court had agreed to hear. It was the lawyer’s hope that Watkins would win, and this would protect my mother in her refusal to co-operate with the committee by naming the names of other ex-Communists. Meanwhile, the committee did charge her with contempt, and the possibility of going to prison hung over her for twelve months.
In 1957, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Watkins. The ruling was that the committee’s outing of former Communists served no clear legislative purpose. Although the ruling was somewhat narrow, it definitely covered my mother and was considered at the time a victory for the first amendment against right-wing Congressmen who were out to expose and punish people with Communist backgrounds.]
. . .Mr. Moulder. Why did you stop going to Communist Party meetings?
Mrs. Kling. Well, that is a complex question and it involves my personal life. But I will tell you the plain, unvarnished truth about it.
I met a young man with whom I fell in love and he strongly dis-approved of my membership and activities. And, well, then I just stopped going to meetings because of that.
That young man was my father. My mother died in 1976, and he died in 2008.
[finally, after many questions and speeches by the Committee counsel and my mother’s responses, I enter the picture]
. . .Mrs. Kling. I would like to get home to my little boy.
Mr, Tavenner. You may go right now as far as I am concerned.
There are other names in the hearing that I recognize. Ralph Shaw was my uncle, married to my father’s sister, Sarah. They never gave up on Communism. When Stalin’s evil was exposed, they turned their hopes to Tito and Yugoslavia.
A man named Schoemehl testified as an FBI informant who infiltrated Communist organizations. [Decades later, St. Louis had a mayor of that name. One wonders if there is any relationship.] At the hearing, he implicated my uncle Ralph.
You may have heard about a blacklist against former Communists who were screenwriters or actors. But blacklisting went well beyond Hollywood. Ralph, who was a machinist, was a was effectively barred from working, and the Shaws spent the rest of their lives on welfare. There were people calling for Washington University to fire my father, and it took courage for the Chancellor not to do so.
A culture of free speech does not mean that you have to share your personal space with people with whom you disagree. But trying to ruin their lives is quite a different matter.
Today, ironically, it is the left that is most eager to name, shame, and ruin people for espousing unpopular views. Have they not learned about the bullying that took place in the McCarthy era? Or do they think that anti-Communist bullying was bad because it was done by right-wingers, but left-wing bullying is good?
I have no sympathy for bullies. In my opinion, people who think that the answer to left-wing bullying is to support Mr. Trump’s transformation of the “bully pulpit” (original meaning: great fun pulpit) into a pulpit for bullying are wrong.
My Grandfather was a card carrying communist in the 1930s, mostly due to the Depression and his involvement in the labor movement, but gave it up after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Somewhat ironic that I think anyone today would call him a Nazi (he was quite racist), but he was generally about the equality and dignity of man and disliked Fascism/Corporatism/War/etc because they squashed the common man.
He never got brought in front of any committees (to my knowledge). What difficulties he might have had I was never told, though I would be surprised if there weren’t many he experience as a labor organizer. He wasn’t the kind to talk about that stuff or complain.
I sympathize with your views on bullying. As to the best way to deal with it, that’s contextual. It depends on the amount of good faith on the other side, shared moral understanding and interests, and their likely response to your actions. In some cases de-escalation makes sense. In others it’s counterproductive.
Wow! Interesting story, Arnold. Your mom had guts. My condolences on her early death.
Not surprised that Washington University did not fire your father, after all, he is the hero of the story.
So, is the argument that people have a natural right not to be bullied? That bullying is inconsistent with utilitarianism? Or merely the tautology that bullying is bad: a statement that is true by definition. Bullying is defined as “An act of intimidating a weaker person to do something, especially such repeated coercion.”
In TLP parlance, that coercion is bad, therefore bullying, defined as coercion is bad? Or that Trump is a barbarian and therefore bad? Or that bullying oppresses and is therefore bad?
The argument of utilitarian John Stuart Mill seems to be the most commonly held libertarian position: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
Yet Mill, who many libertarians claim as one of their own, provided an exception to general rules in his thought on barbarous nations: “To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error, and one which no statesman can fall into, however it may be with those, who from a safe and unresponsable position, criticize statesmen.”
Today, “barbarians” includes any dissenter from popular orthodoxies. And please note for TLP purposes that Mill was decidedly bigoted against conservatives whom he described as stupid and thus Mill the libertarian utilitarian has as much fear of barbarism as they do.
In the end, nobody owes anybody anything and it is of no concern how many virtues the intolerant would ascribe to themselves.
Their company is toxic and popular culture and orthodoxies are best rejected and ignored in favor of self-fulfillment.
Stirner says “It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.”
Mrs. Kling. I don’t know how full-bloomy it was. I believe it
was still going when I left.
Love it.
The thing is the “trying to ruin people’s lives” part is depending on third parties actions to actually have an effect. You have person A, who “names and shames” person B for espousing unpopular views, but then you have to have person C (often a large number of person Cs), who actually do the firing or ostracizing. Assuming person A isn’t outright lying, it’s not clear what is wrong with this situation. Does A have a duty to refrain from publicizing what they think are bad or harmful beliefs that B holds? Does C have a moral obligation to tolerate B even though they agree with A? How does A have any actual power to coerce C into firing/ostracizing B? And what if there is person D in the mix that the “unpopular views” happen to be about? What are C’s obligations towards D?
So would you approve of McCarthyism and blacklisting then, as long as it’s actual communist or former communist sympathizers being targeted? And you do realize that every human being on the planet holds views that nearly every other human being on the planet thinks are bad and harmful, right?
I’m not saying I “approve” of it. But it’s unclear what is wrong with private individuals and organizations declining to associate with or employ other individuals on the basis of their political beliefs. If private property rights entitle you to decline to serve a black customer in a restaurant, as some libertarians argue, then surely they entitle you to decline to employ someone because they hold offensive beliefs.
What about blackmail? Why should it be illegal under that logic?
Let’s say I have damaging or compromising, accurate information about you. If I spread it around in public, I would have the defenses of truth and free expression. If third parties decide to act in ways that harm your interest and relations (existing or potential) with them, then so long as they aren’t engaging in unlawful discrimination, then that’s their prerogative, right?
Now, let’s say I approach you and let you know that I have this information, but that I offer to sign an NDA in exchange for some consideration. Normally, an agreement to refrain from what otherwise is perfectly legal activity is also legal. But in the case of blackmail, it’s not. Sometimes people trot out the explanation that we don’t want to give people a ‘bounty’ or a financial incentive to go prying into other’s people’s private lives looking for dirty laundry, but actually, we already disincentivize or criminalize all sorts of unlawful invasions of privacy, but if the method of obtaining the information was not unlawful, then what’s the problem?
And what about tortious intereference more generally, both of existing relations and prospective advantages?
The point is, until quite recently, most cultures were very sensitive to this issue and recognized that spreading harmful information about people – everything from rumors to gossip to opinions to malicious libel – and even if completely true was anti-social behavior worthy of condemnation and penalty. The ladder of severity in Jewish religious law is Rechilut (gossip), Lashon hara (detraction, potentially accurate), and Hotzaat shem ra (false defamation), and all are prohibted. Some took the approach of considering any information any anybody to be a kind of personal intellectual property akin to copyright that another individual could not spread without consent of the ‘owner’ / subject, or as if the individual is considered to have the rights of ‘originator’ in the ORCON caveat for classified materials.
At a more general level, this is something the progressives who want to do away with free speech rights ought to worry about, in “the Devil turned round on you” sense. If we’re going to weaken the First Amendment to ban ‘hate’, then that potentially resurrects all these old speech-penalizing laws which prohibit spreading harmful information about anybody to anyone else, specifically to prevent the kinds of harms we associate with public disgrace.
Or do they think that anti-Communist bullying was bad because it was done by right-wingers, but left-wing bullying is good?
Yes, pretty much this, I think.
One thing I wonder — what would the attitude be from the progressives, conservatives (and libertarians) if the people being investigated by the committees had been, during the 30s and 40s, secret members of American organizations aligned with and taking money & direction from Hitler rather than Stalin?
If somebody came to you now for a completely non-political job like a machinist, but you knew they were a neo-Stalinist or neo-Nazi, should you feel compelled to hire them if otherwise qualified?
During World War II, people were indeed investigated for being involved with fascist organizations, and saying nice things about Mussolini or Hitler could easily get you fired. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was set up before WW II to investigate fascist sympathizers.
Much of what HUAC and its sympathizers did in the late ’40s and ’50s was an attempt to continue what had been done against “fascists” during a shooting war against them but now against “communists” in a cold war against them.
Congress did investigate fascist sympathizers in the 1930’s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee#McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_Committee_(1934%E2%80%931937)
In general, I’m not sure how I’d answer your questions. In general, I would not have any desire to work with or employ people from either camp, and I certainly sympathize with others who would hold the same attitudes, but I am certainly not in favor of some kind of Trotskyite system where those who don’t hold “acceptable” political opinions are cut off from mainstream society and effectively starved. Maybe the old Hate the sin, Love the sinner approach would be best, at least in the case of harmless idiots?
«but I am certainly not in favor of some kind of Trotskyite system where those who don’t hold “acceptable” political opinions are cut off from mainstream society and effectively starved.»
A bit off-topic, but if you are talking about the line “In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”, the context is
“The sole means of self-defense in these conditions is the hunger strike. The GPU answers this with forcible feeding or with an offer of freedom to die. During these years hundreds of Oppositionists, both Russian and foreign, have been shot, or have died of hunger strikes, or have resorted to suicide. Within the last twelve years, the authorities have scores of times announced to the world the final rooting out of the opposition. But during the “purgations” in the last month of 1935 and the first half of 1936, hundreds of thousands of members of the party were again expelled, among them several tens of thousands of “Trotskyists.” The most active were immediately arrested and thrown into prisons and concentration camps. As to the rest, Stalin, through Pravda, openly advised the local organs not to give them work. In a country where the sole employer is the state, this means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced with a new one: who does not obey shall not eat. Exactly how many Bolsheviks have been expelled, arrested, exiled, exterminated, since 1923, when the era of Bonapartism opened, we shall find out when we go through the archives of Stalin’s political police. How many of them remain in the underground will become known when the shipwreck of the bureaucracy begins.”
I was referring to that line. Thanks for the correction; I was unaware of the context.
The context is Trotsky writing The Revolution Betrayed. I strongly suspect that if he had come out on top after Lenin’s death, instead of Stalin, he would not have had any problem with exacting obedience through unemployment and starvation.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, Dalton Trumbo informed on people with fascist leaning to the FBI years before he came under suspicion for his own political views.
I wonder what % of modern day progressives wish the Skokie Supreme Court case had gone the other way. I think the general attitude of progressives toward communists isn’t like toward even conservatives, let alone fascists, if the New York Times is a good judge of mood of the moment. I doubt opposition to McCarthyism has as much to do with principled support for a free and open society as because communists are on ‘the right side’ even if they go ‘a little too far.’ They’re part of the popular front against fascism (real or imagined) and thus worth defending.
Communism was “un-American”. Today, the Dems are trying to make anti-communism socially and employment wise unacceptable.
There is always a question, in any tolerance based society, about how much to tolerate those who are not tolerant.
It’s clear to me that Christian Capitalist civilization has become very tolerant, thru Free Speech and other rights, of those who are intolerant of Christians and intolerant of market capitalism. Communists, in practice in power, have not shown themselves able to tolerate anti-communists.
The protests in Hong Kong are showing this. Communists, and Socialists in Venezuela, are clearly bullying people.
Claiming that Trump is “bullying people” seems a bit weak — he is often calling out the Fake News folk for various items of Fake News. He is insulting folk, like Sleepy Joe Biden. But I don’t think insults are the same as bullying. He makes many exaggerated statements that are not quite true; many that are lies. He’s a liar*. Many anti-Trumpers also claim he is a bully, or a racist, but don’t really have examples that show this.
*There’s no lie of Trump as bad as Obama’s oft repeated lie “You can keep your doctor”.
“Today, ironically, it is the left that is most eager to name, shame, and ruin people for espousing unpopular views. Have they not learned about the bullying that took place in the McCarthy era? Or do they think that anti-Communist bullying was bad because it was done by right-wingers, but left-wing bullying is good?”
I respect your strong feelings on this subject, in view of your mother’s background.(FWIW, I had great aunts and uncles who were involved in communism back in the 30s and 40s – a great uncle served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade). However, the naivete on display here is just breathtaking. Leaving your mother out of it, could people who seriously sympathized with the Soviet Union (or with Trotsky) really oppose “bullying” in principle? And putting the Soviets and communism aside, hasn’t “bullying” been a leftist tactic in this country since the 19th century? Hasn’t the hard Left, since Marx, sneered at concepts like fair play, due process, the rule of law and individual rights as smokescreens for exploitation and oppression, and taken as its main principle the advancement, by means fair or foul, of whatever “class” (once the Proletariat, now the holy triumvirate of People of Color, Muslims and LGBTQ) is deemed to be “progressive”? Whom do you think you’re talking to? Adlai Stevenson? Hubert Humphrey? Sorry, they don’t live here anymore.
As for Trump’s “bullying” – like most other politicians (the only exceptions being some prissy establishment Republicans), he attacks opposing politicians, establishment figures in and out of government, and powerful media organizations that attack him. None of those he attacks has anything to fear from him. He hasn’t sent anyone to jail or caused anyone outside the Executive Branch to lose a job. In fact, those he attacks seem to benefit from it (Reps. Omar and Tlaib are now untouchable in the Democratic Party). When he occasionally points out, in his inarticulate and rambling manner, that totally unrestricted immigration is not a benefit to most American citizens (when he is not saying he wants to increase legal immigration), it is not a personal attack on anyone, it is just true – unlike the Democrats’ blanket demonization of white Americans who don’t vote for them as racists. Trump stands out only for his use of Twitter, his 5th Grade vocabulary and his witlessly juvenile sense of humor. He is no more a “bully” than Obama or the Clintons. I think you realize that you can’t bring the Left to its senses by pointing out they are acting like Trump. They are much worse than he is (see e.g. the recent tweets by Warren and Harris – both lawyers – asserting that Michael Brown was “murdered”). Your problem isn’t really with “bullying” – it is with the existence of the whole realm of politics, an essential aspect of human life that libertarians vainly wish would just go away.
And, as much as I hate the Left’s current “de-platforming” jihad, is it really always wrong to show disapproval of someone’s political or moral views in ways that go beyond declining to share one’s “personal space”? Should a company refrain from firing an employee who publicly advocates, for example, bringing back slavery or Jim Crow or terrorism? At the height of the Cold War, was it wrong for movie studios to refrain from hiring screenwriters inclined to insert Soviet propaganda into middlebrow films? In any society, even one with a First Amendment, there is a range of socially acceptable views. One hopes the range is broad, but at some point publicly advocating for positions outside that range is going to have social and economic costs. What the Left is trying to do (and largely succeeding) is skewing the range of views far in its direction, so that “progressive” views previously seen as silly or harmful (gay marriage, transgender-ism, opposition to Israel’s existence, open borders, government control of the economy) are not only acceptable but mandatory, and opposition to them beyond the pale (see e.g. the recent attempts to frame Buchananite libertarianism as racism). This cannot be effectively opposed by saying (as Dr. Kling seems to say) that there should be no consequences (other than the withdrawal of personal friendship) for expressing an opinion.
You seem to conveniently forget the Trump support he though was
an opponent that he was too fat and to to go and lose weight.
Essentially all of Trump’s name calling is a form of bullying.
Yes, Trump attacks people he perceives (rightly or wrongly) as attacking him, often unfairly (e.g. Ted Cruz and wife). All politicians do this, Trump is just cruder and more juvenile in style than most. If you read carefully, you’ll see that I did not nominate him for sainthood. The explicitly racial inflammatory rhetoric of the Democrats (including the supposedly urbane and sophisticated previous president and the supposedly avuncular previous vice president) bothers me much more, although Arnold takes no notice of it.
If name calling is a form of bullying — the Dems, the college Professors, and the media are doing it far far more than Trump.
Look at his tweets, read transcripts of his speeches … listen to him (? I don’t like listening to most pols). He
“mostly says Hooray for our side”.
Making lists and getting people fired through on-line outrage mobs is still mostly new, and there is not yet consensus on how impolite, rude, and uncivil it is. I wish there were more successful libel suits against those who libel and slander others.
<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5JCrSXkJY<Hooray for our side.
To comment on the last paragraph:
Ultimately, our politics and our government involves a great deal of authority, power, and coercion. It’s inherently a form of bullying. Many argue that government simply shouldn’t have the enormous amounts of power and authority that they do, which I agree with. But in the meantime, it does. Some politicians are better than others, but they are all inherently authoritarian bullies in that they have that power over others.
Trump’s public caricature and demeanor is this obnoxious (and humorous) bully, but in some substantial ways, he’s actually *less* of a bully and *less* authoritarian than his predecessors. Instead of pushing for more authoritarian heavy handed laws and regulations, he’s pushing in the opposite direction with a war against regulations. A politician who has the superficial caricature of a bully but who governs with a soft touch is preferable to a politicians with a really kind superficial demeanor but who governs as more of an authoritarian.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. But just like we combat violent crime with violent police, we combat authoritarian politicians with less authoritarian politicians. Trump is the less authoritarian option in the present climate.
He’s not less authoritarian if you happen to be an immigrant or someone who wants to buy stuff from China.
He’s not less authoritarian if you happen to be an immigrant or someone who wants to buy stuff from China.
In our world of managed economies, both of these are subsidized affairs; some of us see Trump’s actions as restoring more of a market balance to the activities.
Some of us want to rationalize whatever Trump is doing because he’s the leader of our tribe.
Messr Kling: did Dr. Sol Londe suffer any repercussions for his non-testimony?
I come from a line of tax evasion accountants.
I am the first cousin who found the link. I would like to say that I would not have expected any less of Aunt Ruthie (Ann) regarding her testimony. She was so special, so loving–such a sweet smile. I remember once she said, “of the five siblings, I’m the youngest, the shortest and the smartest”. That was no brag, just fact!
I would like to mention an even more personal experience with McCarthyism. My father was born in Russia in 1904. They emigrated in 1911 so he did not speak English with an accent. He told everyone (except authorities) that he was born in Bradford, PA. One day I was snooping through some documents, and found his naturalization certificate. I marched into the living room and told him that he was a liar. He just sheepishly looked up at me and said, “You never lived through the McCarthy Era”. I didn’t see the logic with so many Russian immigrants in country, but this was his way to deal with it.