Enemies from Within Speech

McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” speech serves as a warning to his audience about the imminent Communist threat, and while this speech was directed at the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, the speech would inform and inflame the anti-Communist movement nationwide. The speech is delivered using emotive techniques such as oversimplification, apocalyptic rhetoric, and the rhetorical tradition of the jeremiad.

McCarthy begins his Wheeling speech with a gracious nod to the 16th president. With exalted language he refers to former president Lincoln as “one of the greatest men in American History” and calls the anniversary “a glorious day” in the scope of world history (829). In the following sentence, McCarthy draws a parallel between Lincoln’s laudable contempt for war and the prevailing desire for peace and disarmament in the postwar years. McCarthy argues, however, that this desire for peace is undermined by a brutal Cold War and armaments race. By presenting Lincoln as a pacifist, McCarthy produces a rhetorical feint that increases the dramatic effect of what follows. Moreover, McCarthy’s use of the phrase “peace in our time” is noteworthy in its striking similarity to the title of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s speech, “Peace for Our Time,” which was given to honor the Munich Pact signed with Hitler in 1938, a pact which Hitler promptly broke.