Posted on 01/29/2008 8:48:10 AM PST by forkinsocket
No American politician of the 20th century is more reviled by historians and opinion makers than Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose 1950s anti-Communist crusade is synonymous with witch-hunting and repression. Actually, no politician even comes close. Herbert Hoover? True, the Great Depression occurred on his watch, goes the current wisdom, but Hoover can’t be blamed for a global catastrophe, and his economic programs paved the way for needed reforms. Richard Nixon? True, the Watergate scandal justified his resignation, but Nixon was a master statesman, we are reminded, whose initiatives produced détente with the Russians and an open door to China.
For McCarthy, there’s been no such balancing act. Americans have learned to view him as the nation’s most dangerous modern demagogue. Pick up a dictionary and you’ll find the word “McCarthyism” defined as “the practice of publicizing accusations with insufficient regard to evidence” and “the use of unfair investigatory methods to suppress opposition.” To be labeled a McCarthyite is akin to being called a liar or a fraud. His loudest current admirer is Ann Coulter, a fact, I suspect, that even the senator would have found unsettling.
My own biography of McCarthy was published in 1983. What most surprised me was the warm reception it got from hard-nosed conservatives like Pat Buchanan, who considered the book more balanced than what had come before. My final judgments on the senator did acknowledge his role in highlighting a number of security problems in the federal government, something previous writers had been reluctant to do. But I also described him as a serial slanderer who poisoned political debate, weakened government morale and made America look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It’s amazing how people can be demagogued for so many years that the lie becomes “truth”. Thanks to the researcher for setting the record straight.
Maybe this should be a barf alert. I thought LBJ and Jimmy Carter (among others) did infinitely more damage to our country than McCarthy ever dreamed of doing.
Is this guy for real? It has been shown that McCarthy was actually doing good things. One good thing is that because of McCarthy, our government set communisim back 60 years. Especially if you look at Hollywood today. Hollywood is back to where it was pre-McCarthy.
Isn’t this the guy that Coulter recently wrote about as being nothing but a dyed-in-wool liberal since he wrote the McCarthy book?
It’s amazing that only those with (R) by their names are considered the Great Boogiemen of the century, as posited in the 1st paragraph.
My list would include especially FDR along with Carter and Klintoon.
“The fiercely negative judgments of those who lived through the McCarthy era are widely accepted today for good reason: they ring true.”
Maybe for those who were close to the fire, but apparently for many every-day people then, this was all just peachy. It seems the libs near the fire took over and convinced everyone that McCarthy was “evil”.
“These judgments tell a cautionary tale, showing how a nation’s legitimate concern for security in uncertain times can be turned into something partisan, repressive and cruel.”
Ah, and there is the little innuendo -
“BUSH’S WAR” IS ILLEGITIMATE AND WE BETTER STOP PUTTING PANTIES ON THE HEADS OF ARABS.
No, she wrote about Ron Radosh, who researched and realized the Rosenbergs were guilty, and wrote his book anyway, and has been anathema to liberals ever since, even though he wrote the truth, and even though he minimized the horrible nature of what they did. His subsequent writings try to make up for it by being as radical as ever, and I believe he did write a review of the new McCarthy book that was pretty stupid. Coulter bitch-slapped him.
Oh yeah. Thanks. I could’ve looked it up, as it was very recent.
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