National loyalty — in question?

Back before World War II there was a civil war in Spain. A bloody and costly one. On the one side were the Nationalist fascists and on the other the pro-democracy Republicans who were, in turn, mainly pro-communist. Gen. Franco used the Nazi war machine to suppress the Republicans in the most brutal way. So, now here’s the question: Back then, since the United States declared that anyone with communist leaning was an enemy of the United States — all of which came to a head with Senator McCarthy in the early 1950s — what do you do as a nation about the thousands of good Americans who joined up to fight Franco and the Nazi war machine? Could you label them all communist? Hemingway as well?Part of the problem here is fear, not reason. We were terrified of the “red menace” in much the same way we are now terrified of the “Muslim extremists” and “Jihadi terrorists.” Yet not all the men and women who went to fight in Spain against Franco were communist, just as many of those Americans, Europeans and other civilized nations’ volunteers who went to fight against Assad in Syria (another fascist government) are neither religious fanatics nor terrorists.There is no doubt that the extreme elements at large from ISIL (or ISIS) or al-Qaeda, or Al-Shabab are, truly, terrorists and self-proclaimed as our enemy. However, that does not mean that everyone who goes to that war, planning to fight for what they think is right and just, can be categorized as terrorists. Was Hemingway labeled a Communist threat? Should he have been?Governments like to generalize and, yes, at times it is safer for the nation to start from the skeptical position: You went there, there are radical elements at work there, you may be tainted or corrupted by events and/or beliefs and may not be trustworthy as a citizen. It is a logical argument. However, that is tantamount to guilt before innocence. Should a journalist with access to ISIL be said to be corrupt because he allowed reporting, interviews, and thereby legitimized their existence and power? Is that journalist now an enemy of the state?Diligence, careful evaluation and above all our Bill of Rights need to be applied with pinpoint precision in the coming months. What we do not want is that most damaging of events to reoccur: we do not need another McCarthy — and in Congress these rabble-rousers are lining up to preen before TV cameras. What we need is more intelligence, in-depth investigation, careful police and security services’ fact gathering and, in the end, a rising of the banner of the Bill of Rights for the whole world to see. If a returning fighter did something wrong, let us have open court due process, not vigilantism by Congress. Those rights for every citizen are, after all, what makes our nation the most strong one on Earth.Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.