“I’d suggest that the blowback from McCarthyism has done a great deal of damage. Every high school kid has had to suffer through Miller’s The Crucible...”
lol. Yeah that’s because we caved! We should not have done!
But at least it’s gone from an argument about totalitarianism to an argument about blowback. I can accept that.
Blowback should be fought though, not caved to. The 60s & the 70s were dominated by liberals because conservatives instinctively knew they were right & didn’t get educated about the issues. That has massively changed. We can now, en masse, tell the people how & where they the left are wrong.
There is less blowback if you know where you stand & why you stand there. Few people did in McCarthy’s day. Unfortunately it seems you need the experience of being beaten to fight back.
You also need the smarts to learn from that experience. If the Pubbies pull off a double whammy in Nov and 2012 and then do a GHWB or a Trent Lott, they'll have earned defeat, and matters may have to taken up by the people at large.