“Senator, may we not drop this?…You’ve done enough.  Have you no sense of decency, sir?  At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

The speaker was Joseph N. Welch, chief counsel for the United States Army—then under investigation by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for alleged Communist activities.

It was June 9, 1954, the 30th day of the Army-McCarthy hearings.

And it was the pivotal moment that finally destroyed the career of the Wisconsin Senator whose repeated slanders of Communist subversion had bullied and frightened Americans for four years. 

Joseph McCarthy

Today, however, other Americans should be asking themselves: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” 

Like self-described Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs.

On January 6, 2021, Biggs was a member of the Proud Boys, a Right-wing terrorist group which violently attacked the nation’s Capitol Building.

Their goal: To prevent the counting of Electoral College votes—which, as they knew, would establish that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden had legitimately won the 2020 Presidential election.

On August 31, 2023, Biggs received a prison sentence of 17 years. He qualified for a terrorism sentencing enhancement because he tore down a fence that stood between police and rioters.

Biggs sobbed as he was sentenced.

He pleaded for leniency to take care of his daughter and cancer-stricken mother: “I wanted to see what would happen. My curiosity got the best of me. I’m not a terrorist. I’m one of the nicest people in the world.”

Joe Biggs

And like Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney from November 2020 to January 2021. 

She repeatedly claimed that the “election was stolen and President Trump won by a landslide.”

On December 4, 2020, Ellis met state lawmakers in Georgia to persuade them to overturn the 2020 election results.

Indicted for her election-overturning efforts, on October 24 she tearfully pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting false statements: “As an attorney who is also a Christian, I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously and I endeavor to be a person of sound, moral and ethical character in all of my dealings.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse.”

Jenna Ellis

And like ex-President Donald Trump. 

He’s facing four criminal indictments as well as civil trials for:

• Inflating his worth to avoid taxes;
• Misclassifying hush money payments to women during his 2016 campaign;
• Inciting a mob of his followers to overturn the results of the 2020 election; and
• Hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.

Altogether, he’s facing 91 felony charges.

Rather than facing up to his lifetime of criminality, Trump chose to portray himself as a heroic victim—by comparing himself to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison in South Africa.

On October 23, addressing a rally in Derry, New Hampshire, Trump said he would go to prison like Mandela:

“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela because I’m doing it [running again for President] for a reason. We’ve got to save our country from these fascists, these lunatics that we’re dealing with. They’re horrible people and they’re destroying our country.”

 Donald Trump

Among the characteristics of a Fascist regime:

• Corporate power is protected and labor power is suppressed.
• Rampant sexism.
• Cult-like worship of an “infallible” leader who never admits mistakes.
• Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.   
• Disdain for intellectuals and the arts not aligned with the fascist cause. 
• Loyalty to the leader is paramount and often more important than competence.
• Obsession with national security, crime and punishment.
• Fostering a sense of the nation under attack.

Trump’s four years in the White House can be accurately described as meeting all of these definitions of a Fascistic regime. 

* * * * *

Clearly, the word “hypocrisy” meant nothing to Joseph McCarthy—just as it means nothing to Joe Biggs, Jenna Ellis and Donald Trump.

But it should mean something to the rest of us.

In feudal Japan, men who publicly disgraced themselves knew what to do. The samurai code of Bushido told them when they had crossed the line into eternal damnation.

And it gave them a way to redeem their lost honor—seppuku. With a small “belly-cutting” knife and the help of a trusted assistant who sliced off their head to spare them the agonizing pain of disembowelment.

In the armies of America and Europe, the method was slightly different: A pistol in a private room.

Considering the ready availability of firearms among Right-wing Republicans, redeeming lost honor shouldn’t be a problem for any of these people.

But of course it will be. It takes more than a trigger pull to “do the right thing.”

It takes insight to recognize that you’ve “done the wrong thing.” And it takes courage to act on that insight.

In people who live only for their own egos and wallets, such insight and courage will be forever missing. They are beyond redemption.

Their lives give proof to the warning offered in Matthew 7:17-20:

“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”