Actually, It's Just Like the Old McCarthyism
By Leon H Wolf Posted in Democrats — Comments (56) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Every once in a while, some well-meaning liberal who is new to the site will demand to know why it is that we won't engage every one of their silly little talking points, as though we're missing out on what could be a very productive use of our time. What is at once painfully obvious about these liberals is that they've never had the displeasure of debating a liberal before.
Now, this site has got some high-class liberals who are generally given wide latitude. They bring fresh perspective, challenge us to "think outside the box" and question our perspective on the world. They are the exception to the rule. As a general rule of thumb, liberals instead try to win arguments by repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of its veracity. Eventually, through sheer exasperation, you concede what you consider to be a very minor point so that they will just! shut! up! and hopefully you can move the discussion forward. Sooner or later, however, you learn that any concession whatsoever is unwise, because that only tends to make them fixate on that issue even more, and thus a Known Fact™ is born.
There are two horrible things about Known Facts™. The first is that, in the mind of a liberal, they can never be killed. The second is that they have a tendency to rise uninvited to plague discussions with which they are wholly unrelated. You could be talking, for instance, about a Victims of Communism memorial, only to have the "Bush bungled the response to Katrina because he hates black people" Known Fact™ rear its ugly head.
And thus, I was not surprised at all to find that the Known Fact™ of McCarthyism (perhaps the all-time favorite liberal Known Fact™) has injected itself into a discussion of a newspaper article. (!)
The Washington Post article in question (I don't want to be redundant, but it IS important that we remember that a newspaper article is under consideration - as opposed to, say, Senate hearings, or criminal prosecution, or even disapproving frowns from people in high places) contained the following passage, which Armando apparently found objectionable. I've preserved all of his emphasis:
What Lieberman doesn't say is that many Democrats would view such an outcome as an advantage. Their focus on 2002 is a way to further undercut President Bush, and Bush's war, without taking the risk of offering an alternative strategy -- to satisfy their withdraw-now constituents without being accountable for a withdraw-now position.
Many of them understand that dwindling public support could force the United States into a self-defeating position, and that defeat in Iraq would be disastrous for the United States as well as for Mahdi and his countrymen. But the taste of political blood as Bush weakens, combined with their embarrassment at having supported the war in the first place, seems to override that understanding.
Apart from titling his response to this Congressional investigation newspaper article "WaPo's Ed Board Editor Practices The New McCarthyism," and calling the indictment article "McCarthyism" in the post, Armando further analyzes the passage thusly (in his usual erudite manner):
You no good SOB Hiatt. You have been irresponsible, grossly negligent, ingenuous and a Bush lackey on Iraq for 4 years now and you have the gall to write those words. You despicable McCarthyite cretin.
We're not supposed to say this anymore - but eff you. How dare you question the patriotism of people who are doing what YOU have failed to do - hold the Bush Administration to account? How dare you?
Your editorial page has always "clapped louder" at the behest of the Bush Administration. Now you dare to SMEAR Dems at the whistle of the worst President in history? How dare you sir?
As Joseph Welch famously said:
"You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Fred Hiatt should immediately resign his position. He has no credibility to comment on any issue.
Well, wow. I dunno, I would have thought that firing newspaper editors for expressing their opinion would have been a hallmark of... McCarthyism. But what do I know? Apparently, I don't get what McCarthyism is even supposed to be all about.
See, even though the decryption of the Venona cables has conclusively proven that McCarthy was essentially right, and there was in fact a massive infiltration of the federal government by the CPUSA at the behest of the Soviets, I thought that the beef liberals had with McCarthy was that he was really mean in the way he went about looking for these communist spies (who really existed). Intimidated the whole country, and such. I've never been clear how a single Senator in the minority party could wield such talismanic power over the whole country, but Known Facts™ are not supposed to be detailed things. The point of McCarthyism was, (at least I thought), that you lived in fear that any day you could be called before Congress to testify, or they might send some goons in FBI jackets to your door, et cetera, et cetera.
Apparently, however, I didn't understand at all. Apparently, McCarthyism was really all about having an editor for the Washington Post suggest that it might be to the political advantage of some members of your party if the U. S. lost the war in Iraq.
An aside - really and seriously, do you expect anyone to believe that Hiatt's point isn't true? I mean, you want us to believe that if the U.S. tucks tail and run, Nancy Pelosi and Teddy Kennedy are going to be all broken up about this? Be serious.
So, back on topic - apparently, the appropriate response to this unjust persecution newspaper editorial is that... what? Hiatt should be railroaded out of town? Because... because... it's McCarthyite to have a free press? I swear, I'm trying to follow, I really am.
Never, fear, however, I have found a few ways that Hiatt and McCarthy are, in fact, similar. First, in both cases, the basic substance of their claims was true. Second, the truthfulness of their claims led to overblown hysterical liberal screaming. Third, they were both accused of muzzling freedom of speech. Fourth, in response to this, they both had liberals fighting to muzzle their free speech. So really, I guess I can think of a lot of ways that Hiatt is a McCarthyite.
I just don't think any of those are what Armando had in mind.
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Actually, It's Just Like the Old McCarthyism 56 Comments (0 topical, 56 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Listen, I'm too young to have lived through the "McCarthy era," so having no firsthand knowledge, I admittedly don't know what the mood of the times was.
But I mean, come on, it's just so freakin' implausible, that things were nearly as bad as they are often made to seem. You know that the Republican Caucus in the Senate was in the 30s for most (all) of that time period? How in the world could a guy who wasn't even in a position of caucus leadership have injected fear and terror into the hearts of Americans? I'm sorry, it just doesn't fly with me.
Now, the guy may have been arrogant and overbearing, and he may have stretched the truth. He was, after all, a politician. But let's not pretend that he was some mythical monster for using Communism as a publicity issue. Especially considering, and here is my real point -
that he was essentially right. Are you disputing the accuracy of the Venona cables?
I think we need a Godwin's Law for McCarthy.
Hiatt's point was actually not that "liberals are traitors who want the terrorists to win." It was that some elected Democrats in Congress would see defeat in Iraq as an electoral boon. As far as I can tell, that's spot-on.
I want to make sure that you know I wasn't talking about your article Leon, I didn't make that clear originally.
But thanks. :-)
I was actually sitting here thinking of how such a "McCarthy corollary" might go.
I don't think anyone can reasonably dispute that Communism was a serious internal and external threat. Nor would I question that Communist Party members were, in fact, seeking to undermine our government and various of our institutions.
Of course McCarthy did not simply make up the threat of Communism. It was a real threat. The problem is that his accusations were largely indiscriminate, and that many innocent people ended up having their careers and lives ruined over McCarthy's accusations.
The fact that there were real Communists out there, and that McCarthy's shotgun approach may have even targeted a few of them, really doesn't excuse what he did. But I'm not really looking to disabuse any True Believers who may feel otherwise.
The first person to shout McCarthy on a blog is the actual McCarthyite?
I'm curious - given, of course, that McCarthy's job, as ranking member on his subcommittee was to deal with security threats in the federal government- if you know of any people, specifically, who had their careers ruined by McCarthy. I really am curious, I have no True Believer status about McCarthy at all - but while history has clearly vindicated the legitimate targeting of McCarthy's biggest fish - (Hiss, White, Rosenberg) - I never hear of folks specifically targeted by McCarthy who had their "careers ruined." If the Arthur Miller/Charlie Chaplin types had anyone to blame, it was the HUAC (which McCarthy obviously had nothing to do with).
arguement ad nauseum is not only a liberal disease.
I don't think that really says a whole lot. I mean, another terrorist attack on the US would probably be an electoral boon for the Republicans. That doesn't mean the Republicans sit around rooting for it to happen.
The thing is that victory and defeat are rather difficult concepts in the context of Iraq. I think these terms are defined far more precisely on any given day at RS, for example, than they have been by the Bush Administration. Many pro-withdrawal Democrats, for example, believe that our continued presence in Iraq is simply not bringing victory any closer, and therefore we should get out because there's no upside. Even if they're completely wrong on the merits, that's a far cry from rooting for defeat.
I don't see us reaching common ground here because one inescapable truth of politics is that everyone always believes the other side to be acting in complete bad faith. Officials of the other party never have any sincere beliefs, their motives are always the most cynical ones you can attribute to them. I could surmise that very few Republican lawmakers care one fig for whether the Iraqi people achieve a happy concord, but it's an unprovable assertion, so why even go there?
Was communism a real threat? Of course. Were there really traitors working in the United States? Of Course.
All of this doesn't change the fact that McCarthy was at his heart a facist. He went far beyond being arrogant. . He accused everyone who disagreed with him of being a communist, he organized book-burning. Along with Huey Long he was a would-be-dictator.
Nor was he a "true believer" in the anti-communist cause. Rather, McCarthy found communism around the time he was being investigated for serious ethics violations as well as being in serious jeopardy of losing re-election.
Obviously, it is only natural for us to have an original impulse of affection towards anyone who opposed the evil ideology of communism. But let us not forget, there was no bigger anti-communist than Hitler.
Sadly, it is sometimes the case that the enemy of our enemy isn't our friend.
but i don't understand the point of this post. i usually think of your posts as either about the "big picture" or about abortion (or both), leon...sniping about some post on dailykos seems kind of below you, not to mention kind of a diversion of your talent, considering the ridiculousness of the kos post...
you obviously aren't irate here, but you have to love invoking mccarthyism as criticism in outrage over a blog post invoking mccarthyism as criticism in outrage over a newspaper column. is this a meta-joke? :)
history has clearly vindicated the legitimate targeting of McCarthy's biggest fish - (Hiss, White, Rosenberg)
I don't know about that. If I'm not mistaken, Hiss was already in jail when McCarthy started making his accusations. And White was HUAC's doing, no?
And I don't get it either. I mean, I don't think anyone should be surprised that there's some shrill nonsense at Kos.
And heck, I'm a liberal.
McCarthy was an ass, but the only way he could wield such power was that there was not just a red "scare", as the revisionist would have you believe, there was a real "threat". BTW if anyone says the Rosenbergs and Hiss were not really spies, they don't know what they are talking about.
The main reason you still have so much outrage against McCarthy after all this time is because he exposed fellow travelers in Hollywood. Some of them lost their jobs, not because of McCarthy but because of the old studio system which blackballed them.
That's why even today they make movies about him, he is their great Satan. Like the Bourbons of France, the Hollywood libs have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
...try to win arguments by repeating the same thing over and over again, regardless of its veracity. Eventually, through sheer exasperation, you concede what you consider to be a very minor point so that they will just! shut! up!
This is precisely why I can't stand to listen to Sean Hannity for any extended period.
McCarthy is one of those topics like abortion. As soon as you say the word, the feeding frenzy starts up. I think the more important thing here is the behavior of Armando.
We have this charming myth in this country that our Fourth Estate are public servants devoted to finding and presenting objective truth. Certainly journalists see themselves this way. We Republicans have a great deal to say about what we see as pervasive bias in the MSM toward the Democratic side. Leon's post is a perfect example of this, since his starting point is the presumption that the media should simply tell the truth, objectively and without bias.
In his piece, Armando is proving (as he already has thousands of times) that his own starting point is completely different. To Armando and people like him, the job of the press is rather to present a partisan, biased point of view, viz. one that is friendly to the Left.
I have a feeling that both Armando and Markos would respond by saying that they only want the press to tell the truth, it's just that the Leftist party line is the only truth there is. But they're both trained attorneys (Markos is at least) so they can't actually believe that. (Can they?)
Sorry, with Howard Dean at the Democratic helm, it's sometimes hard to distinguish the two.
The Left has a high tolerance for Shrill Nonsense that is potentially damaging to President Bush and/or the Republican Party.
Whenever someone like Leon challenges or debunks the Shrill Nonsense, we get posts like these that downplay the significance of the Nonsense. We gotta do it because no one on your side is going to.
Think of it as a first-trimester abortion of a Known Fact.
Never, fear, however, I have found a few ways that Hiatt and McCarthy are, in fact, similar. First, in both cases, the basic substance of their claims was true. Second, the truthfulness of their claims led to overblown hysterical liberal screaming. Third, they were both accused of muzzling freedom of speech. Fourth, in response to this, they both had liberals fighting to muzzle their free speech.
First off, the Communists that were caught by Venona and forced out of prominent positions by HUAC were almost all forced out before the Senator from Wisconsin started his grandstanding. The people who McCarthy was claiming were Communist stooges were part of a different group from those Communists caught by counter-intelligence groups.
McCarthy did more to harm the cause of anti-Communism by making it look like nothing but a stick used to beat one's political opponents rather than a necessary response to a very real threat. After all, suppose that we had a Republican in 2005 who was loudly proclaiming that he knew of many bureaucrats and even Democratic politicians who were on the payroll of Zacarias Moussab al-Zarqawi himself, taking orders delivered from the wild spaces of the restive Al Anbar province. If this Republican Senator were shown to be lying, he would do great damage to our national security because for ever afterwards no matter how real the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, people would associate anti-terrorism with political hay-making.
Yes, when a leftist starts to scream about McCarthyism it indicates that his brain functions have begun to shut down. Every now and then, though, someone can descend into unthinking cant and still be right.
" If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it"- Joseph Goebbels
Is defended on the simple thought that Bush is so evil that "I wouldn't put anything past him."
I used to get mad about it (and I'm hardly a diehard Bush supporter), but now I just sort of chuckle.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is a very real thing. Read Frank Rich if you want a weekly summary of the current state of affairs in the BDS world. At the moment, it's:
Katrina! Libby! Abu Ghraib!!
say a cliche. Both Lieberman and Hiatt make valid points,the response is a cliche and an ugly one, mindless,overused,defensive,and it goes almost without saying, hysterical. The term McCarthyism is a catch all to be used whenever the truth strikes home and the liberal has no defense or reasoned response whatsoever. So on to hysteria. The maddened Armando gives away the game when he puts emphasis on defeating or hurting Bush and by extension Republicans. As with most Democrats mired in their depravity that's the only thing that matters, not the nation,and certainly not the Iraqui's who have died for a new Iraq. Whatever your politics can anybody doubt that what the left vomits is followed closely in the Mid East and around the world and offers sustenance to circles that wish to destroy us. Maybe we should have a dozen reviews of what we've already reviewed, pre war intelligence,maybe even a dozen reviews of the reviews. Let's feed the hate and watch the strait jackets come out.
"As rhetoric becomes more overblown, the chances increase that the speaker is projecting his or her own faults onto an opponent"?
McCarthy and Hitler are similar in that today, if you really want to turn heads in politics, you compare your opponent to one of these two. The truth is though, you are usually wrong in either comparison. With Hitler, you are usually exaggerating because c'mon, its just a bit rediculous to compare your opponent to Hitler, and with McCarthy, you are comparing your opponent to someone who was actually good for America, on balance, and I don't think that is your intent either.
It was that some elected Democrats in Congress would see defeat in Iraq as an electoral boon. As far as I can tell, that's spot-on. : Leon H
I don't think that really says a whole lot. I mean, another terrorist attack on the US would probably be an electoral boon for the Republicans. That doesn't mean the Republicans sit around rooting for it to happen. : Steve M
There is a difference in that the actions and words of a number of elected Democrats give aid and comfort to our enemies and as a result encourage them to try to defeat us. The actions and words of Republicans do not promote a terrorist attack.
"All of this doesn't change the fact that McCarthy was at his heart a facist. He went far beyond being arrogant. . He accused everyone who disagreed with him of being a communist, he organized book-burning. Along with Huey Long he was a would-be-dictator."
Gee, I missed the book-burnings. Can anyone point to an actual book-burning organized by Sen. McCarthy?
And McCarthy accused everyone who disagreed with him of being a communist? Wow, no wonder he was so influential -- I mean, I'm sure that was very convincing to folks!
He accused everyone who disagreed with him of being a communist
You mean a minority party Senator used irresponsible rhetoric? Forty years from now, can I talk about the Dark Night of Fascism™ that existed when Teddy Kennedy terrorized the nation?
he organized book-burning
The horror. The HORROR! Why, it's nearly as horrible as... as... a couple hundred people having a tractor run over their Dixie Chicks CDs. 40 years from now, the Dixie Chicks will be able to moan about the horrors of the Dark Night of Fascism™ under Clear Channel Radio. Howard Stern, too.
Along with Huey Long he was a would-be-dictator.
A politician with grand designs for power? Again, I can scarcely fathom the fear, the desperation.
Back in the real world, we're talking about a Senator. From Wisconsin. A Republican Senator, back when the Republicans were happy to have 40 seats in the Senate.
Rather, McCarthy found communism around the time he was being investigated for serious ethics violations as well as being in serious jeopardy of losing re-election.
Now, you are engaging in rank revisionism. Especially given that one of the most cherished liberal beliefs of McCarthyism was that he exaggerated the Communist threat during his original election campaign.
But let us not forget, there was no bigger anti-communist than Hitler.
See there? McCarthy, Hitler - clearly, both presented an equal danger to this country and the cause of freedom everywhere.
I've lost count of the number of times we've called for the heads of op-ed writers who've disagreed with us. And called them McCarthyites.
There are certainly shrill folks on both sides, but it's really getting tiresome when folks pretend that the shrill factor is equivalent on both sides, because it ain't.
Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." (from the ever-indispensable Wikipedia
There are various corollaries and exceptions already extant. (Quirk's Exception seems to be the one I've seen cited most often)
Godwin's all-inclusive nature makes it tricky to do much with a specific topic, but it seems that discussions about Joe McCarthy rapidly produce the following (usually false) claims:
- The Red Scare was entirely the product of public hysteria caused by wholly false accusations made by Joe McCarthy and/or the HUAC. As such, any reactions to supposed Communist ties were wholly unjustified since there were no Communists in America[1] and, even if there were and I'm certainly not saying there were bless me no, they were completely harmless and/or in keeping with our traditional support of free speech/expression.
- One or more of the major parties is currently engaging in 'McCarthyite' suppression of speech. cf. The USA Patriot Act.
- One or more participants in the discussion is engaging in 'McCarthyite' suppression of speech within the thread and/or forum of discussion. Usually contra the claims of such suppression.
1. I have to confess a certain fondness for this sort of claim, in its similarity to the utterances of the highly amusing Iraqi Information Minister c. 2003.
Advocate sweeping changes of the media industry based on a perceived bias?
Somewhere the analogy of Hitler and McCarthy as argumentive weapons fall short. With Hitler usage is designed to make your opponent horrible,any attempt to make McCarthy look better is,reduntanly and perforce, positive. The tecniques are opposite so as in the Hitler mode you must distort to destroy,in the McCarthy case you find some measure of good, real or exaggerated. Your post confuses the attack with the defense, the slur with the credit, reserved or otherwise and therfore negates motive.
You can't expect me to meaningfully engage with you when you accuse Democrats of treason.
The threat of Communism was definitely there but it was not internal. A few commies within the United States had the ability to do absolutely nothing. Even a lot more socialist West European nations didn't end up embracing Communism (largely thanks to the US of course). The only real external threat was the Soviet Union - not the idea of Communism.
McCarthy's actions were not needed.
And can't you Americans stop calling socialist Democrats "liberals" since they have got absolutely nothing to do with liberalism?
about how about an exquisite combination of the most base opportunism coupled with a party interest that for charity's sake we'll call equal to concern for America. Note the post on Rockefeller's tour of the Mid East. Then there was Dem Reps Bonior and Mcdermott pre war trip to Iraq where they had the good sense and tatse to say they trusted Saddam more than Bush. Examples abound. We differ but from where I sit it's perilously close to a form of treason.
I'm perfectly happy to let the free market sort that kind of thing out (as it's currently doing - hello, existence of RedState).
A few commies within the United States had the ability to do absolutely nothing.
Yeah, there's no way that having top aides at State and Treasury on the Soviet payroll could possibly have affected the U.S. Let's try that again.
As a right-leaning Republican weblog, RedState does a pretty good job of keeping the discourse civil & respectful. For example, posters who have strayed into making bigoted anti-Islamic statements have been invited to take their bile elsewhere.
You have to admit there's more meat on the bone here than just a bunch of Hannity-Coulter-Limbaugh talking points.
dKos's high tolerance for profanity makes it seem a lot more shrill.
The equivalent of "BUSH BOMBED THE LEVEES" from a right wing nut job would be soundly shouted down here. (I was going to use David Duke as an example, but he's gone so far he's met Cindy Sheehan on the Other Side.)
calling Democrats treasonous? Would you consider that shrill?
when put as a blanket statement (i.e.: "All Democrats are traitors" yadda yadda yadda). How often that happens here - even in the comments - is something of which I've not taken particular note.
I know I've been guilty of engaging in that particular level of rhetoric only in discribing one particular moonbat in my diary and I stand by that isolated case - my personal knowledge of her being the determining factor there. I believe you and I have previously crossed on that subject and I don't intend to revisit it again here.
But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the quantity and quality of such behavior on this particular site (to say nothing of the rest of this side of the Grant Chasm save perhaps the Freepers) comes remotely close to Kos, DU, myDD, etc. on their least-shrill days.
As Leon points out, the equivalence is simply not there.
that the tone and tenor of this site if better than any of those sites.
But that sort of shrillness does exist.
BTW, it happened in this very thread.
Other than to point-out that I don't believe anyone seriously suggested RedState was a 100% shrill-free zone (Good Heavens, what sort of boring wasteland would that look like?), I'm more than happy to leave the field on this point.
Cheers.
And reading back, it looks like it was my fault.
Yes, the post on dKos was obnoxious.
What I was getting at, though, is that complaints about the media are abundant here, and I have a hard time believing nobody has ever suggested that a particular member of the media lose their job over a perceived bias. And while I agree that the accusation of McCarthyism is a bit ridiculous, I find some RS member's generous application of the term traitor to be a bit ridiculous too. Obviously we'll have different perspectives on that. Point is, both sides complain about the media, both sides want it to change in their favor, and both sides employ hyperbole. Is this site as bad as dKos? No, but it's not immune either.
And scouring opposition blogs for inane comments to ridicule is about the basest task this medium can perform. I'm sure you'll all double over laughing when reading this, but there actually are intelligent and civil discussions being conducted by the left, the content and results of which you could be writing about instead.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is a very real thing.
BDS. I like that. Maybe we could start a foundation for research into a cure. :)
To find me a single front-page post on RedState featuring half the shrill craziness of that Armando post. You won't be able to do it, but I'd encourage you to try anyway.
But even so, a brief comparison of the comments here vs. dKos will yield the clear result that yes, they are FAR more shrill over there. Very occasionally over here, you will find someone who says all Ds are traitors. Very occasionally. Now go through the comments in the story under discussion. Two thirds of the commenters in that thread would have been banned on this site for saying those sorts of things about liberals. Over there, they say not a peep.
And it has nothing to do with Kos being larger and harder to moderate, either. Armando is rather obviously reading the comments, and responding to them (and thusly contributing to the problem). There simply is no equivalency.
If I had to pick just one, I'd nominate trevino's post about Margaret Cho's dog. The comments were particularly remarkable for the strident claims that saying those opposed to the war are "on the other side" is far, far different from an accusation of treason. Arguing that Kos is "on the other side" because he claims to be a fan of Margaret Cho who, in turn, named her dog after a historical terrorist would probably qualify as front-page shrillness.
That said, RS is clearly more civil than dkos, but it is also a smaller community with much heavier moderation by the Powers That Be. In terms of overall left-right shrillness, I'd certainly put the Freepers up against anyone, and they don't even have the excuse of being on the losing team!
By crying McCarthy, the liberals have an easy code for "you don't need to listen to anything this guys says."
Funnily enough, all of the crap about McCarthy (who was an easy target due to some unsavory personal characteristics) is perpetuated by Hollywood and the left, but built on shaky historical ground.
HUAC -- the House Committee on Un-American Activities -- is the committee that "hounded poor innocent people"; it was first formed in 1938 (that would be almost a decade before McCarthy was elected)as the Dies Committee investigating...the Ku Klux Klan and ties to German intelligence operations. Either because it found no pressing threat, or it simply wasn't gaining political traction for Dies, they changed target to the American Communist Party, which was rumored to have infested the Works Progress Administration (under which was the Federal Theater Project -- the initial tie to Hollywood and the intellectual community.) Funnily enough, the Dies Committee's #2 was Sam Dickstein (an unfortunate nomiker if there ever was one)...later ID'd in the Verona decrypts as a Soviet agent.
HUAC became a permanent standing committee in 1946. McCarthy was still not involved. He was a Senator, not able to particiate in these hearings (and the respective Houses do like to protect their turf), and had showed -- to this point -- no interest in Commie-hunting.
The 'blacklisting hearings were done in 1947. McCarthy still wasn't involved (Nixon was, if it'll make the libs on the board feel better.)
His first official speech on the Communist threat was in 1950. (The "I have 250 names" speech...) His target of investigation: federal employees with security clearances. His goal: revoke the clearances.
But he was a blowhard, a drunk, and not particularly engaging a character. The perfect personification of evil? No -- and his bullying style is still in use today by much more ambitious and dangerous men of middling talent and mediocrity...
Much more dangerous are men like John McCain, whose ire at losing to Bush caused him to pen the Incumbent Protection Act...I mean, "Campaign Finance Reform." McCarthy never passed legislation to curtail the political association and speech of Americans for his own benefit.
Crying Hitler or Mccarthy is just intellectual laziness.
He had his security clearance revoked less than a month before it was set to expire anyway - and this served as the ruination of his career since he was forced to spend the rest of his life touring the University circuit and lecturing, and being given the Enrico Fermi Award by LBJ. Truly, a horrifying existence. Frankly, it's amazing how many people who had their "careers ruined" had no problems finding work on the University lecture circuit.
None of this has anything to bear on the fact that he frankly admitted to having communist leanings in the past - and while this certainly didn't conclusively prove he was a spy, it perhaps was nonetheless the prudent thing to do to keep communist sympathizers away from sensitive nuclear secrets (see Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel).
I really don't think you should make light of book burning. We haven't seen it confirmed yet that he organized book burning.
Granted I smiled when I saw your analogy, but, it is symbolic, even thought I do take your point.
When people burn books, it's as if they are trying to control ideas. Whether or not McCarthy organized book burnings, I don't think book burning is a very good reflection of American values.
When young, I was taught the obvious stuff about McCarthy: hounded people, destroyed lives, initiated a time of terror and hysteria over something that wasn't a threat.
As I got older, I came to appreciate that Communism was a threat, but thought that McCarthy was just an opportunistic self-aggrandizer.
Within the last few years, however, Liberals have begun convincing me more and more (though I'm not there yet) that McCarthy was actually a pretty stand-up guy.
It began with "Treason" (Ann Coulter). Read it, it was interesting, but I don't trust everything Ann says so I didn't buy her arguments. Yet, I read an extensive argument about the book, held by one of McCarthy's most vocal critics, David Horowitz. He hates McCarthy with a burning passion. The discussion involved him, Susan Estrich, and another leftwing scholar arguing about "Treason."
The thing is this: everything they said was nothing but overblown polemics. They leveled charge after charge, but failed to include any evidence or events that would substantiate them. The anti-McCarthyites were long on invective, short on evidence. Estrich, in fact, condemed the book outright, though she had never read it. (see the discussion here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9080)
This prompted the obvious thought: "If the McCarthy haters were right, wouldn't they have plenty of evidence to support it?"
Since then, I've seen the growth of several Leftist memes, all long on invective and short on substance: "Bush Lied", Halliburton, Enron, Katrina, etc.
Obvious thought: "If the Left is willing to lie this much, about such recent events, in an age when everything is permanently recorded on the Internet (and can be easily verified), and hurl such vitriolic assertions for nt reason, how can I trust what these same people say about Vietnam or McCarthy?"
The more I see the Left descend into BDS, the more the MDS (McCarthy Derangement Syndrome) seems to be a valid explanation for their actions.
Though I'm not there yet, I'd like far more evidence, Liberals have almost totally convinced me that McCarthy has to be innocent: why else would they hate him so much?
I can't say this post succeeds on any of its points, and this is because it confuses McCarthy for a cause when he was merely a symptom.
It was not, after all, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin who invented 'Red-baiting' or the frenzies that it whipped common people into, suspending all critical thinking. It had existed for decades. Just as Socialism had existed for decades. It was not illegal to be a Socialist - indeed, it had a great influence on American politics in the early 20th century.
But it WAS Joseph McCarthy who exploited the fear of communist influence. It was Joseph McCarthy who, in his own alarming way, said "I have a list of over 200 card-carrying members of the Communist Party who work in the State Dept," a list he never actually produced or verified.
It was Joseph McCarthy who used his hearings to ferret out homosexuals in every industry.
It was Joseph McCarthy who invented evidence for the sole purpose of threatening testifiers with it.
It was Joseph McCarthy who invented lies about his critics (I'm thinking here of Edward R. Murrow) in order to discredit them, rather than answer their charges.
It was Joseph McCarthy who allowed for uncorroborated, secret testimony which was never made available to the accused or the public, making him the shoddiest prosecutor since the Salem Witch Trials (which at the very least had the benefit of corroboration, albeit foolish).
It was Joseph McCarthy who considered it relevant whether a member of a person's family was relevant to that person's political background.
It was Joseph McCarthy who had dozens of writers and actors blacklisted in Hollywood, merely on the suspicion of their being Communists.
That is what I consider McCarthyism. In an era when the mere rumor of being a communist was enough to destroy a person, he was the most vicious gossip, the loudest whisperer, the cruelest and most effective character assassin.
Joseph McCarthy did not invent x-baiting (where x can be red, race, Islam, gay, etc.) But he was the most egregious exploiter of the least worthy and most shameful part of any person: his ability to injure the innocent for no cause but fear.
should not be lightly dismissed. He preyed on our fears for his own political gain, and everyone fell in line.
I had not previously read what Rep. Senator Margaret Chase Smith had to say, but find it resonates today, when politics are also bitterly divided:
http://www.mcslibrary.org/program/library/declaration.htm
Accusations of McCarthyism should be reserved for truly egregious situations, for example, asking someone if they belong to the Federalist Society.
I don't particularly get Armando's point here - it's the same old "liberals are traitors who want the terrorists to win" line, and as such, I find it truly impressive that anyone on the liberal side can still muster indignation after all these years. I mean really, if you actually believe liberals are traitors, your mind is unlikely to change, and if you don't, I don't see anyone being converted to that point of view given the present state of things.
The conservative effort to rehabilitate McCarthy does strike me as a bit shameless but I'll trust history to sort that one out.