Posted on 12/11/2023 4:03:18 AM PST by Phoenix8
Joseph McCarthy is the most unjustly demonized individual in American history.
In February 1950, McCarthy, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, launched a massive campaign against alleged Communists and Soviet agents working for, and perhaps spying on, the U.S. government. In Senate hearings stretching across much of the first half of the 1950s, he accused numerous U.S. government employees, including many in the State Department, of being Communists or even agents of Soviet Intelligence. He was bitterly opposed by powerful members of the Senate, by numerous high-ranking officials within both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, and by the overwhelming preponderance of the press corps. He was finally censured by the U.S. Senate in December 1954 and died, possibly of effects of alcoholism, several years later. He was forty-eight.
The demonizations, then and now, involve charges that McCarthy lied, badgered, intimidated, victimized innocents, and fanned the flames of a massive anti-Communist hysteria. A typical account of his methods is provided by History.com’s “This Day in History,” which claims, “In widely publicized hearings, McCarthy bullied defendants under cross-examination with unlawful and damaging accusations, destroying the reputations of hundreds of innocent officials and citizens.”1
(Excerpt) Read more at theobjectivestandard.com ...
This aspect of his needing vindication has been one of the most painful parts of this injustice.
I grew up hearing how terrible Joseph McCarthy was. I heard it from my teachers. I heard it from the Media. I read it in books. It was all one way, that he was the modern day Tomás de Torquemada, running roughshod over the Constitutional rights of innocent people, destroying their lives, and driving some to suicide.
Growing up, I just accepted it all. After all, it was the opinion of EVERYONE. Right? Heck, as Freeper MtnClimber has observed, even people I view as well-spoken conservatives are still in the "McCarthy was a very bad man" mindset.
Oddly, for me, my first indication that there were things I simply didn't know about all this treatment of McCarthy was when I read a book by Ann Coulter (of all people): Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Like most people, I took for granted that McCarthy was a bully, constantly harassed innocent people who appeared in front of his committee, and trampled on their rights, culminating in the brave Joseph Welch who finally stood up to him when he cruelly attacked Welch's assistant, when he had enough of the bullying and bravely fought the tyrant McCarthy with the immortal phrase: "You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
That was the end of the bullying McCarthy, as far as any of us who swallowed this treatment of events by the media hook, line, and sinker, knew.
But in Ann Coulter's account of this, it was 180 degrees different.
She maintained that Welch had been browbeating McCarthy's assistant Roy Cohn for an extended period of time (the transcript says, in McCarthy's words, "hours") when Cohn appeared as a witness to be questioned by Welch. Coulter stated that Welch was speaking in falsetto with extreme sarcasm, demeaning Cohn, cutting him off, etc. In Coulter's account, McCarthy let this go on for a period of time without interrupting, and finally began to appeal to the then Chair of the committee (Mundt) to put an end to it, though observing all rules of order and proper decorum while doing it, but Welch persisted. McCarthy finally had enough and said after Welch persisted with his plea to Cohn about getting "...anyone tainted with communism out before sundown..." that Welch ought to check the credentials of his own assistant, Fred Fisher, who was was employed by a legal firm known to be a mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
It was after this that Welch uttered his famous "Have you no sense of decency" line.
Now, I was baffled by this. Coulter had written and published this completely unknown (to me) account of this hearing which was 180 degrees at odds with the "official" accounts of it, leaving her wide open to criticisms. How could she do that?
So I went to the Library of Congress online and found the transcripts. And in reading them, I found them to be exactly as Ann Coulter had characterized them.
So I began to investigate further into just who Joseph McCarthy was, and to my dismay, realized I, and millions of others, had been lied to for decades about who and what Senator Joseph McCarthy was.
Shortly after that, I read "Witness" by Whittaker Chambers, and realized that in both the cases, Chambers, and McCarthy (and more recently, Nixon and Trump) were subjected to the politics of political assassination, involving coordination with the media, education, and government entities, which they still practice today, albeit with greater efficiency and sophistication, factoring in social media as well.
It was distressing and alienating to realize I had been lied to by the orchestrated machinery of our society all these years. But instead of letting it get me down, I took the opportunity to educate myself on this and other subjects.
Overall, it has been a valuable experience.
That is an excellent book.
The Communist party is still working in America. Their program is pretty much in line with “mainstream” left $15/h pay, make rich pay fair share, Unions, antiwar, anti-racist, ...
Check their web site.
McCarthy was against Hollywood (since Hollywood was full of communists and sympathizers) and that will get you.
I witnessed a round table of this era and Joseph McCarthy in particular about 20 years ago at a forensic seminar put on by several conservative groups which came to the conclusion that Joe McCarthy had the right message, unfortunately Joe McCarthy was the wrong messenger. Not to detract from Joseph McCarthy but the press absolutely went on a dicrediting campaign because of his alcoholism. It was the chink in the armor and the Press exploited it to the utmost.
Sadly Badgers are among the worst detractors of their former senator.
McCarthy was a strong civil rights supporter, and this alienated him from the Democrat senators in the former Confederacy. I believe nearly all of those men voted to censure McCarthy.
McCarthy never investigated Hollywood. His investigations were limited to federal government institutions.
And it continued and continues to this day.
Tucker Carlson on Nixon, JFK, and the CIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsklCPE38gg
“So if you wanna understand, if you really wanna understand, how the American government actually works at the highest levels and if you wannt know why they don’t teach history anymore, one thing you should know is the most popular President in American history was, Richard Nixon.
“Men in dark suits” rule the US - Putin on Deep State https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP3D1sUSuzg 2:43 mark
It is possible to right the ship if folks would pay attention and stop voting for the same tired, corrupt trash. And it all starts at the local level.
Michigan town votes to oust entire govt. over Chinese factory plans:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/china/election-government-chinese-factory-plans/
Same thing today.
What brought around communism to most american campuses today was not the russian bolchevik version of the 40’s but rather the german frankfurt school version of communism. The people hitler kicked out of germany. They came to the usa and settled at columbia and berkley. Their critical theory was dominant at columbia university when I was there in the 70’s -80’s. It morphed into critical race theory at harvard in the 1990’s.
It was a frankfurt school critical theorist named Adorno—who performed the greatest blood libel in american history byo of a slight of hand in 1953—the year when stalin was gearing up to send jews to concentration camps (before he died) and julius and ethel rosenberg were executed for treason. (no one has been executed since—because the word has become meaningless.)
From the 20’s through the 40’s the nazis were considered to be a leftist party —while the communists were even further left. The difference between them as how much of the economy the government controlled. Nazis believed in contolling the “commanding heights” of the economy. They let big companies do their job while tightly controlling them. The communists believed in controlling the whole economy.
What adorno did in 1953 was call nazis a rightest party. So nazis were on the far right—which is bad and the communists were on the far left which is good. By doing this piece of left right jiu jitsu. Adorno tagged the republican part as being nazi light.
He was dead wrong. But it didn’t matter. All that needed to happen was that the NY Times pick up on his blood libel.
They did. And so did every other media outlet.
There are several problems with Joseph’s investigation.
First of all, his investigation was different than the highly successful HUAC investigations going on in the House, which identified and removed hundreds of communists.
Second, he was intending to run for president, *against* President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a master of political infighting. DDE did much to neutralize his campaign and undermine his program, busting up his campaign timetable.
And third was his profound alcoholism. Alcoholics ruin the judgment center of their brain, damage that can last for six months after they go dry.
His heart was in the right place, but his execution was awful. And ever since then, the left has tried very hard to negate the HUAC investigations by rolling them into his.
If McCarthy were alive today he’d he would have been at the forefront to help Trump rid us of the deep state.
Indeed, they did. "Conservative" Democrats who voted to censure McCarthy included George Smathers (D-fla.), Richard Russell (D-Ga.), Rusell Long (D-La.), James Eastland (D-Miss.) and John Stennis (D-Miss.). Even Harry Byrd (D-Va.), dean of the Bourbon Democrats, an outspoken anti-Communist and a formidable foe of civil rights and later a staunch supporter of the Vietnam War voted against McCarthy. You can read the vote tally here.
Your right, but Hollywood took their cases as their own.
I have often thought that had McCarthy taken better care of his health, he could have ridden the public’s indignation over the Soviet Sputnik satellites to another Senate term.
Hollywood has always had a special hatred for McCarthy. The 1977 movie about him, “Tailgunner Joe,” was a thoroughgoing smear.
BTTT
He had a lot of blue-collar support, as does Trump.
BINGO!
Excellent analysis.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.