Once again it is Saturday Night and time to revisit some of the great moments in American film, moments that have both inspired and defined the American experience.

There is little doubt that one of the greatest and most quoted speeches in film was Spencer Tracy’s questioning of Frederic March in Inherit the Wind. As a play and then a movie, Inherit the Wind was a fictional recreation of the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” that pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan. In the film Tracy plays the Darrow part (he is renamed Henry Drummond) and March Bryan (who is named Brady). Bryan/Brady comes off as a bit of a cartoon in the movie, to better set the stage for script’s defense of free speech.

Inherit the Wind is not so much an attack on anti-evolutionists and religious fundamentalists as it is a veiled thrust at Senator Joseph McCarthy. Released in 1960, the film’s final climactic scene where Tracy and March have it out resonates strongly today. Some have compared Tracy’s speech to Joseph Welch’s retort to McCarthy.

Brady: On what grounds?! Is it possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic?

Drummond: Yes. The individual human mind. In a child’s power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted “amens” and “holy holies” and “hosannas.” An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters. But, now, are we to forgo all this progress because Mr. Brady now frightens us with a fable?! Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says, “Alright, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance.” “Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder-puff or your petticoat.” “Mr., you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.” Darwin took us forward to a hilltop from where we could look back and see the way from which we came, but for this insight, and for this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.

Brady: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!

Drummond: Then why did God plaint us with the power to think?! Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man [that] raises him above the other creatures of the earth: the power of his brain to reason? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?

Brady: I don’t know. I am a man, not a sponge.

Drummond: Well, do ya think a sponge thinks?

Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!

Drummond: Do you think a man should have the same privilege as a sponge?

Just so you can compare the two here is the transcript of the Welch-McCarthy Exchange. Welch, by the way graduated from my alma mater, Grinnell College.

Mr. Welch: Senator, you won’t need anything in the record when I finish telling you this. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. When I decided to work for this Committee, I asked Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, “Pick somebody in the firm to work under you that you would like.” He chose Fred Fisher, and they came down on an afternoon plane. That night, when we had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case is about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, “Boys, I don’t know anything about you, except I’ve always liked you, but if there’s anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case, you speak up quick.”

And Fred Fisher said, “Mr. Welch, when I was in the law school, and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers’ Guild,” as you have suggested, Senator. He went on to say, “I am Secretary of the Young Republican’s League in Newton with the son of [the] Massachusetts governor, and I have the respect and admiration of my community, and I’m sure I have the respect and admiration of the twenty-five lawyers or so in Hale & Dorr.” And I said, “Fred, I just don’t think I’m going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out, and go over national television, and it will just hurt like the dickens.” And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I’m a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

A brief exchange between McCarthy and Welch follows which leads to the climactic moment.

Mr. Welch: And if I did, I beg your pardon. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.

Senator McCarthy: Let’s, let’s –

Mr. Welch: You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Together these two speeches speak to the fundamental importance of free speech in American society. Today, more than ever, we need to again assert this right even as some would curb it in the name of “fighting terrorism.”

Thanks to the American Rhetoric Website for both transcripts.

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