Question

How do McCarthy’s references to Abraham Lincoln at the beginning and end of his speech support his argument?

Answer 1

1. What would be the reason for beginning this speech with areference to Abraham Lincoln? ... Locate a quotation that supports each of the following pointsMcCarthy uses to forward his beliefs.

Answer 2

Senator Joseph McCarthy delivered the Wheeling, West Virginia speech on February 9, 1950. Right there he reminded Abraham Lincoln’s phrase “when a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.”

This argument was a key moment in McCarthy speech because he grabbed the audience’s attention and made a clear point from the beginning. As Lincoln's did in his “Lyceum Address”, Senator McCarthy warned that the danger to the U. S. was not foreign menaces but domestic.

The speech was delivered in Lincoln Day, and when he stated that they were there to “celebrate the one hundred forty-first birthday of one of the greatest men in American history”, he wanted to reinforce that Lincoln was an outstanding man who influenced America and warned about the internal problems of the country.