Tim Sandefur has done what looks like an excellent piece of historical detective work. He writes about some of the images that are sometimes brought up by those who want to claim that there was no real proof of any serious communist threat to the US and that Joe McCarthy was a deluded fool, etc, etc. The entry is quite a long one so it is worth reading over a coffee break. Here is how it kicks off:
“You’ve probably seen this amusing poster somewhere or other; a bookstore near my house has it displayed on the wall. It’s often cited as an example of Cold War hysteria—the evils of McCarthyism—how foolish our grandparents were, that they would believe such silliness! They must have been really backwards.”
We then are shown the supposedly sinister poster and told how it might have been created, and where from.
This period of US history fascinates me. When I was studying history at school and university, the standard line on the 1930s and subsequent decade and a half in the US was that a lot of the fears about the “Reds” were massively overblown, misused for various purposes, etc. And yet it turns out that even Joe McCarthy might have had a case, as our own Brian Micklethwait wrote some time ago.
It remains a notable fact of US politics that “socialist” is a pretty dire term of abuse. Even those who are, in my view, socialists – such as Barack Obama – seem to want to deny it.
I too used to think that “the red scare” was a bit ott, because that’s the narrative we’re fed by the legacy media.
Then I read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Spy-American-Stalins/dp/0393060977
which really lifts the lid on the activities of Comintern in the 20’s and 30’s.
McCarthy was undoubtedly a highly unpleasant man, but his concerns were not exaggerated.
Gawd all that fuss over rough paper towels. What kind of office revolution got started when they got to the toilet paper then? Anyone else remember Izal toilet rolls?
Andrew Duffin wrote:
‘McCarthy was undoubtedly a highly unpleasant man, but his concerns were not exaggerated.’
It would be good to note that US political commentator Ann Coulter has been making this exact point for years – specifically, in her book ‘Treason’, which contains some extensive and well-footnoted debunking of the whole ‘McCarthy witch-hunt’ nonsense.
McCarthy was no doubt an unpleasant man, but both his demeanour and his tactics are really not very different than those that we see in the US Congress every day. Personal attacks, innuendo, guilt-by-association, the use of code words and phrases and the deliberate destruction of enemies – nothing unusual there. As for his personal vices – we just heard (thanks to a recently-concluded trial) the complete tale of a candidate for US President with a serious chance of winning, who cheated on his wife, fathered a child out of wedlock, lied directly to the voters about it, bribed all and sundry to keep quiet about it and denied it until the very day that he was caught red-handed leaving his mistress’s hotel room. But Joe McCarthy – he was rude and bombastic!
It’s claimed that Senator McCarthy exposed the private lives of his enemies for political gain. Well, folks, why don’t we all just read a little more about the race for US Senate which was won by President Obama in 2004? Hint – President Obama’s Wikipedia page won’t tell you what happened. You’ll have to dig a little deeper.
Every personal vice attributed to Senator McCarthy, from his drinking to his embellishment of his service record, has been repeated by innumerable US politicians of all ranks, ever before and ever since. To accuse him of these things is merely to say that he was no different than his peers, or his predecessors, or his successors. It does, however, seem that such vices are much-more-readily and much-more-censorially viewed by the media when the perpetrator has an (R) after his name.
llater,
llamas
I recall reading somewhere (I can’t remember the title of the book) that McCarthy angered the FBI with his accusations, because by announcing so-and-so was a known communist, he was blowing the cover on the FBI’s investigations.
One word:
VENONA
(and yes it should always be entered in all caps)
OT, but a passing reference in the article reminded me of an observation about the VW Rabbit (Golf 1 to you Euroweenies) that will resonate with anyone who ever tried to (for instance) replace the oxygen sensor on one:
“It may be Fahrvergnügen on the freeway, but it’s Schrecklichkeit in the shop.”
M. Stanton Evans “Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and his fight against America’s enemies”.
It is the best work on Senator McCarthy – it needs to be read.