On Monday, CBS Evening News Plus anchor John Dickerson dished out another pompous commentary to wrap the show. This time, he used the 71st anniversary of lawyer Joseph Welch’s infamous scolding of then-Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) for having “no sense of decency” as a likely veiled smear on President Trump, his supporters, and their desire for toughness and law order the CBS host deemed “cruelty.”
Dickerson waxed poetic about Welch’s remark as having altered American history or something:
Some questions can stop a room and freeze time. 71 years ago today, Boston lawyer Joseph Welsh asked such a question. In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had been accusing Americans of communist ties with ruthless abandon. One target members of the U.S. Army, which contributed to the Army-McCarthy hearings, where, during an exchange, the senator targeting a young associate on Welch’s legal team. Welch, seeing the tactics which had ruined so many lives, aimed callously at one of his team, spoke out.
After that famous quote, Dickerson huffed the line “didn’t cite rules or legal violations,” but “something deeper, cruelty, and a loss of basic human restraint.”
This, Dickerson declared in a clear smear at the American right, has in modern times been “quoted to summon moral clarity, but the world it pierced in 1954 had scaffolding: norms of civility, shame, and mutual restraint.”
“McCarthy could be shamed because cruelty was still disqualifying. Now, cruelty is often reframed as strength. Authenticity. Welch’s appeal to decency wasn’t a demand for censure or cancellation. It was a call to self-governance, a recognition that decency is the minimum standard, and its absence is a kind of self-inflicted disgrace. Not a quaint set of rules for elites, but a matter of simple self-respect,” declared the man who wrote during Obama presidency the 44th President should “go for the throat” of Republicans.
Dickerson made a more direct call-out to the present by insisting the 1950s were a time when “public shaming had a scarcity value” and not “hundreds of viral clips a day.”
“Welsh’s rebuke found its purchase in the daily beliefs and self-enforcement of his fellow Americans. It was the unwritten code that made a society self-governing in the smallest ways. How one debated, how one conceded, how one listened without humiliating themselves or another. How one treated another human being,” he swooned.
These days? Dickerson fretted “cruelty...gets applause,” a problem “one for all of us to answer.”
Yes, Dickerson cares so much about decency he referred to Republicans as “cats and dogs,” fawned over Hillary Clinton as “ruthless,” called an Obama speech in 2024 “nourishment,” and smeared Americans in the Tea Party as “clownish” and “overhyped.” Or how about seeing partisanship around every corner? There was the time recently when he used Pope Francis’s passing to attack Trump or when he deemed spring 2025 a dour time in America because Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Therein lies the mantra of liberal journalists who come off like arrogant historians in the mold of Michael Beschloss or Jon Meacham. Indecency toward one’s adversaries are not actually smears if, in their own minds, they’re simply telling the truth.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from June 9, click “expand.”
CBS Evening News Plus
June 9, 2025
7:26 p.m. EasternJOHN DICKERSON: Some questions can stop a room and freeze time. 71 years ago today, Boston lawyer Joseph Welsh asked such a question. In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had been accusing Americans of communist ties with ruthless abandon. One target members of the U.S. Army, which contributed to the Army-McCarthy hearings, where, during an exchange, the senator targeting a young associate on Welch’s legal team. Welch, seeing the tactics which had ruined so many lives, aimed callously at one of his team, spoke out.
JOSEPH WELCH: Let us not assassinate this man further. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
DICKERSON: The question didn’t cite rules or legal violations. It accused McCarthy of something deeper, cruelty, and a loss of basic human restraint. Today, Welch’s question about decency gets quoted to summon moral clarity, but the world it pierced in 1954 had scaffolding: norms of civility, shame, and mutual restraint. McCarthy could be shamed because cruelty was still disqualifying. Now, cruelty is often reframed as strength. Authenticity. Welch’s appeal to decency wasn’t a demand for censure or cancellation. It was a call to self-governance, a recognition that decency is the minimum standard, and its absence is a kind of self-inflicted disgrace. Not a quaint set of rules for elites, but a matter of simple self-respect, like wiping food from your face. Another difference in the 1950s, public shaming had a scarcity value. There weren’t hundreds of viral clips a day. Welsh’s rebuke found its purchase in the daily beliefs and self-enforcement of his fellow Americans. It was the unwritten code that made a society self-governing in the smallest ways. How one debated, how one conceded, how one listened without humiliating themselves or another. How one treated another human being. Back then, cruelty disqualified you. Today, it gets applause. The question that raises is one for all of us to answer.