Good Night & Good Grief

Ketterhagen Residence, Veterans Day 2012

Once again, Ketterhagen's got his crazy on. Phil has apparently fallen victim to recent attempts by some rightwing extremists to turn history upside-down by rehabilitating the reputation of Senator Joseph McCarthy -R, WI. you can read about it here in the Burlington Standard Press, with commentary to follow: http://myracinecounty.com/?p=14972

It seems Mr. Ketterhegen objected particularly to the donation of a DVD of the movie Good Night and Good Luck, a movie that recounts how newsman Edward R. Murrow exposed McCarthy for what he was a liar, a bully and threat to American freedoms.

Standard Press Excepts: He (Ketterhagen) said “Good Night, and Good Luck” vilified McCarthy, and didn’t address the historical context of the senator’s behavior. “Correct info should come from the Venona Papers which were released in 1994 from the Russian archives which shows McCarthy was totally correct in his findings,”

Ketterhagen also said at the meeting that he had reviewed teaching materials in the past, and had found a disproportionate amount of communist or socialist authors.

“I’m not going to allow the teaching of a philosophy, or a ‘left’ thing,” Ketterhagen said. He also held up a number of films he personally brought to the meeting, saying that most of the board would consider them too biased toward the “right” for use in the district. When asked, Ketterhagen declined to give the names of the films. End Excerpts

Notice that Ketterhagen not only echos McCarthy with his vague accusations regarding communist/socialist authors and what philosophies he is "going to allow", he also cited the Venona Papers, the very documents used by rightwing revisionists to attempt to justify McCarthy's behavior. Well, below is an article from the Wall Street Journal that demonstrates just how wrong the sort of upside-down thinking Mr. Ketterhagen is swallowingis , but how dangerous it is with regard to our potential to repeat the tragic mistakes of our past. After all, there certainly has been no shortage in the past few years of people of Mr. Ketterhagen's ilk making false and hate-filled accusations at our President of being a communist or a socialist.

WSJ Article: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB120882522444233275

Excerpts: "The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures," Lamphere said. "He made charges against people that weren't true. McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused."

During the hearings, McCarthy failed to substantiate his claims that communists had penetrated the Army. He did, however, insinuate that Fred Fischer, a young lawyer at Hale and Dorr, the law firm representing the Army, was a communist sympathizer because he'd been a member of the National Lawyers Guild at Harvard Law School. Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg had also been a member of the group, which was alleged to be a communist front.

Upon hearing this accusation, Joseph Welch of Hale and Dorr, responded, "Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or recklessness." When McCarthy continued to hound Fischer, Welch said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

A Senate committee concluded that McCarthy's behavior as a committee chairman was "inexcusable," "vulgar and insulting." On Dec. 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67-22 to censure him; on May 2, 1957, McCarthy, age 48, died of acute hepatitis, widely believed to be a result of his alcoholism.

As a top Justice Department attorney, John L. Martin prosecuted scores of spies during a long career, and read many of the FBI's most secret raw files on historic espionage cases, including the files on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Judith Coplon, Alger Hiss and Rudolph Abel. "While Venona later confirmed and expanded upon what the FBI knew about Soviet operations in the U.S.," Mr. Martin says, McCarthy used "the umbrella of national security to justify his outrageous practice of besmirching reputations of loyal Americans."

Efforts to vindicate McCarthy overlook the fact that he did not help the cause of dealing with the spy threat. Rather, he gave spy hunting a bad name. In sanctioning McCarthy's intimidating tactics and dishonest charges, revisionists dangerously invite history to be repeated.

Once again we can only conclude that Phil Ketterhagen is not only wrong, he's a nut and an embarrassment to the Burlington Area school District.