Scripts - good night, and good luck (part 1)

1. This might just do nobody any good. At the end of this discourse a few people may accuse this reporter of fouling his own comfortable nest and your organization may be accused of having given hospitality to heretical and even dangerous ideas.
2. It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television. And if what I say is responsible I alone am responsible for the saying of it. Our history will be what we make of it.
3. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us then television and those who finance it those who look at it and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late.
4. We all editorialize. I'm just making sure we identify what We're giving them the information up front and we're asking them to comment on it.
5. I've searched my conscience. I can't for the life of me find any justification for this. I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument.
6. The story you are going to run tomorrow is without merit. So before you take any steps that cannot be undone I strongly urge you to reconsider your stand. These are very dangerous waters you are attempting to navigate.
7. If the Senator feels that we have done violence to his words or pictures and desires to answer himself an opportunity will be afforded him
on this program. Our working thesis tonight is this quotation: "If this fight against Communism has made a fight between America's two great political parties" "the American people know that one of these parties will be destroyed and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one-party system." We applaud that statement and we think Senator McCarthy ought to. He said it months ago in Milwaukee. The American people realize that this cannot be made a fight between America's two great political parties. If this fight against Communism is made a fight against America's two great political parties the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed and the Republic can't endure very long as a one-party system. On one thing the Senator has been consistent. Often operating as a one-man committee, he has traveled far interviewed many, terrorized some accused civilian and military leaders of the past administration of a great conspiracy to turn over the country to Communism. As I read his statement, I thought of that quotation, "On what meat does this our Caesar feed?".
8. The sale of that book was so abysmally small it was so unsuccessful, that the question of its influence. You can go back to the publisher you'll see it was one of the most unsuccessful books he ever put out. He's still sorry about it, just as I am. Well, I think that's a compliment to American intelligence.
9. Earlier, the Senator asked, "Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed?". Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare's "Caesar" he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
10. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We proclaim ourselves, indeed as we are the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."