On January 6, 2021, people throughout the world watched as a mob incited directly by the outgoing president, Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol. This was a classic attempted political coup to keep in power a government rejected in an election.
The history of coup attempts shows a disturbing trend: people whose ideas were too unpopular and repulsive to prevail at the ballot box have resorted to violent, extralegal and antidemocratic means to get their way.
But Dickstein, a Democrat from New York City who served in the House of Representatives from the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, conducted himself in public life with none of the refined elegance that his self-presentation suggested. At a time when Joseph McCarthy was still an unknown lawyer in Wisconsin, Dickstein invented the modern practice of naming names broadcasting the identities of suspected subversives without the slightest pretense of due process. If anyone can be credited (or blamed) with introducing the phrase “un-American activities” into the nation’s lexicon, it is he. An unusually shameless publicity hound in a legislative body full of them, Dickstein had a habit of inviting his antagonists to step outside and settle matters like men, once announcing such a fistic challenge to Rep. Thomas L. Blanton of Texas on the House floor. (Blanton appears to have declined.) ..