Sometimes You feel like you are re-living history. More to come on this subject at a later time, for now I beg you read this. Ponder this, commit it's lessons to heart.
--------
Arthur Miller and the Crucible.


Taken from Wikipedia:

Miller himself has stated that he wrote the play to comment on the parallels between the unjust Salem witch trials and the Red Scare from 1948 to 1956. Under McCarthyism, the United States was terrified of Communism's influence. Like the witches on trial in Salem, Communists were viewed as having already silently infiltrated the most vital aspects of American life and security, presenting a clear and present danger to the community at large.

Political dissidents at the time were regarded with suspicion, and, to many under the influence of the Red Scare hysteria, presented a direct threat to national security. The implication of a person's name offered up to the House Un-American Activities Committee by a testifying witness carried the same weight as irrefutable evidence of guilt, and any refusal to name names by a witness was a clear sign of a Communist conspiracy. Miller, seeking to protect his business and personal friends from the negative outlook it propelled, and admitting in private his own desire to keep his inner-conscience and sense of self inviolate, refused to testify to the Committee and was blacklisted by the American entertainment industry.


Many of Miller's peers, fearing the wrath of the US Congress and the US courts, provided the names of their associates to the Committee in an attempt to save themselves from public and professional disgrace. Most of these accusations were procured out of fear and were largely uncorroborated and had no legal basis of proof. Miller, portraying a stark similarity between the collaborators of both the McCarthy era and the Salem witch trials, depicts cowardly neighbors accusing each other falsely to save themselves from the high court of Salem. To Miller, only those who refuse to cooperate to such a system of plain injustice even to the point of death, most notably John Proctor and the seven condemned villagers who hang with him for their silence, hold onto their honor and sense of self and die as vindicated martyrs.

Most of the characters in "The Crucible", including John and Elizabeth Proctor, Judge Danforth, and Abigail Williams, actually did exist, and were involved in the Salem witch trials. However, the historical personages were in most cases very different from their counterparts in the play. For example, the play's John Proctor is a farmer in his thirties or forties, Abigail Williams is a teenager, and the two are depicted as having had a love affair. The real Proctor was an elderly tavern keeper and Abigail Williams was only eleven (and of course there is no historical evidence of an affair between the two). This reimagining of ages and relationships — and many other variations from history — are dramatic license on Miller's part, who openly admits the liberties he took in the process of the play's creation. As Miller said, "The play is not reportage of any kind…what I was doing was writing a fictional story about an important theme."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“ It was to dig a skeleton out of the closet of America. ”

—Arthur Miller, 1967

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox — if we deny the essence of racial equality, then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the. . . confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought." – Ford Fiftieth Anniversary Show, CBS and NBC, June 1953, "Conclusion." Murrow: His Life and Times, A.M. Sperber, Freundlich Books, 1986

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With these quotes and text I leave you for the evening. Now to steal a final quote.

"Good Night, and Good Luck"
-Edward R Murrow