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Yea. Let's lock people up, deny them the right to make a living in their chosen field for the high crime of holding an unpopular idea.

Of the 10 listed as the Hollywood 10, is there any freeper commenting on this thread who can point to a crime than any one of them committed?

I await the flames that surely cometh.

I doubt very seriously that we would have handed China over to the Communists if not for Communist agents and fellow travelers in our government and media at that time.

Is this a "crime" by any particular Communist agent of influence? I don't know. But it is certainly something that anyone with a conscience ought to feel extremely guilty about. It resulted in the Korean War, the Vietnamese War, the Vietnam War protests that handed Southeast Asia to the Communists, and infinite suffering in China itself.

It can also be argued that it is a crime. Ezra Pound was punished for doing propaganda for Mussolini in the Second World War. These folks were doing propaganda for Stalin in the midst of the Cold War, when it was clear to most people that the Soviet Union was our enemy and an enemy to the peace and stability of the whole world. We are talking here about card carrying members of a party that had been declared illegal.

According to the article:

"... that henceforth no studio would knowingly employ any member of the Communist Party, or the members of any other group which advocated the overthrow of the United States government by revolution."

I say if Hollywood does not want to hire those who advocate the overthrow of the United States government by revolution, then they should have that right. Don't you agree?

Now, what are you talking about? Holding an unpopular idea? Crimes?

Maybe you're thinking of the Spanish Inquisition, not HUAC?

I suggest that you read "RADICAL HOLLYWOOD" ,by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner (who are LIBERALS and not right wingers, BTW),to start with and educate yourself. Just because you don't know anything at all about the CRIMES which were committed by American Commies, who worked in Hollywood, doesn't mean that none were committed.

Good point.They seem to have been prosecuted for their IDEAS rather than subversive ACTIONS.I don't think any of them were involved with Hiss or the Rosenbergs.
Commies or not,their films were a damn sight better than that unadulterated GARBAGE that spews out of Hollywood today by writers and actors FAR more harmful to the health of American culture than the Hollwood Ten ever produced.

Of the 10 listed as the Hollywood 10, is there any freeper commenting on this thread who can point to a crime than any one of them committed?

In my mind, they were no worse than that neo-nazi professor who recently got sh!t-canned by his university once his political ideas were exposed. As for the Hollywood 10, their "unpopular ideas" were simply that the US should abolish the constitution and adopt Soviet-style communism. Personally, I think "freedom of speech" ends when someone is advocating the abolition of the First Amendment.

These guys were all guilty of contempt of congress and got off easy for it. If you've ever watched the video tape of their "testimony," you know that they wanted to create a national media circus to help advance the cause. If you ask me, they all should have been thrown in jail.

It would help if you even knew what you were talking about. The blacklist did not originate with the government. It was the studios. Do the studios have a right to hire whomever they choose? It's called capitalism, baby. Hire a known communist, nobody goes to see your movie, and that's a lot of money down the drain. As for the precious little angels who refused to comply with a Congressional committee and were thus jailed for contempt, I'm sorry if they aren't above you or me. We'd be jailed for the same thing. And if you'll read the linked article, that son-of-a-bitch Trumbo was gladly willing to name names when it helped the Soviets. He named people who sought out his own book because he had disavowed said book once Hitler invaded Poland. To Hell with these people. They took a pledge to defend the Soviet Union against the United States if it came to that, everything they did was in support of the Soviet Union, and I'm not too broken up about Congress bringing that information to light. Interestingly, they didn't cry foul when HUAC was investigating the KKK.

How many false facts can you pack into one sentence? They went to jail for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer the question if they were or had been Communists. They had no legal grounds for refusing to answer. They went to jail for refusing to answer, not because they were Communists, just as anyone before Congress might for refusing to answer any question that wasn't self-incriminating of a crime. Any private employer that wouldn't hire any of the 10 had every right to not employ them, whether for their criminal conviction, being a member of a political party engaged in treason, or a million other less important reasons. The Hollywood 10 didn't just hold "an unpopular idea", you sarcastically call a "high crime". Knowingly or not, they were engaged in treason as members of the American Communist Party - financed and given its orders from Moscow. Since they weren't prosecuted for a crime of engaging in treason with the criminal, mass murdering Soviet regime, they got no more than a slap on the wrist for contempt of Congress, NOT for the treasonous Communism you call "an unpopular idea".