“Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the ‘Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?’ But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did—if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather—surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
It’s rather rum that a period of about nine years years in American history wherein life was made unpleasant for a five-digit population composed of Communist Party members, employees of the federal government, employees of the motion picture studios, and employees of higher education was in the history curriculum of British schools.
Ever wonder why America’s enemies aren’t plagued by DEI, gender dysphoria and a whole host of social contagions meant to bring down a society as America is?
Couldn’t China or Russia use just a little Diversity??
I’ve told my sons that growing up, it was McCarthyism and the Red Scare that were America’s Great Sin, at least in terms of pop culture and education. Racism and slavery and such were known and taught, but they were simply the sins of the world that the US had gotten over. But there was no excuse for McCarthyism. And those who spoke out against such things as communism or socialism were often, and not too subtly, boxed into the same group as McCarthy.
In 1938, Bishop Sheen told a rally in New York’s Carnegie Hall that Americans had been too tolerant of man’s inhumanity to man:
“We were silent before when 2,000,000 kulaks met death and 60,000 churches were closed by an atheistic government in Russia; we were silent before when 20,000 churches and chapels were desecrated, burned and pillaged and when 6,000 diocesan clergy were murdered in Spain. … Those who cannot pull God down from heaven are driving his creatures from the face of the earth.”
I’m seeing a trend today that drives home Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s thought.
Are these shooters of today motivated by a political party and hate, or are they mentally ill?
Maybe both. (?)
This last tragic event in Michigan, yesterday, has many guessing.
Witches and Warlocks?
Satan is not running short on stooges to rid “creatures from the face of the earth.”
Exorcisms for witches before and now. Capital punishment for serial killers. Holy water on the devil. Miraculous Medals for all people.
Lewis states that witches tend to:
kill their neighbours
or drive them mad
or bring bad weather
The Lefties threaten to
kill the unborn, old, and unwanted
force others to affirm gender and other madness
are (at least) obsessed with weather
I’m not for burning the Left at the stake, but I’m sure not for standing by and pretending they are benign!
McCarthy had support from the Kennedys. The true shame is the way the opponents of Trump have sought to destroy him for having the temerity to beat the Hildebeast. In doing so, he has torn down the curtain and exposing them to the world.
Hollywood has always had its Communists. Look at Hollywood now. Garbage TV shows, garbage movies, garbage music. YouTube videos of a lawn care guy mowing an overgrown field get higher ratings.
Last night I watched a video of a young man from Minneapolis swap out a bad automatic transmission and replace it with a 5 speed manual in his girlfriend’s BMW.
Top that, Hollywood.
[…] and News:From Harvard Yard to Southern Charm: Students Flee in DEI Exodus – Gary Isbell at TFPIt’s Not a Witch Hunt If There Are Real Witches – D.R. McClarey, J.D., at The American CatholicThe Radical Mediocrity of Curtis Yarvin – […]
I’ve told my sons that growing up, it was McCarthyism and the Red Scare that were America’s Great Sin, at least in terms of pop culture and education.
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In my experience, teachers of American history had little to say about it, in part because the school year ran out before they got to the post-war period and in part because they had other things to talk about. i can recall made-for-television movies / miniseries about it – one in 1974, one in 1977, and one in 1980. One was about the Rosenbergs, one about McCarthy himself, and one about Robert Oppenheimer. I think it was much more an item in trade books and magazine journalism, and the market for that sort of thing at that time was modest. I recall reading about Oppenheimer and McCarthy because there were brief features about them in Time-Life books.
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(Unless my memory is failing me, the treatment of the Rosenbergs and Oppenheimer in that oeuvre was sympathetic and that has been largely discredited in the intervening years).
teachers of American history had little to say about it, in part because the school year ran out before they got to the post-war period and in part because they had other things to talk about.
By the time I was in late elementary, I heard about it. In pop culture it was also a thing, and I recall not a few different shows would have episodes with nods to the period. By Middle School and High School it was often a ground point for discussions around a variety of topics relating to freedom and democracy and its threats in several different classes. College, too. That was also during the Reagan years, when I always detected a subtle implication that Reagan was ushering in the real Big Brother (it was around 1984 after all). Though oddly enough, I remember it beginning to wane during that my time in college, especially the later years.
Oh, and the treatment of the Rosenbergs was also mentioned frequently, and never in a good way.
It amuses me sometimes when people talk about the “McCarthy Era,” as if Senator Joe McCarthy were ever, really, the leading spokesman against Communism.
It would be more accurate to call it the Sheen Era, or the Era of Pius XII. But no Communist sympathizer would want to draw attention to the real leaders, because it would force them to listen to their arguments.
It was easier to lampoon Joe McCarthy, or Richard Nixon, for their many faults, real or imagined. But McCarthy and Nixon, and Whitaker Chambers, were right about Soviet spies in the State Department, including Alger Hiss.
Does anyone still think that Hollywood was or is free from the influence of communism?
i attended a suburban high school about a five hour drive northeast of where you’re living. One of the history teachers was on one of the suburban Democratic committees. Another had an office separate from the group office of the history and English teachers where he had a poster on the wall on ‘The New Freedom’. Admirer of FDR, dismissive of HH. IIRC, he allocated a few minutes to Alger Hiss, et al in one lecture.
Oh, and the treatment of the Rosenbergs was also mentioned frequently, and never in a good way.
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There was oral testimony from one person fingering her as an accomplice to her husband’s spy ring. For this she received a capital sentence.
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Sol Stern and Ronald Radosh were publishing the preliminaries of their research in magazines as early as 1979, including the conclusion that Julius Rosenberg ran a Soviet spy ring.
Was there no evidence of actual witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts? Tituba, the “Indian,” Arawak, or African salve from Barbados, may well have practiced some non-Christian pagan or voodoo rituals. This kind of thing does leave people open to demonic influence.
Every Catholic diocese has priests appointed as exorcists. Or at least they are supposed to. And the need has never been more obvious than it is today.
There were exorcisms in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and in every century since then.
But how could Protestant Puritan, clergy and lay people respond? Did they ever think of educating Tituba in the Faith? Baptizing her?Teaching her to repent of violations of the 1st Commandment?
They had no priests, no Sacrament of Penance, no Rite of Exorcism, if it were needed. It never seemed to occur to them to deal with a possible demonic influence through ordinary spiritual means. Would Puritans ever think of blessing a house with holy water?
No. It was all handled, and handled badly, by the courtroom, the jail and the hangman’s noose.
While many modern Americans dismiss demons as fairy tales, many others actively invoke them, and practice various kinds of witchcraft, superstition, neopagan religion, occult rituals and fortune telling.
We may have more witches than Communists in Hollywood.
Was there no evidence of actual witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts?
None. The hysterical, or play acting, teen age girls who testified condemned individuals who were enemies of their families and who had land that their families wanted. Other victims were those who had expressed doubt about the whole circus. By 1693 the hysteria had faded, “spectral evidence” was no longer admitted, of the 26 people tried that year, all but three were acquitted, and Governor Phips pardoned them. The shameful, murderous episode was at an end.
Following the Salem witch trials, there was a wave of revulsion at the guilty verdicts in 1692. Few doubted at that time that witches did exist, but many attacked the fairness of the trials, especially the concept of “spectral evidence” which allowed the accusers to testify as to what demons purportedly told them about the accused. Many people found this admission of supernatural hearsay to be not only fundamentally unfair but preposterous and feared that the accusers had been simply settling old family feuds with the accused.
Samuel Sewall, who would rise to be Chief Justice of Massachusetts, published a public apology for his role in the trials in 1697:
“Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family, and being sensible that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem, he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all his other sins, personal and relative. And according to His infinite benignity and sovereignty, not visit the sin of him or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land. But that he would prowerfully defend him against all the temptations to sin for the future, and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of His Word and Spirit.”
Far be it from me to state definitively that Kamala Harris is a witch, but she does love Venn Diagrams! Coincidence?
I already said that the events of Salem were handled badly in the courtroom. But also, that it was the wrong place to handle it in the first place.
The Puritans were crippled by not having the sacraments and prayers of the Catholic Church. They had very few spiritual weapons in their arsenal, and little or no missionary experience. How many Native American tribes from Massachusetts were converted to Christianity by the Puritans?
They were not afflicted with the modern, secular rejection of all things supernatural, that dismisses even the possibility of demonic activity. True. But they had very little in the way of dealing with it, or even discerning whether it might be present or not.
Even without the hysterical overreactions, the preposterous “spectral evidence” and the bad judicial decisions, the Puritans didn’t even seem to think of curing or healing a possible spiritual problem. Only punishing it, even by hangings.
Did Tituba bring some pagan rituals with her from Barbados? Quite possibly, although it was never really proven in court, despite a coerced confession, and the accusations of several silly girls. In this sense, a lawyer is justified in saying there is “no evidence” that would stand up in a just court. But a reasonable suspicion remains.
Are those kinds of rituals spiritually dangerous? Quite possibly. This possibility is dismissed out of hand by our contemporaries, even as many other contemporaries plunge recklessly into every kind of superstition and paganism. With very bad results.
And some contemporaries still think there were never any Communists in Hollywood or the State Department.
1997 McCarthyism was clearly in our history text book under the Cold War chapter for my finals. Fast forward 2025 and my daughter prescribed English text for her finals is The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. The topic has never really gone away.
When John Wayne was asked by Michael Parkinson about his support for “blacklisting” communists, he stated that he did no such thing and instead only stood together with other actors who were proud to be Americans and that this was necessary to prevent radical liberals from taking over Hollywood. Wayne also pointed out that the “blacklisted” actors found work later on, and if they weren’t getting as much work as they liked, that was true before they were “blacklisted.” Parkinson fires back that it is ridiculous to think that liberals could take over Hollywood.
The received wisdom is that Wayne was in the wrong here, that the blacklisting of commies was one of the worst sins in the history of the nation. But everything he was saying was true, and we’ve seen the takeover come to pass. What’s particularly ridiculous looking back at the interview is Parkinson’s attempts to say that allowing commies in film is just a matter of getting along; surely they will respect the views of the right as well. Now moderns on the left routinely dismiss John Wayne as a supposed symbol of bigotry, hatred, etc. So much for just getting along.