2018
Half a century ago Congress had the House Un-American Activities Committee as its watchdog to investigate threats to our republic from within and without. Initially given the cumbersome title of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities in 1934, in its early years HUAC performed its role admirably. But in its quest to rid the nation of suspected Communist elements during the Red Scare after World War II, it became overzealous and besmirched the good names and reputations of too many American citizens, ruining their careers and lives and ultimately leading to the dissolution of the committee. Its role was delegated to the House Judiciary Committee.
Today the nation is in a crisis, assailed by enemies both foreign and domestic. Russia meddles in our elections and disseminates false and divisive propaganda through social media while corrupting people with influence and access to those who walk the highest corridors of power. The mainstream media, the bedrock of democracy, is under constant assault. TV and radio talk show hosts and websites and blogs that are not bound by journalistic standards and ethics bombard the public with misinterpretations, misconceptions, and outright lies and cloaking them in the mantle of “alternate facts.” They are the disciples of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels, who claimed: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler declared: “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility because … in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie rather than the small lie since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
The Republican Party resorts to every trick it can think of to prevent certain groups of citizens from exercising their right to vote. State legislatures drag their feet for years to forestall court-ordered redistricting and ignore the will of the people even when they overwhelmingly vote for change on referenda. Lame duck Republican governors sign legislation to limit the power of their Democratic successors. The president sows racism and discontent every time he addresses his most rabid supporters and empowers white supremacists. Lobbyists exert undue influence on lawmakers, and only the wealthy who are also backed by the overstuffed wallets of special interest groups can afford to campaign for the nation’s highest offices. The rich continue to get richer, the income equality gap widens, and the working person is left with the dregs, not the fruits, of his or her labor. The nation is in its most polarized state since the Civil War.
Now that the Democrats will have the majority in the House of Representatives once again, perhaps the time has come to take back that responsibility from the House Judiciary Committee and resurrect HUAC or create a similar investigative committee to try and put an end to these activities that are unquestionably un-American. These words spoken by Abraham Lincoln a century and a half ago are just as true, if not truer, than they were back then:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggravated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”
The Republican Party Lincoln helped found is a perversion of its roots, having run the gamut from the Great Emancipator to the Great Communicator whose voodoo economics continue to have a negative impact on our financial well-being to the Great Prevaricator, whose buffoonery has made us the laughingstock of the entire world. I have no doubt that were he alive today, Lincoln would be ashamed of what his party stands for now. And unless citizens are made acutely aware of how they’re being misled and exploited by certain powerful wings of the Republican Party, these words also spoken by Abraham Lincoln may be the nation’s epitaph:
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”