The Conservative Movement Has No Decency

Framing Donald Trump as an indecent anomaly exonerates the movement and party that produced him.


One of the most storied, Aaron Sorkin-esque moments in American history — making the rounds recently after Donald Trump’s indecent comment on Khizr Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention — is Joseph Welch’s famous confrontation with Joe McCarthy. The date was June 9, 1954; the setting, the Army-McCarthy hearings.

It was then and there that Welch exploded:

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

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