A Rhetorical Analysis Of Margaret Chase Smith's Wheeling Speech

The year 1950 was a time of civil unrest amongst the people of America. The Red Scare swept through the nation, and the worry of a communist or a fascist living just down the street became a very real and very common fear of many Americans. This angst then grew due to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s claims in his “Wheeling Speech”, given on February 9th 1950, in which he proclaimed that he was in possession of a list of 205 communists working for the Senate Department. This alone sent a frenzy throughout America; the thought of the corruption communists could cause within the government terrified the American citizens. In this time of uneasiness, a brave Republican Senator, Margaret Chase Smith, takes the house floor and gives a remarkable speech that addresses her concerns about the government and the country. Smith implements allusions to McCarthy’s Wheeling Speech and all the damage caused by it, presenting a perfect case of misused power. She also demonstrates several anaphoras which create fluidity and connectivity within her speech and puts emphasis on her strongest points. In addition to the allusion and anaphoras, Smith uses indignant and zealous diction to scold the Democrats for the harm they caused America and bare fair warning to the Republicans that she would look down upon them as well if they were to put themselves above their country as their counterparts had. In her speech,

The fact that the government is implementing and furthering these fears, Smith feels, is preposterous on the grounds that these rights were the “basic principles of Americanism”. Smith then characterizes her idea of “Americanism”; she does this by displaying a strong anaphora supporting it with a syntax consisting of semicolons and individual paragraphs per line. Her characterization is that “Americanism” is,

“The right to