‘We Need to Do McCarthyism to the Tenth Power’

For decades, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s name has been used as shorthand for the opposite of the aspirational ideal of civilized American politics. In the way that Kleenex has become interchangeable with tissue, McCarthyism, for many, is an eponym for the unjust, reprehensible use of political power. Indicating that anything resembled the tactics and smears of the late senator from Wisconsin has been enough to suggest that such behavior was out of bounds, with no rightful place in our modern politics. But now comes a small, influential group of hard-line…

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Are Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?

The Trump administration is carrying out a brazen crackdown on academic freedom: deporting students for writing op-eds, withholding funds from colleges that defy his control, and justifying it all as a response to anti-Semitism. Who is to blame for this? According to one popular theory on the left, the answer is liberals who have consistently supported free speech and opposed Donald Trump. The logic of this diagnosis has a certain superficial appeal. Many of President Trump’s authoritarian moves have been justified in terms of arguments that originated on the center-left.…

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Insisting Law School Students Respect 1st Amendment Is Akin to ‘McCarthyism,’ Bloomberg Columnist Claims

A Bloomberg Law columnist is upset that students at Yale Law School didn’t protest the First Amendment and shout down an invited speaker, James Ho, a Trump-appointed judge who sits on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 15, Ho spoke at Yale Law School, and according to Vivia Chen’s opinion essay, his commentary went uninterrupted by angry student protesters. Following closely on the heels of another Trump-appointed 5th Circuit judge, Kyle Duncan, being shouted down by Stanford Law students, the fact that Ho’s speech was able to…

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