Talking Back To a Bully

Some people just don't know when to quit. 

In 1954, Joseph Welch, as a counsel to the U.S. Army, was working to defend the Army in a dispute with Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Army accused Roy Cohn, a chief counsel to a investigatory committee McCarthy served on, of trying to give preferential treatment to a former McCarthy aide, leading McCarthy to charge back that the accusation was made in retaliation for his investigations of Communist infiltration in the Army.  Welch had planned to use a young lawyer named Fred Fisher to help him in the ensuing Army hearings until Fisher told him he had been a member of the National Lawyers Guild, a liberal lawyer's group suspected of being a Communist front.  Welch replaced him with another lawyer in his firm, though Fisher would stay with the firm.  McCarthy, though, learned of Fisher and named him as a Communist sympathizer in one of the hearings over the matter, and on national television.

Welch would have none of it. "Until this moment, Senator," he said, "I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad."

McCarthy persisted, and Welch finally asked him rhetorically if he had any sense of decency in him.  It finally happened; someone talked back to McCarthy.  One of the most embarrassing eras in American history was over.

Fast forward to 2012. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, spoke to day and offered the "meaningful dialogue" the NRA had promised to address the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  He blamed the media for misrepresenting the NRA and supposedly pushing a message of violence and ignorance  and he blamed violent video games and action movies for the many mass shootings in America in recent years.  Then he offered his solution to stopping gun violence - more guns.  He advocated posting armed policemen at every school in the country and encouraged the arming of faculty as well.  Just as McCarthy continued to push his witch hunts against suspected Communists, LaPierre continued his own crusade against gun control advocates.

The only way to confront a bully, as Joseph Welch proved, is to come right out and talk back to him.  And in that spirit, I'd like to say this to Wayne LaPierre:

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

 You can always spot a bully when you see him.