The Fault Is in Ourselves
History is replete with examples of fearmongering to bring to heel those deemed unworthy.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
— William Shakespeare, 1599
From Salem to Selma, from the Red Scare to the Red States, we have rehearsed our anxieties with the fervor of a nation convinced that the barbarians are not only at the gate but already seated in the parlor, sipping our bourbon and rewriting our textbooks.
The weaponization of fear is not isolated to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue but finds its ways into ivory towers and Silicon Valley as a tried a true method of leadership by fiat: one that intimidates workers into obeying, rather inspiring collaboration by treating them with dignity and respect.1
Have You No Shame?
The McCarthy era, that operatic decade of denunciation and dread, was less a political moment than a moral pageant — a morality play in which suspicion wore the robes of patriotism and silence was mistaken for virtue.
The House Un-American Activities Committee has been replaced by congressional hearings livestreamed and digitally clipped for maximum indignation.2 The blacklist has become a blocklist, and reputational ruin arrives not by telegram but by trending topic.
What McCarthy understood — and what today’s avatars of moral panic have perfected — is that fear is the most efficient currency in a society grown weary of nuance. It buys loyalty, sells what used to be newspapers, and fills the empty spaces where civic imagination once lived.
In both epochs, the machinery of retribution is not built on evidence but on insinuation. The whisper becomes the warrant; the accusation, the verdict.
Leadership Requires a Conscience
Leadership in such times is not a matter of charisma but of conscience. The temptation is always to join the chorus — to denounce louder, to posture nobler, to assure the mob that one’s own virtue is unsullied.
But the lesson of every age in which fear becomes policy, is that the true leader is the one who resists the seduction of certainty. Margaret Chase Smith, who stood alone in the Senate to rebuke McCarthy in 1950, did not speak because she was brave; she spoke because she was tired of cowardice masquerading as patriotism.3
Similarly, media moguls who command ever-greater market share of conglomerates — as they seek to avoid scrutiny among pending mergers and acquisitions — silently applaud and high-five each other as footage more ludicrous than the previous day’s airs on their platforms.
Where is our modern-day Edward R. Murrow, who broke from his typical reportage to offer a commentary directly to the American people in the March 9, 1954 broadcast of See It Now?
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another.
“We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.
“As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
“The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully.
“Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ Good night, and good luck.”
Broken Illusions and Mirrors
The culture of fear thrives on the illusion of control — on the fantasy that if we can only silence enough voices, punish enough heretics, and purify enough institutions, we will be safe.
But safety is not the goal of democracy; freedom is. Neither is safety the goal of the corporation; growth is.
Both freedom and growth, as every generation must relearn, are dangerous. They require trust, humility, and the courage to be wrong.
[Click the links to explore those topics more deeply]
The half-remembered, half-forgotten lesson of McCarthyism should not be seen as a cautionary tale but as a mirror. The face we see is our own — grimacing with suspicion, flushed with righteousness, and longing, always, for the comfort of certainty.
The leader who would guide us through such a landscape must be willing to break the mirror, to scatter the shards, and to say, with humility and hope, that the truth is not a weapon but a light.
Should we choose to not stand up for our convictions and instead feel around blindly in the dark, then the fault is indeed in ourselves.
Theres so much to learn,
Related
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“Five takeaways from Pam Bondi’s tense, partisan Senate hearing,” BBC, October 7, 2025
See “Being a Leader Means Having a Moral Conscience,” which contains Sen. Smith’s Declaration of Conscience:
“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
The right to criticize;
The right to hold unpopular beliefs;
The right to protest;
The right of independent thought.
The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.”
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