Criticism
Critics denounced the Committee as a "propaganda apparatus" to stoke anti-German and anti-Soviet fears, feeding the Red Scare and spreading misinformation about Soviet Russia.
The Committee attracted criticism from the public for its perceived overreach, and especially for publishing the names of those accused of association with communist organizations. One woman from Kentucky wrote to Senator Overman on behalf of her sister, who had been accused by Archibald Stevenson, criticizing the Committee for its "brutal as well as stupid misuse of power" and "gross and cruel injustice to men and women the full peer in intellect, character and patriotism of any member of the United States Senate". The Committee was compared to "a witch hunt" in one exchange with a witness.
Read more about this topic: Overman Committee
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)