I am old enough (barely) to remember the era when Joseph McCarthy declared that there were communists within the government, the military, and Hollywood. He claimed that he was going to ferret them out and put them on trial. And he did, not in secret but on television, ruining numerous lives.
Finally, when McCarthy charged that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph N. Welch, employed a man who had once belonged to a communist front group, Welch responded, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” Then, in 1954, journalist Edward R. Morrow produced an exposé of McCarthy on his news program, See It Now. The public turned against McCarthy, and the Senate censured him; finally, he was stopped.
I don’t suppose saying the same words to President Trump would stop his relentless search for people to punish.
I remember that President Nixon had an “enemies” list, and, in fact, my father was on it. In the late 1960s, I was a government employee, working for the newly established National Endowment for the Arts. As the Vietnam War dragged on and protests began, I was asked to sign a petition that appeared in The Washington Post whose title was “Government Employees Against the War.”
Older staff members cautioned me that if I signed that petition, I surely would end up on someone’s enemies list and probably never get another government job. Perhaps I was on a list but didn’t find out about it. I went on to work for various city, county, and state governments in California and Oregon.
So, I get a sense of déjà vu as the nightly news keeps showing the latest Trump “enemy” as each one is either fired or indicted though none as yet have been tried or jailed.
Although the shock of ICE terrorizing anyone with brown skin has somewhat diminished, I am still appalled that we, the people, haven’t been able to stop labeling such people as “enemies,” although there have been strong protests in Los Angeles and Chicago. These raids remind me of Soviet Russia in the 1950s and ’60s when the KGB knocked on innocent people’s doors and whisked them away, with no fair trials to defend themselves. They were declared “enemies” of the state.
My years of protesting against enemy lists and denial of human rights have made the current situation seem like a repetition of this country’s past mistakes. When I hear some Republicans in Congress calling Democrats “communists, socialists, and Marxists,” I hear echoes of the McCarthy era. There is the saying (attributed to Winston Churchhill) that those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it. But I do hope that we are learning, will continue to learn, and do what we can to stop the making of enemies lists and labeling people “enemies.”
Judith Bernstein writes to the Sun from Arroyo Grande. Respond to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 13 – Nov 20, 2025.