Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
What has become of our collective sense of justice and decency?
Dear Editor,
On June 30th 1954, during the Army-McCarthy hearing, there was an exchange of words between Republican communist hunter McCarthy and the Army’s chief legal representative Joseph Welch.
McCarthy had launched an attack on a young man who was employed in one of Welch’s office, insinuating that the young man had communist connections. In his response to Senator McCarthy’s insinuations Welch said, “Until this moment Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness”.
When McCarthy did not cease, Welch interjected with, “Let us not assassinate this lad any further Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency Sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency left?”
That exchange and the chagrined response of Welch has become memorialized in the American psyche as representative of good, moral, ethical and principled inflicting a verbal spanking on boorish, unethical and descent.
I never for one moment believed that there would come a time in the history of my country when we would experience the need to respond with that level of chagrined incredulity to the boorish, unethical and indecent conduct of the state and its political and governmental appendages.
The Crime Chief’s comment that he is targeting the victim of a predatory sexual encounter in an investigation calls for a national outcry of, “Until this moment we do not believe that had gauged the propensity of the political state for cruelty and callousness. “How much more abuse does this state intend to inflict upon this young lad and his mother in its zeal to protect one of its own, and cover up behaviour that it should be condemning and prosecuting? Is there no sense of decency remaining in this political administration? Is there no sense of shame remaining in anyone in this political administration?”
What kind of a nation have we become that the welfare of our kids has to take a back seat to the predatory indulgences of those connected to the ruling party in Guyana? What kind of a nation have we become, that a political state that ignored the criminal circumstances involved in the recording of the conversations of the Chief of Police, suddenly become more interested in the circumstances behind the recording of unethical conduct by a named individual, rather than the very conduct of that individual?
Yes indeed we have crossed the Rubicon. We have crossed over into bizarre dimensions of surreality, where the absurd has become the norm and rule, truth has become a crime punishable by ostracization or worse, decency has become an obsolete concept jettisoned to the social dustbin of our collective conscience, and justice for many remain, in the words of Robert Nesta Marley, “An illusion to be perceived, but never attained”. God help us, for surely Guyana has lost its way.
Robin Williams
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