[lainie]

I have my copy but haven't finished it. Does Coulter get into why the McCarthy myths have abounded for so long (and so flagrantly), seemingly unchallenged by others who were there, or his heirs? Or the man himself? When did he pass on, anyway. I don't even know if he has heirs.

[DPB101]

Ann Coulter sums up best why the McCarthy myth has endured on pages 8 and 9. Liberals had no choice. They were locked into a worldview, a religion, they had to defend no matter what:

...Whitaker Chambers (wrote) "In this century, within the next decades (it) will be decided for generations whether all mankind is to become Communist, whether the whole world is to become free, or whether, in the struggle, civilization as we know it is to be completely destroyed." It had been his fate, he said, to have been "in turn a witness to each of the two great faiths of our time"-God and Communism. Communism, he said is "the vision of man without God" . . .These were the irreconcilable opposites--God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism.'

Liberals chose Man. Conservatives chose God. The struggle between the two great faiths was the subtext of every great political conflict in America in the second half of the twentieth century. It was this conflict that fueled the Chambers-Hiss hearings, "McCarthyism", Vietnam, Watergate and the elite' abiding hatred for Ronald Reagan. At the end of the century, the free world won.

It was a crushing defeat for liberals. Not because liberals were necessarily Communists, though many were, but because they had been morally blind to Communism...

[RobbyS]

The McCarthy story has been made into fact by constant repetition. The element of truth in the accusations is that inevitably many bureaucrats abused their authority and used security concerns wrongly.

[Eva]

Yes, read the book. McCarthy died a lonely broken drunk. It's hard to rehabilitate an image that has been so totally destroyed that the man grew to fit it.