Patriots Without Integrity

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Patriots Without Integrity

“Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than he who is crooked, though he be rich.”
Proverbs 28:6 NASB


There is no doubting that Joseph McCarthy was a true American hero. McCarthy was born and raised in the small town of Appleton, Wisconsin. He dropped out of school, when he was fifteen, to help his family with their farm. Five years later, at the age of twenty, he enrolled in high school, graduating one year later. McCarthy went on to earn a law degree from Marquette University, and began practicing shortly thereafter.

By the time the United States entered World War II, McCarthy had worked his way into a judicial position, winning election as the Tenth District Circuit Judge for the State of Wisconsin.

That position as a judge qualified him, in 1942, to enter the Marine Corps, after basic training, as a second lieutenant. McCarthy went on to establish himself as an American hero, working as an intelligence officer for a dive bomber squadron, flying twelve combat missions, and ending a distinguished career as a Marine with the rank of captain.

By anyone’s standard, Joseph McCarthy was a true American patriot. His story is the quintessential American story. He ascended from rags to riches, farm boy to war hero, all in the name of patriotism. All because he believed in something so strongly he was willing to lay down his life for it. In fact, McCarthy’s entire identity was wrapped in the American flag and all it symbolized.

Ironic then, that McCarthy’s heroism was tainted by a complete lack of personal integrity.

Miriam Webster’s Online Dictionary defines integrity as

• firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values
• an unimpaired condition
• the quality or state of being complete or undivided

Captain McCarthy lacked character.

Morality.

Honesty.

Integrity.

He had a problem with lying, and not just a little bit. During political campaigns, after the war, he inflated his combat record excessively.

• Instead of truthfully disclosing his plum commission as a second lieutenant when he entered the Corps, he lied and told everyone he had enlisted as a “buck private.’

• Instead of being content with reality, and focusing on truth, McCarthy inflated his number of combat missions from twelve to thirty-two, a number required to receive the hero’s medal called the “Distinguished Flying Cross.”

• Instead of disclosing the true nature of a wound (received during an initiation ceremony for soldiers who crossed the equator for the first time), McCarthy chose to tell anyone who would listen that the wound was a product of hostile enemy air raids and combat crashes.

• Instead of being content with who he was, and what he had accomplished for his country, McCarthy wrote a letter of commendation for himself, and told everyone that his commanding officer had written it.

All of his lying paid dividends. He was so good at it that he won an election for U.S. Senator from an incumbent who had held the seat for decades. He was so good at it that, in the eyes of most Americans, he became an almost mythological patriotic caricature.

But way down deep inside Senator McCarthy’s soul, he realized that he was not a man who lived by the values and ideals he espoused. McCarthy was a man with a dark side.

• He won his Senate seat, partially, because he was funded by a pro-Communist union of radio and machine workers.

• He won his Senate seat because he accused his opponent of war-profiteering when, in fact, McCarthy himself was the one engaged in the practice.

• He won because he ran a campaign built on lies. He gave the American people what he thought they wanted, instead of who he really was.


You see, Senator McCarthy lacked integrity. His words and his actions did not match. He lied so often, and for so long, his entire life became a lie. He was a patriot with no integrity. A man who fought for an ideal he did not live.

Proverbs 28:6 says this:

“Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than he who is crooked, though he be rich.” NASB

A student was sitting in a garden with his grandfather. 'I am getting excellent grades', he said 'and all of my professors see a great future for me. And yet I am miserable.'

'A happy and wholesome life is like a perfect circle,' his grandfather replied, picking up a stone and a small tree branch. He placed the stone on the ground and, using the branch as a compass, drew a perfect circle with the stone at its center.

'When you have a fixed and steady center, then your circle will be perfect,' the grandfather said. 'However, if the center is constantly shifting, you will never be able to draw a circle. Today, many people receive a good education and establish a successful career, but never establish a spiritual center around which their life's activities orbit. Especially in these turbulent times one needs such a center. When you establish a center, my son, and it is clear, all else will follow.'

Jesus taught us much the same thing. In one of his parables about investing ourselves, He has the Master say to the man who invested his ten talents and made ten talents more, 'well done my good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over little, I will set you over much, enter into the joy of your Master.'

It is not important what is at stake because the honorable man will be honorable in either situation. Pressure only magnifies our essential character. That is why small things matter. The hope is that we are moving, both in big and small things, towards an integrity in our lives that comes from practicing what is honorable.

I think it’s important for all of us to realize that real integrity involves more than just doing what is right. The pursuit of personal integrity demands that we match right actions with right motives

And it is entirely possible to do right things with wrong motives.

McCarthy fought for more than his country. He fought for the fame and fortune a distinguished combat record could bring. He fought for personal prestige. And he was willing to sacrifice the ideal for which he was fighting in order to profit personally.

In layman’s terms, he was a sell-out.

A fake.

Phony.

He was a patriot without integrity.