Fifty six years ago Margaret Chase Smith was the Republican Senator from Maine. She was the first woman to serve in both the House of Representatives and The U.S. Senate, and the first woman elected to any federal office from that state. She became the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party convention in 1964. She stepped into the national spotlight in 1950 when she presented her, "Declaration of Conscience," on the Senate floor in which she criticized the tactics of McCarthyism. Below is the summary from the end of that speech. Does what she warned the country about then have merit when applied to our present political situation? 1. We are Republicans. But we are Americans first. It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country. Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed to that confusion. 2. The Democratic administration has initially created the confusion by its lack of effective leadership, by its contradictory grave warnings and optimistic assurances, by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home, by its oversensitiveness to rightful criticism, by its petty bitterness against its critics. 3. Certain elements of the Republican Party have materially added to this confusion in the hopes of riding the Republican party to victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance. There are enough mistakes of the Democrats for Republicans to criticize constructively without resorting to political smears. 4. To this extent, Democrats and Republicans alike have unwittingly, but undeniably, played directly into the Communist design of confuse, divide and conquer. 5. It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques -- techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretchasesmithconscience.html
