A Declaration of Conscience

On June 1, 1950, a little-known freshman senator from Maine, Margaret Chase
Smith, gave a speech on the Senate floor.

Her Declaration of Conscience was a response to a speech made by fellow Republican Senator Joe McCarthy several months earlier. She didn't name him in the speech, but she spoke out strongly against fear-mongering and baseless accusations. She insisted on what she called "The Basics Principles of Americanism", noting that

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism.

• The right to criticize. 
• The right to hold unpopular beliefs. 
• The right to protest. 
• The right of independent thought. 

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. 

After describing Democratic failures in leadership, she objected to Republican responses:

I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny- Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. . . . I  do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.

I do not want to see the Republican party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system. . . .
As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves. It is with these thoughts that I have drafted what I call a Declaration of Conscience. 

The Declaration was cosigned by six other Republican senators.  Among the five points of the Declaration, the first and last speak directly to today:

1. We are Republicans. But we are Americans first. It is as Americans that we express our concern with the growing confusion that threatens the security and stability of our country. Democrats and Republicans alike have contributed to that confusion.

5. It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques-techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.  

Despite Smith's appeal to fellow senators, for the next few years McCarthy's power and influence grew. In 1954 he became chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and the subcommittee on investigations.

By May of that year he had pushed too far, and opinion began to shift. He was formally censured by the Senate, by a vote of 67-22, in December 1954, and widely ridiculed in the press. He died of chronic hepatitis and cirrhossis of the liver in 1957, at the age of 48, before finishing his second term in office. 

Margaret Chase Smith continued in the Senate until 1972 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President H. W. Bush in 1989. She died in 1995 at the age of 97.

This year on April 29, 75 years after Smith's Declaration of Conscience, Senator Angus King, also from Maine, delivered his own Declaration of Conscience on the Senate floor. King summarized Smith's 1950 speech, then said 

I fear that we are at a similar moment in history. And while today’s ‘serious national condition’ is not involving the actions of one of our colleagues, it is involving those of the President of the United States.

Echoing Senator Smith, today’s crisis should not be viewed as a partisan issue; this is not about Democrats or Republicans, or immigration or tax policy, or even the next set of elections; today’s crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that has sustained us for more than two centuries. . . . 

It’s important to emphasize that the danger I am describing isn’t based upon institutional jealousy, a loss of the prerogatives of the Senate, or the politics of Democrats and Republicans; it’s about the violation of the very deliberate division of power between the legislature and the executive which as I said is the heart of the Constitution. It’s there for a reason to see that power is not concentrated in one set of hands. It is the most important bulwark between our citizens and—let’s call it what it is—tyranny.

Senator King went on to explain the threat, clear at the end of April, even more clear now: 

To those who like the policies of the President and are therefore willing to ignore the unconstitutional means of effectuating them, I (and history) can only say, watch out:

Today, the target may be the undocumented or federal workers, but tomorrow (perhaps under a different King-President), it could be you.

Once this power is concentrated into one set of hands, it’s going to be very difficult to get it back and it can turn that power against anybody who displeases the monarch. So what can we do? What are the guardrails and how can we buttress and support them?

The first guardrail is the Congress itself, the part of our government actually empowered to define policy, appropriate funds, and oversee the actions of the executive. But unfortunately, the majority in Congress has thus far wholly abdicated these fundamental responsibilities and, thus far, has shown little inclination to even recognize the danger, let alone take action to confront it.

We could reclaim our power, however, by pulling back the trade authority (there’s a bill to do that), instituting vigorous oversight of the activities of DOGE to determine to what extent their actions compromise congressional intent, or holding the President’s nominees and his prized tax bill until he ceases his attempts to make policy unilaterally, including impounding congressionally authorized and appropriated funds. 

You know, do our job.

As citizens, we can do OUR job by demanding the Senate do theirs. 

Consider sending links or quotes from Smith's and King's speeches to your own US Senators. Quote or paraphrase King's summmary of ways to reclaim Senate power.

Here's a helpful spreadsheet I discovered for Congressional contacts.

Read more on this:

Dale Oak, Bulwark, May 29,2025: Remembering an Act of Courage and Conscience

Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, May 31, 2025: Letters from an American.

Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine, 2018: The Senator Who Stood Up to Josephy McCarthy When No One Else Would