{"id":159337,"date":"2025-03-27T08:18:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T08:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-march-27-2025-patriotic-speeches-margaret-chase-smith\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T08:18:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T08:18:05","slug":"americanstudies-march-27-2025-patriotic-speeches-margaret-chase-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=159337","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: March 27, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Margaret Chase Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[250 years
\nago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or
\ngive me death<\/a>!\u201d speech to the
\nVirginia Assembly<\/a>. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that and four other
\npatriotic speeches!]<\/p>\n

On why we
\nshouldn\u2019t misrepresent a 1950 Senate speech, and why it\u2019s well worth
\ncelebrating nonetheless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout
\nher long and impressive life and political career, Margaret Chase Smith<\/a> (1897-1995) was
\ntwo things in roughly equal measure: a groundbreaking woman in American politics,
\nincluding the first woman to serve
\nin both houses of Congress<\/a> and the first to have her name placed in
\nnomination for the presidency at a major
\nparty\u2019s political convention<\/a>; and a prominent figure and voice in the
\nRepublican Party, both in her home state of Maine<\/a>
\nand on the national landscape. There\u2019s of course nothing wrong with her being
\nassociated with both of those histories, and indeed I would say the opposite\u2014too
\nmuch of the time we view our most pioneering figures as somehow outside of our
\npolitics, and reversing that trend would help us understand how everything
\nin our history is political<\/a>, even if (or rather especially because) it also
\nhas the potential to transcend politics. <\/span><\/p>\n

The single
\nmost famous moment in Smith\u2019s political career, her June 1, 1950 \u201cDeclaration
\nof Conscience\u201d speech<\/a> to the Senate, perfectly embodies both of those
\nlayers. It most definitely represented a Republican Senator\u2019s perspective on
\nboth the Democratic Truman administration and the upcoming presidential
\nelection, as illustrated by lines like: \u201cThe Democratic administration has
\ngreatly lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the
\nthreat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russia
\nthrough key officials of the Democratic administration\u2026.Surely these are
\nsufficient reasons to make it clear to the American people that it is time for
\na change and that a Republican victory is necessary to the security of the country.\u201d
\nSmith, a moderate Republican throughout her career, had previously been an ally
\nof President Truman<\/a> on various issues, and so these political and electoral
\nstatements were significant ones and can\u2019t be overlooked when we remember Smith\u2019s
\nspeech.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet Smith\u2019s
\nspeech also and crucially transcended
\nsuch partisan political concerns<\/a>, offering one of the earliest public critiques of Senator Joe McCarthy<\/a>
\nand in the process making a critical patriotic case for a very different vision
\nof the Senate, the US government, and American ideals. It did so through
\nperhaps her most famous lines, \u201cAs an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist
\njust as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist\u2026.They are equally dangerous to
\nyou and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation
\nrecapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead
\nof our ourselves.\u201d But it also did so through her argument for \u201csome of the
\nbasic principles of Americanism,\u201d including \u201cThe right to criticize,\u201d \u201cThe
\nright to hold unpopular beliefs,\u201d and \u201cThe right to protest.\u201d Throughout Of
\nThee I Sing<\/i> I make the case for both criticism overall and protest
\nspecifically as core characteristics of critical patriotism, and I\u2019m not sure
\nanyone has made that case more potently in a political setting than did
\nMargaret Chase Smith on the Senate floor. <\/span><\/p>\n

Last SpeechStudying
\ntomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Speeches you\u2019d highlight?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[250 years ago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or give me death!\u201d speech to the Virginia Assembly. So this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that and four other patriotic speeches!] On why we shouldn\u2019t misrepresent a 1950 Senate speech, and why it\u2019s well worth celebrating nonetheless. Throughout her long and impressive life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[13299,11350,7095,4274,38865,1358,63679],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-159337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-americanstudies","tag-chase","tag-march","tag-margaret","tag-patriotic","tag-smith","tag-speeches"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: March 27, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Margaret Chase Smith - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=159337\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: March 27, 2025: Patriotic Speeches: Margaret Chase Smith - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[250 years ago this past Saturday, Patrick Henry delivered his \u201cGive me liberty or give me death!\u201d speech to the Virginia Assembly. 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