End in Sight

There is great rejoicing these days among liberals who say that the storm centering around Senator McCarthy has at last blown itself out to sea, or at least out of the newspapers. The "ism," they claim, has become a "wasm," and only time and a little effort are needed to clear away the debris. This attitude, appealing as it may be, underestimates the damage wreaked in the last few years--damage that cannot be repaired so long as legislative supports for hysteria remain unexamined, in the statute books.

It is probable, of course, that there will be lax enforcement of laws passed during the period--at least while international tensions remain at their present low cbb. But if McCarthyism was an unfortunate product of Cold War fears, what is to prevent the same hysteria from reappearing with a toughening of the Soviet line? The Landys and the Ladijinskys may get their commissions and keep their jobs now, but would they be so fortunate if the Cold Peace were once again the Cold War? Clearly, more than the Geneva spirit is needed to safeguard the rights and liberties so recently attacked.

One method of consolidating recent gains is for Congress to pass new laws regulating both itself and the Executive Department. If Congress would once and for all set legal curbs on one-man committees and bring the safeguards of the courtroom into the committeeroom, it could profit from the relaxed climate of opinion. In addition, a full review of the Administration's security system would go a long way toward ending that program's injustices.

There is a whole area, however, in which new laws would do very little good. For there are already laws on the statute books that have no terminal dates, dates when Congress can reconsider its actions. Of course, court action is one way to review laws--as in the case of an appeal to the Supreme Court by 360 citizens asking for the voiding of the Internal Security Act of 1950. But the Court can rule only on a law's constitutionality--not on its wisdom; Congress itself must evaluate the wisdom of its own actions.

A date of expiration--say two years hence--placed on such laws as the Internal Security Act of 1950 and the Communist Control Act of 1954 would force Congress to prove the continued need for anti-subversive laws enacted during the last few years. Ideally, Congress should repeal portions of these laws that may have injured the non-Communist more than the true subversive. Yet even the present period of freer speech and fewer book-burnings cannot erase the usual Congressional dislike of making an about-face to repeal its own laws. Regardless of the particular merits or demerits of these and other anti-subversive laws, Congress should review the laws in the light of changing conditions. Already the change in Communist tactics may very well have rendered portions of these laws either inadequate or obsolete. Just as selective service laws are valid only for a limited time, so Congress should place a date of expiration on all present and future laws designed to combat internal subversion.

Since world conditions change so rapidly, no one can predict what type of anti-subversive law will be needed in two years. A terminal date would force Congress to re-examine laws enacted in the middle of a storm that may well have passed.