Posted on 01/26/2013 2:52:13 PM PST by Olog-hai
Most Europeans are unlikely to be familiar with the facts behind the American term “McCarthyism.” They probably know it describes something very bad in American politics—the “Communist witch hunts” of more than half a century ago. They may also know that simply uttering the term, like casting a spell, stops all debate cold by associating someone with the eponymous Joseph McCarthy. As the story goes, he was himself very bad. After all, he conducted those long ago “Communist witch hunts,” ruining his name in perpetuity. This probably exhausts general knowledge.
But here’s a secret: Most Americans know little more than this same familiar but completely false narrative. In recent years, stunning revelations from archives in Washington and Moscow have confirmed that McCarthy’s investigations—and those conducted by other officials before and after—netted not innocent and imaginary “witches,” but secret cadres of hardened Communist agents determined to bring down the American republic. Surely, this makes Joe McCarthy a great patriot and deserving “the plaudits of a grateful nation.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at d-intl.com ...
I read Stanton’s book. McCarthy had problems with alcohol, he exaggerated some personal records, and he sometimes went off on a tangent and attacked the wrong target. Nevertheless, he was right about his central assertion of communists in high and low positions in the government. The leftists have always used misdirection to try an invalidate what McCarthy discovered. The facts are: most of what he asserted was true...the government did have a lot of commies. Thanks to McCarthy, many of them were booted out. He deserves praise not condemnation.
Related reading assignments.
Blacklisted by History
Blacklisted By History
The Untold Story Of Senator Joe McCarthy
And His Fight Against America's Enemies
M. Stanton Evans.
Crown Forum Press 2007.
I have the book to hand and it was recommended by Freepers. The documentation is incredible. The official documents obtained by freedom of information or other sources absolutely exonerates Senator Joe.
It is to my regret that the left are often rotten to the core. They simply do not have the common decency to concede that which McCarthy exposed. It would spoil their act to do so. Sure, they could go ahead and attack McCarthy for his abrasive manner and maybe a little antagonistic. The exposure after many years of the left wing icon Hiss, and indeed Morton Sobell, tells the story. Sobell was in the US Army Intelligence and in his nineties, conceded he fed information to the Soviets.
The actions of the gallant KGB officer who defected and gave America the Venona Files, does not seem to get much press- how very convenient. The left has a knack of simply ignoring the rotters within. Anyway, excuse the rant. Joe McCarthy was an American patriot and a martyr. Imho.
What about "Chon"? What are you trying to say about him? That he was a homosexual? That McCarthy was one as well?
What in particular should we pay close attention to?
You looking for the lib of the month award? I see zero posts vindicating anything you said on here.
What’s understood by few is that McCarthy’s relationship with J Edgar Hoover was exactly the same as J Edgar Hoover’s relationship to what subsequently became known as the NSA.
The NSA provide Hoover with intercepts of Russian cable traffic decoded and translated into english that showed various people in government to be spies. However, because the NSA did not want their sources to be revealed—they required that the FBI develop their own evidence—rather than reveal the NSA evidence in court.
As it happened the beginning and ending of McCarthy’s senate hearings coincided with his weekly meetings with J Edgar Hoover. The FBI denies that Hoover ever told McCarthy anything during their 3 years of weekly meetings. But what else would they have talked about? Needless to say, Hoover would have imposed on McCarthy the same rules regarding any of his divulges that the NSA imposed on Hoover. That is Hoover might finger someone but McCarthy would have to develop his own sources of evidence.
The number of Spies that the NSA decripts pointed to and the number of spies that McCarthy mentioned were fairly similiar. The FBI did not catch most of them. Neither did McCarthy develop very good evidence on most of the people he fingered.
However, to this day the sorts of the questions that McCarthy asked—are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party—are standard on any questionnaire that everyone needs to fill out to get any level of security clearance to work for the government.
During the 1950’s no such questionnaires existed.
Oh yeah, the Russian’s learned that the US had broken their code in 1947 because they had a spy among the code breakers. They changed their code—but the NSA did not lift their ban on revealing sources.
During the 1990’s something similar happened during the Wen Ho Lee trial. He was a Chinese spy. But in order to prevent the Chinese from learning how he was found out—no evidence was brought against him. He skated.
These days most federal institutions are under more or less constant cyber attack—mostly from the Chinese but also from the Russians and various bad actors like the Iranian and North Koreans and who knows who else.
What’s understood by few is that McCarthy’s relationship with J Edgar Hoover was exactly the same as J Edgar Hoover’s relationship to what subsequently became known as the NSA.
The NSA provide Hoover with intercepts of Russian cable traffic decoded and translated into english that showed various people in government to be spies. However, because the NSA did not want their sources to be revealed—they required that the FBI develop their own evidence—rather than reveal the NSA evidence in court.
As it happened the beginning and ending of McCarthy’s senate hearings coincided with his weekly meetings with J Edgar Hoover. The FBI denies that Hoover ever told McCarthy anything during their 3 years of weekly meetings. But what else would they have talked about? Needless to say, Hoover would have imposed on McCarthy the same rules regarding any of his divulges that the NSA imposed on Hoover. That is Hoover might finger someone but McCarthy would have to develop his own sources of evidence.
The number of Spies that the NSA decripts pointed to and the number of spies that McCarthy mentioned were fairly similiar. The FBI did not catch most of them. Neither did McCarthy develop very good evidence on most of the people he fingered.
However, to this day the sorts of the questions that McCarthy asked—are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party—are standard on any questionnaire that everyone needs to fill out to get any level of security clearance to work for the government.
During the 1950’s no such questionnaires existed.
Oh yeah, the Russian’s learned that the US had broken their code in 1947 because they had a spy among the code breakers. They changed their code—but the NSA did not lift their ban on revealing sources.
During the 1990’s something similar happened during the Wen Ho Lee trial. He was a Chinese spy. But in order to prevent the Chinese from learning how he was found out—no evidence was brought against him. He skated.
These days most federal institutions are under more or less constant cyber attack—mostly from the Chinese but also from the Russians and various bad actors like the Iranian and North Koreans and who knows who else.
It's a tricky situation. They're not hiding in any way now. Yet half the population can't see them at all.
Joe had to work to root out these bastards
They are all out right in the open for all of us to see, they have a machine behind them and the money to complete thier task..............so what are our options? Reviewing the early beginings of the American revolution may give you some ideas.
Given the dominance of leftists i.e. communists and libs in the media even in those days, it’s no wonder McCarthy was treated as an ogre. He was rash, and he even a lot of moderate Pubbies were glad to see him gone. Nevertheless, he did the country a great service.
Sure, McCarthy may very well have exaggerated his war experiences. But the fact remains that he did volunteer for the US Marines, he did serve in a combat area, and he did fly 12 combat missions as a crew member.
But serving in the US Marines in the Pacific in World War II is not where McCarthy put his life on the line and eventually surrendered it. It was his work trying to bring the issue of Communists in the US government to the forefront, and making himself a target for every leftist and communist sympathizer that did him in.
In my opinion, he wasn’t doing it primarily for political gain, although being a politician makes nearly everything that person does be an element of political gain. Joe McCarthy was fighting on this issue when no one else (or very few others) was willing to open their mouths on the subject and thereby invite attack. In that environment, McCarthy both worked himself and drank himself to death.
As far as I’m concerned, McCarthy purchased this country more time to try to stave off leftism and communism… And he did succeed in making it disreputable to be a member of the Communist Party or to be a communist sympathizer.
In the 1960s that all changed. That set up the environment for people like Bill Ayers to present themselves as citizens of the community, instead of the totalitarian, power-hungry leftists that they are. It is why today we have people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton holding government office and making decisions about the future of our nation.
In the end, McCarthy bought us time, and we didn’t take advantage of it.
The Venona project was indeed confirmation that McCarthy was right all along, but I didn’t need to see the results of Venona to know that McCarthy was spot on. All I had to do to realize that McCarthy had been attacked and vilified for telling the truth was to look at the tactics used by the left since McCarthy to attack those who tell the truth. That’s pretty telling.
Stanton’s book “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Sen. Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies” was one of the most meticulously documented books on the subject that I had read to that point.
I was one of those people who unthinkingly believed about McCarthy what my teachers taught me in school, and what I saw in the newpapers, magazines and on television.
When I read Ann Coulter’s book “Treason”, I was perplexed. I was puzzled why her account of the famous encounter between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy was so completely and diametrically different from the accounts I had grown up with and been taught.
It wasn’t just a little different, it was COMPLETELY different. So I did what the Internet allows you to do these days: I researched. I obtained the transcripts of the actual hearings, and read them.
Ann Coulter was spot on in her characterization of that hearing, and the others as well. After I read that, I began to read everything that didn’t appear to be completely slanted against McCarthy. I read three separate books on Venona, and then capped it off with the book that was, for me, the most important political book I have read in my life.
“Witness”, by Whittaker Chambers.
I was completely astounded by that book, and it explained a lot of things for me. It explained why the Left viewed Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy the way they did, and why all three of them, Chambers, Nixon, and McCarthy were villified and slandered by a poisonous and biased media.
What is perhaps most disturbing of all is to see that the Left practices the exact same form of character assassination warfare today that it practiced fifty years ago against Whittaker Chambers. Exactly.
I admit freely that it was a disillusioning time for me. To realize that all my teachers, people I had no reason to distrust, fed me a steady diet of falsehood regarding Joseph McCarthy. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever. But I do temper that with the knowledge that many of those people did not realize that they were spreading mistruths. Many of them, like myself, did not even have the conception that they might’ve been deliberately lied to by people they expected to provide them with facts. So, I don’t blame many of them directly.
But I do blame leftists, and the media outlets that are populated by them. What they did was deliberate, deceptive and manipulative.
Thanks - I'll check it out...
It is erroneous to use that liberal phrase. Have a good day.
I want these Communists dealt with
john Kennedy knew about the evil of Communism
Witness by Whittaker Chambers is a great book. In it he explains that in any town, on any day, on any street, the ugly Communist machine can “disappear” anyone they want. You will be put in a car and no one will ever hear from you again.
When I read Ann Coulter's book "Treason", I was perplexed. I was puzzled why her account of the famous encounter between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy was so completely and diametrically different from the accounts I had grown up with and been taught.
I immediately went to my copy of the Ann Coulter book, also of the Crown Forum Press (2003). I read Chapter 6 titled "But Were There Communists In The State Department?" Memories came flooding back from my youthful years in England. The London Daily Mirror poured it on as only they could. Old Adolf was dead and now they had a new hate figure- Joe McCarthy. The same people who said if only a working man could talk sense into "Uncle Joe". He would then be nice.
A bit of a ramble by me and I am hesitant in pinging at any time, but I took the chance. Freeper constitution123 had given me some valuable insight into the radical left. For I had thought they were merely turned on by some sort of phoney Hollywood type emotion. "The fatuous statement for example "Have you no shame senator"? ad nauseum. It was pointed to me by constitution123, that the left have been absolutely brainwashed. I now realize that this is a very important observation. The task of reversing that mind numbing "follow the leader" mentality seems to be beyond anyone. "First kill the media!"
A joke of course.
Uncle Joe was Joseph Stalin. A working man and of the proletariat was driving around in an old car asking for donations. England circa 1954. He said he wanted to go to Moscow and talk with Joe Stalin. Commonsense and the cold war would end.
Crazy but true.
Completely true. Many liberals are true believers, though I believe a large portion of them are simply soft hearted people who couldn’t be bothered to advance beyond “Stage One Thinking” as Thomas Sowell describes it. They aren’t evil, nasty or power-hungry, but they wonder why the government can’t fix things.
“Why can’t the government give some money to people who have less, just to help them out?”
“Why can’t the government regulate the price of gasoline and food so we don’t have to pay so much?”
Why can’t the government set wage levels for everyone so there is no discrimination in income?”
Should read: gallant KGB officer who defected and gave insight into the code names used for spies in the venona files.. His death sentence in absentia by Russia still stands.
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