Ronald Reagan had a closer view of the era than you or I and he thought McCarthy was using a shotgun when he should have used a rifle.”
McCarthy never made citizens “fear” the government. He investigated and exposed Communists agents within the government.
Your Reagan quote is interesting. I don't know when it was said but the fact is Senator McCarthy was much more astute and knowledgeable about communist infiltration than Reagan was at the time. Reagan was a liberal New Deal Democrat in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Reagan said that it was only after reading Witness by Whitaker Chambers that he began to understand the extent of the Communist threat.
The quote was from his autobiography. An American Life.