[kegler4]

"My grandfather was investigated by this committee, but his accuser was a Democrat, not a Republican. He was his opponent for office in the Democrat primary for NJ state assembly. The only evidence that they had was that he was seen picking up a communist newspaper at a newstand and reading the headlines. They ruined his life..."

McCarthy was partly right, but some people apparently think the innocent lives destroyed by his crusade were necessary collateral damage. That's crap.

It might be stupid to be a communist or a socialist, but in the U.S. it's not illegal -- not unless you're selling or giving away secrets that damage our security.

[Eva]

In the case of my grandfather, the damage was intentional. Democrats followed the politics of personal destruction even then. His real crime was that he refused to vote the party line.

[bruinbirdman]

"It might be stupid to be a communist or a socialist, but in the U.S. it's not illegal"

It is illegal for the communist party to be on a ballot for public office.

Note that they are all socialists, worker, progressive, green, or other euphemism parties.

yitbos

[Rastus]

McCarthy was partly right, but some people apparently think the innocent lives destroyed by his crusade were necessary collateral damage. That's crap.

Actually, it's crap that innocent lives were destroyed.

Q. Was it fair for McCarthy to make all those names public and ruin reputations?

A. That is precisely why McCarthy did not make the names public. Four times during McCarthy's February 20th speech, Senator Scott Lucas demanded that McCarthy make the 81 names public, but McCarthy refused to do so, responding that "if I were to give all the names involved, it might leave a wrong impression. If we should label one man a communist when he is not a communist, I think it would be too bad." What McCarthy did was to identify the individuals only by case numbers, not by their names.

By the way, it took McCarthy some six hours to make that February 20th speech because of harassment by hostile senators, four of whom - Scott Lucas, Brien McMahon, Garrett Withers, and Herbert Lehman - interrupted him a total of 123 times. It should also be noted that McCarthy was not indicting the entire State Department. He said that "the vast majority of the employees of the State Department are loyal" and that he was only after the ones who had demonstrated a loyalty to the Soviet Union or to the Communist Party.

Further, McCarthy admitted that "some of these individuals whose cases I am giving the Senate are no longer in the State Department. A sizable number of them are not. Some of them have transferred to other government work, work allied with the State Department. Others have been transferred to the United Nations."

The Real McCarthy Record