WITNESS TO HISTORY

I was born on April 12th 1925 and in 2010, as a witness to about one third of American History, I have tried to pass on to friends and family a few of the lessons learned through war and peace, depression and prosperity and political hope and despair.

With our nation now pregnant with violence, in my opinion in our ninth month, and about to deliver some horrendous act that hopefully will shock rational citizens into demanding an end to politically motivated venom, I recall the year 1951.

Julian Bryan, of the International Film Foundation, invited me to lunch at the University Club on New York's Fifth Avenue, and standing in the window we watched the homecoming parade of General Douglas MacArthur returning from Korea after being fired for insubordination by President Truman who refused to allow the use of nuclear weapons against the Chinese.

I was alarmed viewing the welcoming ticker tape parade for an obvious demagogue, a glory seeker, a political General violating the tradition of the American military to be subordinate to civilian leadership. He seemed to threaten everything we fought for in all our wars. The survival of our democracy.

Wise old Julian, the first producer I ever worked for, reassured me. "I'd give him about twelve months, he said. "No more."

And Julian's confidence in the common sense of Americans was well-placed. In less than one year, at the Republican Convention where MacArthur expected to be nominated for President, he received one vote. One vote after speaking to a cheering joint session of Congress....one vote after addressing West Point Cadets about the sacred traditions he had violated.

"Old Dug-out Doug" spent the rest of his career in a Waldorf Astoria suite giving advice that no one followed. A tragic hero later romanticized by Gregory Peck in a popular film.

There then appeared "Tail-gunner Joe"....a phony war hero....the alcoholic Senator Joe McCarthy who said he found 178 communists in the State Department, including General Marshall, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson, greatly damaging for several years the important business of our government.

He made the most of our Cold War fears, intimidating government officials, the military, and dissenting politicians whose political careers he could destroy by one false
accusation they were "soft on communism."


Thanks to Republican Senators Flanders of Vermont, and Margret Chase Smith of Maine,
this demagogic Senator was censured by his fellow Senators and died in disgrace destroyed by our nation's sense of fair play and his bloated, alcohol poisoned liver.


And so today I wait with high hope that the next Senator Flanders, and the next Margret Chase Smith, will break ranks with their fellow Republicans and cry out against the destruction of our two-party system.

Without a loyal functioning opposition party there can be no democracy.




Norman Weissman