#1,068: Of Cowards and Conquerors, Paladins and Pissants

Nearly 76 years ago (June 1, 1950, to be precise), Maine Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith delivered a 15-minute speech on the Senate floor; she called it the Declaration of Conscience. Smith, the first woman to be elected to both the House (1940-1949) and Senate (1949-1973) began her brief address with words that, hauntingly, could have - and should have - been delivered on just about any day since The Fondling Father moved into the White House: “I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. 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. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership in either the Legislative Branch or the Executive Branch of our Government. . .” Senator Smith, who would eventually chair the Senate Republican Conference (1967-1973), managed to get 6 of her Republican colleagues to officially sign on to her declaration

Although never named in her brief speech, Smith - and just about everyone on the Senate floor - knew exactly what and who she was referring to: Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the fear, loathing and disunity he was spreading from “sea to shining sea” with his insistence that America was in the deep grip of a Communist conspiracy. McCarthy’s growing grip on the American public had begun in Wheeling West Virginia on February 9, 1950, when, in his address (known to history as the “Enemies Within” speech) to the Ohio County Republican Women’s Club he attacked the Truman administration and accused more than 200 Americans currently working at the State Department, of being members of the Communist Party. To be precise, the senator, who had long been looking around for a propelling issue through which he could make his political bones, held up a sheet of paper and said: "I have here in my hand a list of 205 - a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. Over the next weeks and months, McCarthy repeated this claim . . . the number of purported Reds changing with each speech or address. As obvious as this “inconsistency” (a nicety meaning “obvious prevarication”) was, no one had the guts to call him out for being a liar.

As his power and public presence grew, “Tailgunner Joe” added a 26-year old federal prosecutor named Roy Cohn to his staff. Cohn (1927-1986), who first gained fame as a prosecutor in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, became McCarthy’s ruthless chief counsel, and ultimately the key architect of investigations into alleged communists and gay federal employees (called the Lavender Scare). The longer Cohn remained with McCarthy, the worse the senator got; in terms of his lies, his brutal pugnacity, and his all too-obvious alcoholism. And, despite being asked behind closed doors to stop attacking colleagues, no one would publicly take the senator to task. They were simply too scared to go against him for fear of being smeared by the man they fully despised. Cowardice was rampant . . . until McCarthy met his match in the form of a soft-spoken Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch. In 1954, Welch was representing Fred Fisher, a young attorney from Welch’s firm (Hale and Dorr) who had been hauled before McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations and accused of associating with the National Lawyers Guild, which FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Roy Cohn’s former boss) swore was nothing more than a Communist front organization.

On June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the nationally-televised “Army-McCarthy hearings”, Welch attacked McCarthy, saying “Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to 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. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”

When McCarthy tried to renew his attack on Fisher, Welch issued his coup de grâce . . . which effectively ended the Wisconsin senator’s political reign of terror: “Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Shortly thereafter, with sanity and a modicum of courage restored, the senate censured McCarthy; in less than 3 years, he drank himself to death and died of a massive myocardial infarction. He was a mere 49 years old.

It has always seemed to me that the lesson here is that sometimes, it takes but a single person with courage and a moral compass in good working order to get others to join in on successfully taking down a monster.

And so ended the horrid saga of Senator Joseph McCarthy. But what of Roy Cohn? The young lawyer simply found himself another narcissist who, like his former mentee possessed similar character traits: high levels of impulsivity, low agreeableness, low conscientiousness, all but incapable of empathy, and an exiguous level of kindness or compassion. That man’s name was, of course, Donald Trump.

Soon after McCarthy’s downfall, Cohn returned to New York city, where he established himself in private practice at the powerful firm Saxe, Bacon & Bolan. In short order he became an unnamed partner in the firm, garnering a reputation for doing whatever it took to win a case. Cohn had many high-profile clients, including several organized-crime bosses (including Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and John Gotti); New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; and Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; he also served as lawyer for the popular New York City nightclub Studio 54. Two of Roy Cohn’s most notable and long-lived clients were New York real estate magnate Fred Trump and his son Donald. In 1973, Cohn defended them against charges of racial discrimination in their apartment rentals. A 1978 profile in Esquire Magazine (“Don’t Mess With Roy Cohn”) painted a portrait of him as “. . . a legal executioner - the toughest, meanest, loyalest, vilesst, and one of the most brilliant lawyers in America.” One of Cohn’s closest personal friends was Roger Stone . . . who would also play a significant role in Felon47’s political career, and in 2000 be sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for commiting crimes on his behalf. However, Stone would never serve a day in federal stir; his good friend DJT, by now the POTUS, commuted his sentence and later granted him a full pardon.

Roy Cohn taught his young friend who, years later would become president, that in order to succeed beyond his wildest dreams he must:

Never, ever admit defeat;
Aggressively (and expensively) litigate against any and every adversary;
Learn how to harness the power of exaggerations and outright lies;
Demand and expect total loyalty from everyone and anyone . . . but don’t show much to them yourself.
Live the life of a multi-billionaire, die broke, make sure you owe billions in back taxes. (As Cohn did).

Publicly, Cohn’s sexuality was an open secret.. Often referred to as “flamboyant” in media coverage, he spent decades surrounding himself with young, attractive men, and summered in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a long-standing destination for LGBTQ life. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 and died in the summer of 1986 from complications of the disease, although he insisted until the very end that he was dying from liver cancer. One can only wonder what kind of role Cohn might have played in a Trump presidency . . . Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?

Over the past dozen or more years Roy Cohn’s role in IT’s life has been taken over largely by “The Steves” - Bannon and Miller . . . the latter being POTUS’ longest serving political advisor . . . the man who has almost single-handedly godfathered the administration’s "take no prisoners” immigration policy. Miller, who has variously served as the White House Director of Speechwriting (2017-2021) Senior Advisor to the President (2017-2021), White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (Jan. 2025- ) and Homeland Security Advisor (Jan. 2025) has been described by the Washington Post’s former immigration editor Jenna Johnson as “ . . . an accelerant for the president’s most incendiary impulses, shaping the lives of individual Americans in nearly every realm.”

Miller’s personality, to a great degree, mirrors that of the late Roy Cohn. Both are/were incapable of admitting error or defeat; both are/were suffused with all-consuming arrogance and possess(ed) not a shred of empathy. They are/were, to a great degree, the puppet-masters (along with Steve Bannon and perhaps Elon Musk) who long pulled the Fondling Father’s public and personal strings. The lack of empathy is, to my way of thinking, the most alarming and disgusting of these “DNA transfers” . . . and helps answer 2 interlocking questions posed by so many: First, How can so many right-wing Christians (let’s call ‘em ‘MAGA Christians’) be so wildly supportive of the least godly, most obviously sinful president in American history? and Second, Why are nearly all Republicans incapable of speaking out against POTUS, his administration, his agenda or his singularly dreadful weltanschauung?

“Empathy,” which comes from the Greek ενσυναίσθηση (ensynaisthisi) is generally understood to mean the ability to understand, feel, and share another person’s perspective, emotional state, and experience. Empathy acts as a crucial foundation for human connection, social bonding, and altruistic behavior. It is a staple of both Jewish thought and practice (חֶמלָה khmelah), and for most Christians is fully aligned with the teachings and example of Jesus. But of late, more and more Christian Nationalists (the MAGA version of Christianity) have come to see it as being toxic; they argue that it can cloud moral judgment or be manipulated to advance policies they see as unbiblical. Indeed, two of the best-selling books among these Conservative Christians, released in 2024 and 2025, are entitled Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion and The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits. Even DJT’s on-again-off-again BFF, Elon Musk declared on Joe Rogan’s podcast that “. . . the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

The rise of MAGA Christian nationalism has seen empathy demonized as “sinful,” “dangerous,” “weak,” and even a tool of liberal manipulation. Calls for compassion toward marginalized groups are increasingly met with defensiveness or hostility. With the popularity of books like the two mentioned above “. . . driving this blatant move away from Christ’s message of radical love, justice and preferential treatment of the oppressed, MAGA Christians are able to sit comfortably in their bigotry as their neighbors are kidnapped and murdered in the streets,” said Bible scholar Mattie Mae Motl. The demonization of empathy, as so supremely role-modeled by IT, gives justification to a seeming majority of MAGA Christians to abandon their LGBTQ+ kids without feeling an ounce of guilt, and permission to fully bully, arrest, deport and even murder people on the basis of the way they look, the language they speak or the land of their birth. It also makes publicly calling out, criticizing or even questioning a president who fronts such beliefs an act of heresy. But remember: hate wrapped up in piety is still hate.

Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, there are many, many Republicans who think (and even say in hushed tones) that 47 and his sycophants are thorough-going embarrassments who are destroying democracy here at home and bringing America down in the eyes of the world. It is next to impossible to find a “regular” Republican (except those who have chosen not to run for reelection) who, like the late Senator Margaret Chase Smith, has the courage, commitment and moxie to call a spade a spade, a traitor a traitor, a sinner a sinner.

Whether we are reaching an inflection point in American - and global - democracy depends largely on who you talk to, what their current set of beliefs are, where they get their news from, and what frightens them the most. At this point, what frightens me the most is how many so-called “public servants” are more motivated by the absolute need to say or do nothing that will put them on the wrong side of a man suffering from pre-senile dementia and a regime they know deep down is callous, corrupt, cruel, crude, and cupidinous . . . than living up to what they publicly profess. Proclaiming words of the Divine while doing deeds of the depraved is sheer hypocrisy.

What lessens my fear is in knowing that there are far more paladins (fighters for righteous causes) in our midst than pissants (worthless, contemptible people filled with rage). Together, we must all identify the most courageous aspects of our being, while at the same time spurning noisome, despicable people and learning the necessity of getting out of our seats, and together, go about the job of doing deeds of empathy, sympathy and compassion for the good of our common future.