Ezra Taft Benson “McCarthy in Retrospect,” Freemen Report

Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve, “McCarthy in Retrospect,” Freemen Report

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, whom I knew and admired, was essentially correct in the claims he made about the Communist threat to America. His most vocal enemies hated and feared him, not because of what he could do to them, but because they knew he was telling the truth about them. Had he been wrong, he would likely have been ignored. He was not vilified because he “smeared innocent people,” but because he identified and exposed guilty ones.

Fortunately, an increasing number of Americans now recognize that McCarthy was on the right track, and that our nation has suffered serious injury because we failed to heed his warning voice.

At Senator McCarthy’s funeral, Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, the Chaplain of the Senate, asserted: “This fallen warrior through death speaketh, calling a nation of free men to be delivered from the complacency of a false security and from regarding those who loudly sound the trumpets of vigilance and alarm as mere disturbers of the peace."

Joseph McCarthy’s fight was the fight for America. That same fight is going on under even more trying circumstances today, and each of us owes it to our God, our family, and our country to preserve until victory is achieved.

[signed] Ezra Taft Benson, Former Sec. of Agriculture

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