This paper was based on a large survey comparing opinions of "political influentials" (drawn from Democratic or Republican national convention-goers in 1956) and the general electorate, mostly regarding rule of law, freedoms, and the nature of politics. I was weirded out by how many people agreed to the sometimes extremely illiberal statements.
"If congressional committees stuck strictly to the rules and gave every witness his rights, they would never succeed in exposing the many dangerous subversives they have turned up." (Agreement by 24.7% of political influentials and 47.4% of the general public.)
"The true American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." (12.8% and 34.6%.)
"Freedom does not give anyone the right to teach foreign ideas in our schools." (45.5% and 56.7%)
"In dealing with dangerous enemies like the Communists, we can't afford to depend on the courts, the laws and their slow and unreliable methods." (7.4% and 25.5%)
A book that contains wrong political views cannot be a good book and does not deserive to be published. (17.9% and 50.3%)So, granted, a lot of this surrounds anti-Communism; McCarthyism arguably didn't die with McCarthy, it just got quieter and wasn't re-challenged until later. And to be fair, various statements espousing free speech and opinion as values were quite broadly agreed with by the general population (though that butts up in practice with the last statement quoted above).
But how does any of that even contextualize:
The majority has the right to abolish minorities if it wants to. (6.8% and 28.4%)The only even slightly comforting thought I can make up about this result is that maybe the agreers meant "has the right" in a descriptive rather than normative sense.
I'm also surprised by how close the "our way of life is being threatened" statement is to the modern phrasing used in stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment.
Who says we Americans are losing sight of our country's core values?
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