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New Book Defends McCarthy, Stokes Debate Over His Legacy
JSOnline ^ | December 16, 2007 | Craig Gilbert

Posted on 12/17/2007 4:39:15 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin

Washington - Fifty years after the death of Joe McCarthy, the arguments still linger over Wisconsin's most famous - and infamous - political son.

In a new book, "Blacklisted by History," conservative journalist M. Stanton Evans argues that the McCarthy of popular memory - scourge of civil liberties, profligate accuser, one-man "reign of terror" - is a fiction; that his critics were the real character assassins; and that McCarthy, basically, was right.

"Not only right in terms of the large picture, but right in case after specific case after specific case," Evans said last week during a talk and book-signing at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Evans is not the first to try to retrieve "Tailgunner Joe" from the rogue's gallery of American politics.

In the current National Review, Cold War scholar Ron Radosh calls Evans the latest example of a "bold new attempt to resurrect (McCarthy's) reputation and stature."

But Evans' book is the most detailed effort yet to defend the two-term Wisconsin senator - not only on big questions such as the scope and danger of Communist infiltration, but on the individual charges and claims he made against government officials and employees.

Evans contends that a close reading of FBI files, intercepts of Soviet messages and other once-secret records made available in recent years all bear out his thesis.

But he admits that rehabilitating Joe McCarthy is heavy lifting.

"I don't feel it's a hopeless task. It's a difficult task," he said in an interview Friday.

"I don't blame anybody for having a negative view of Joe McCarthy. I would myself if I were in their shoes," said the 73-year-old Evans. "That's what everybody's been told for 50 years."

Reassessment a hard sell

Evans says conservative readers and opinion-makers are his target audience.

"I have very little hope that the editors of The New York Times are going to sit down and have their eyes opened by anything I write," he said.

But even for his target audience, Evans' full-throated defense of McCarthy can be a hard sell. Among conservatives who believe McCarthy was right about U.S. negligence toward Soviet infiltration, many still fault his tactics and conduct; others suspect it's futile to battle the great weight of opinion about him.

"McCarthy was the bete noire of every elite cultural institution, including the media. They did such a thorough job of creating a narrative about his career, it's just almost pointless to try to revisit that in any way," said Bill Schambra, who was in the audience for Evans' talk at Heritage and heads the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, a program funded by Milwaukee's Bradley Foundation.

In The Weekly Standard magazine last month, conservative columnist Bob Novak wrote that Evans faces a "Sisyphean task," even on the right, calling it "something like an attempt to unveil the sterling qualities of Caligula, Attila, or Torquemada."

Novak, who described himself as having disapproved of McCarthy, termed Evans' book persuasive. Other fans include conservative commentator Ann Coulter, whose own book, "Treason," argued that McCarthy was smeared by the left.

End of 'McCarthyism'

But in another conservative journal, National Review, Radosh gave Evans a very mixed review, giving him credit for correcting parts of the historical record, but accusing him of bending over backward to "exonerate McCarthy on virtually every count," overlooking his excesses, and failing to account for why "so many anti-Communist Americans felt nothing but hostility to McCarthy."

Evans would like to see the day when at least conservatives no longer use the word "McCarthyism," but that day appears far off, with the term routinely employed as a rhetorical bludgeon on both the right and left.

One apt contemporary example: When GOP Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner got his get-tough immigration bill through the House two years ago, some critics assailed him in street protests and on the Internet as a Nazi, Klansman or McCarthyite (pointedly noting his Wisconsin pedigree). Sensenbrenner in turn accused his attackers of being "21st-century McCarthyites."

"They were more interested in calling me names and attacking my character," said Sensenbrenner.

Tactics vs. substance

In an interview last week, Sensenbrenner said he recently bought Evans' book - he knows the author - but hadn't read it yet.

"His tactics were disgusting and abominable," Sensenbrenner said of McCarthy. "On the other hand, with the collapse of Communism and the opening up of the Soviet Union's archives, including a lot of KGB files, I think there has to be a reassessment not of McCarthy's tactics but of the substance of the message he was trying to get across."

Sensenbrenner said he came of age politically in Wisconsin shortly after McCarthy's death in 1957. "The people that I was associated with in the Republican Party either loved him or hated him. There was no middle ground on this," he said.

By contrast, if you were a Wisconsin Democrat at the time, chances are your political identity was closely tied to your enmity for Joe McCarthy.

"I grew up in this world in which fighting Joe McCarthy was kind of a thing you bragged about," Gov. Jim Doyle said in an interview last week, saying he doesn't take the effort to reassess McCarthy very seriously.

The governor's late father, James Doyle, was a leader of the state Democratic Party in that era, and headed the statewide anti-McCarthy "Joe Must Go" Club. Doyle said that after the 1952 re-election of McCarthy and the election of GOP President Dwight Eisenhower, Doyle's father gave a speech in Wisconsin.

To Eisenhower, he offered his best wishes, Doyle said, and "to Joe McCarthy, war until death."

Death came for McCarthy within a few short years. But a half-century later, the war isn't quite over.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Politics/Elections; US: Wisconsin
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To: ex-snook
McCarthy was wrong. He UNDERESTIMATED the number of Communists in Government and Hollywood.

And he treated them with too much respect...

21 posted on 12/17/2007 6:12:42 PM PST by Onelifetogive (* Sarcasm tag ALWAYS required. For some FReepers, sarcasm can NEVER be obvious enough.)
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To: Calpernia

Excellent, excellent stuff! Thanks for posting it!


22 posted on 12/17/2007 6:35:13 PM PST by rlmorel (Liberals: If the Truth would help them, they would use it.)
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To: Onelifetogive

bump


23 posted on 12/17/2007 7:14:48 PM PST by Calpernia (Hunters Rangers - Raising the Bar of Integrity http://www.barofintegrity.us)
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To: rlmorel

bttt


24 posted on 12/17/2007 7:15:01 PM PST by Calpernia (Hunters Rangers - Raising the Bar of Integrity http://www.barofintegrity.us)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin
I share my birthday with Joe McCarthy.

and with Condoleeza Rice, Yanni and the Prince of Wales.

Weird shit, huh?

25 posted on 12/17/2007 7:16:56 PM PST by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

bttt


26 posted on 12/17/2007 9:09:03 PM PST by ADemocratNoMore (Jeepers, Freepers, where'd 'ya get those sleepers?. Pj people, exposing old media's lies.)
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To: Michael.SF.; Calpernia

http://www.rooseveltmyth.com


27 posted on 12/17/2007 10:03:50 PM PST by RaceBannon (Innocent until proven guilty; The Pendleton 8: We are not going down without a fight)
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To: Calpernia

28 posted on 12/18/2007 1:07:18 AM PST by backhoe
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