Thread by @JewhadiTM

Eviscerating Kavanaugh: @SenFeinstein, have you no sense of decency? chicagotribune.com/news/columnist…

Decency was once an important feature of the Democratic Party’s story. Long before Bork became a verb, long before Clarence Thomas was dragged through the mud because a conservative black man proved a profound threat to Democrats, the party held fast to the notion of decency.”

A lack of decency was something to be feared, something to be avoided for the health of the country.

ou’d hear about it in tales told by history teachers to frighten children, about Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy and his wild, unsubstantiated charges without evidence, of communists hiding under America’s beds.

Such charges ruined reputations and careers, and took advantage of public opinion that had been whipped up during those Red Scare days.

Many have forgotten those days ever existed. But I remember liberal and conservative professors (there were still conservative professors then), talking about McCarthy and what a danger his demagogic recklessness posed to the republic.

Out of many, one. Do they still teach that in school?

But that’s fraying, too, as we fight one another over things we never fought about.

We ignore “out of many, one” and instead we become immersed in our ethnic, class-based and racial or gender-identity politics. Melting pot America is constantly mocked.

Any talk of developing a national purpose will mark you as a fascist, to be shamed and kicked to the margins of society.

We become Balkanized just as the deconstructionists of the left intended.

We segregate into tribes, fighting for primacy and control over the federal authority, for what we can leverage in the way of benefits and power.

It is Chicago politics writ large.

About the last things we have left in common anymore are hot dogs and the Constitution of the United States, the document that is interpreted by the Supreme Court.

For years, Democrats — a party moving further and further to the left — have found it difficult to change the direction of the country through legislation. The Supreme Court became their legislative refuge. Losing control has become too much to bear.

In their zeal to delegitimize Kavanaugh and delay confirmation until after the 2018 midterm elections, the Senate Democrats seem all too willing to delegitimize the Supreme Court itself.

Even if his nomination is confirmed by the Republican majority, the as-yet-unsubstantiated allegation of an attempted high school rape will hang from his neck for as long as he lives. And from the necks of his wife and daughters.

Now it’s a freak show. And trashing the reputation of a man who has never, to my knowledge, exhibited even hints of such behavior is the way of our politics.

It is indecent that we accept this status quo.

Long before Kavanaugh was born, at a hearing in Washington on June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch, a lawyer representing the U.S. Army finally confronted Joe McCarthy on national television.

Welch offered a statement that ended McCarthy’s career.

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch said. “… You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

It was indecent then. It is indecent now.