Words come more easily to him than juiceless sentences

From a 1954 BBC radio broadcast commissioned while actor Peter Ustinov (1921-2004) was working in America, on the anti-communist witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-57), which were wracking Hollywood:  

'To the outside observer there is nothing particularly striking about the Senator - there is no fire, no perceptible fanaticism, and curiously no oratorical powers. Words come more easily to him than juiceless sentences, which is normal; but even words fall grudgingly from his lips - his eyes, meanwhile, having all the dispassionate intensity of a lion who is having his own private troubles gnawing a knuckle. His voice is plaintive by nature, and trembles obediently when a particularly emotional tone is ordered by the brain. On other occasions, it tries the elusive intonations of sarcasm, sounding much like a car with a dying battery, and even attempts the major key of jocularity when bonhomie is called for, but it is a sad laugh, and one which does not invite participation.

It is as though he had cheated the physical restrictions placed on him by nature, and had trained the very shortcomings of his equipment into weapons. His own evident lack of wit makes him impervious to the wit of others; his own inability to listen makes him immune to argument; his own tortuous train of thought wears down the opposition; his crawling reflexes, his unnaturally slow and often muddled delivery force quicker minds to function at a disadvantage below their normal speeds. And yet, cumbersome as is the Senator in action, his changes of direction, like those of the charging rhinoceros, are often executed with alarming ease. A mind trained in all the arts of tactical expediency urges the ponderous machinery on its provocative way.

Whenever he is compelled to admit that he doesn't know, he does so with an inflection suggesting that it isn't worth knowing. When ever he says he does know, he does so with an inflection suggesting that others don't - and won't. This then is the outward face of the man who has heard voices telling him to go and root out Communists and this is the face of a man who recognizes his potential enemy in everyone he meets. Like a water-diviner, he treads the desert with a home-made rod, and shouts his triumph with every flicker of the instrument, leaving hard-working professional men to scratch the soil for evidence.

No one who has enjoyed an argument, no one who has entertained challenging doubt, no one who relishes an unfettered view of history and of the current scene, could possibly be a communist. But anti-communism is no creed - democracy is no creed - it is a vehicle for the enjoyment of freedom, for the ventilation of thought, for the exercise of mutual respect, even in opposition. This is the heritage which has given debate its laws. This is the heritage which is traditionally so near the heart of this immense republic, and for which so many of her sons have died.

When anti-communism attempts to become a creed, it fights with the arms of its enemy, and like its enemy, it breeds injustice, fear, corruption. It casts away the true platform of democracy, and destroys the sense of moral superiority without which no ethical struggle is ever won.

This majestic land, these United States, know by instinct in fact they have often taught us from more venerable parts that democracy can never be a prison - it is a room with the windows open'.

- Peter Ustinov, Dear Me, Harmondsworth, Middx., 1977, p.248-9