May 31st, 2025.

I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,

Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1st, 1950.

It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide

and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear.

I speak as a Republican.

I speak as a woman.

I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,

she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest,

and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were

stifling these basic American principles,

and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.

Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her,

led a faction that had cowed almost all of the Republican Party into silence

by accusing their opponents of

communism. Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation. She had seen the

effects of his behavior up close in Maine, where the faction of the Republican Party that supported

McCarthy had supported the state's Ku Klux Klan.

Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America, Senator Smith said. It has been so abused

by some that it is not exercised by others. Senator Smith wanted a Republican administration,

she explained, but to replace President Harry

...