Yes, political speech is protected. And again, as I’ve said in every post so far, it was not, is not, and should not be a crime to be a member of the communist party, or to espouse communist viewpoints.
But I think we’ve got a funny idea from Hollywood about what the HUAC hearings were all about. We’ve got the idea that people were going to jail for being communists, or being accused of being communists when they weren’t communists, or that the government forced the movie studios not to hire communists.
The truth is, no one was sent to jail for being a member of the communist party. The people who went to jail went to jail for contempt of congress, that is, they refused to answer questions about their membership in the communist party, and the membership of other people in the communist party. No one was accused by HUAC of being a communist except people who actually were communists, nor were people pressured to lie about whether people where communist party members. They were pressured to tell the truth. And the government didn’t blacklist the communists, the STUDIOS did, because they didn’t want to be associated with communism…not because they were afraid of the government, but because they were afraid of the public. They thought (and probably rightly) that people wouldn’t go to see productions by communists, just like today most people wouldn’t go to see productions by open racists.
And yes, there might have been pagans in colonial america. Or maybe not, but let’s stipulate it. But the witchhunts weren’t about finding real pagans and burning them. The vast vast majority of people persecuted during the witchhunts were not pagans, they were innocent of the non-crime of being pagans. The people persecuted during the Red Scare ACTUALLY WERE communists. Should they have been persecuted? See my first paragraph.
However, just because it wasn’t, isn’t and shouldn’t be illegal to hold certain political, economic, or racial views, that doesn’t mean that companies (especially entertainment companies) are obligated to employ people with odious political affiliations. OK, I understand that some people don’t consider communism as odious as the Klan. You don’t have to agree. But surely you agree that no one is obligated to employ a Klansman, or to refrain from calling a Klansman names, or to protect a Klansman from the disgust of others, or to keep former associates Klan membership secret.
If you can discriminate against Klansmen, who inarguably hold odious political views, then you can discriminate against Communist who arguably hold odious personal views. If you can’t discriminate against Communists, then you wouldn’t be able to discriminate against Klansmen. The point is not neccesarily that Communists are are bad as the Klan, although I beleive they are. The point is that people are free to make moral judgements about the political views of others. People are free to espouse questionable, even heinous political views, and we are likewise free to scorn, mock, and berate them for their pathetic vicious fantasies.
If being a communist was just like being a democrat or republican or libertarian, then why would anyone be under a moral obligation to keep that information secret? Is it, or is it not true that the communist party of the USA was run by and for the Soviet Union? Is it, or is it not true that many communist party members were spies for the Soviet Union? Is it, or is it not true that if the communists had their way, we’d all be slaves in some gulag right now instead of arguing whether to applaud when some ancient film-maker gets an award? Is it, or is it not true that the Soviet Union was a slave state that murdered as many of its own citizens as Nazi Germany?
