If you have not done so you should read this one as well:
FDR circa 1932-1939 was the worse, President ever, period.
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.
namesake ping
McCarthy was wrong. He UNDERESTIMATED the number of Communists in Government and Hollywood.
Exactly. We have a big-rumped one campaigning for the Office of the President of the United States of America right this very minute!
those people "black listed" btw acknowledge that they had intentions of making this country a communist haven...
I just posted on this over the weekend. The subject of Joseph McCarthy is one of the key things that made me undergo a political hardening. I have always been a conservative, dating back to when I was an 11 year old kid in the Philippines...but the worm really turned for me when I read Ann Coulter’s book “Treason”.
“Treason” is a book written by an openly biased author, so I took it with a grain of salt.
But what I read completely perplexed me. Ann Coulter’s version of what went on in the hearings (culiminating in the famous “Have you no decency” quote by Joseph Welch) was SO dramatically and diametrically opposed from what I had learned in school, read in articles, and watched on documentaries, that I literally felt that something was completely amiss.
Either Ann Coulter was lying, or the liberals that wrote the books I read in school, put the articles in magazines and newspapers, and made the documentaries were lying. There was no middle ground.
So...I located the actual government transcripts of the hearings.
And I actually read them.
You know what? Ann Coulter’s description of the events of that particular hearing (and others as well) was spot on. I felt like my anchor had been torn loose, and it was a bit disorienting.
The next book I read was “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers, and it changed my political life. I have never been able to view the political process in an even and unbiased way since then.
I have read at least a dozen books about that era since then, and there were some that really put the nail in it for me. Especially the books about the Venona Project. It verified for me 100% that Whittaker Chambers WAS telling the truth. And so was McCarthy.
Anyway, if I could suggest one book, I would recommend “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers. What is most stunning about it is the absolute identical patterns of smear and discreditation used by the liberals in the government and media then, and those used today. Just hideous, but it is the way all liberals operate today.
Oddly enough, I happened to be reading Witness for the first time when Clinton was talking in legal circles in the leadup to impeachment (what “is” is and all that). I was shocked at the similarity to Hiss’s testimony. You’re right, things became a lot clearer after reading that book. I’m reading Atlas Shrugged now. Also very enlightening.
Not only was Joe McCarthy right, but I believe that the Democrats who vilified him KNEW he was right, but it was more important to them to preserve the legacy of FDR than to do the right thing for the country. For the country to see just what FDR had done to the nation and who he had help from in doing it would have eliminated any viability for Democrats as a party.
Most people think that McCarthy blacklisted Hollywood types and the DBM is happy to leave that error widespread. It’s an easier connection for people to make.
If you have not done so you should read this one as well:
FDR circa 1932-1939 was the worse, President ever, period.
The way those old Marxists continually get fresh coats of whitewash from the MSM and academia makes the blood boil.
Mr. niteowl77
Thanks for the recommendation.
I am definitely going to check that out...I have heard about it. Thanks...
Tell me...when you read “Atlas Shrugged”, and they talk about the “Looters”...who comes to mind, Republicans or Democrats?
Ann Coulter said it perfectly in her book. They fought like cornered animals to cover up their complicity.
Yep. See my tagline...:)
Mostly democrats. They tend to be far more socialistic and unthinking. But there are republicans too who think the same way and feed the beast. Men like Voinovich who couldn’t abide a tax cut above $350 billion (I think that’s what his figure was), or Specter who wouldn’t allow the highest tax rate to be lowered beyond 36%, or Grassley, who insists on paying farmers not to grow, or Smith, Collins, and Snowe, who won’t allow oil drillers to drill. I could go on. They’re dupes and bleeding hearts.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/935830/posts
Tailgunner Joe—Where Have You Gone, Joe McCarthy?
Bump thread
ping
Interview with his assistant. Really needs to be read in full.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/935830/posts?page=58#58
>>>This brings us to Senator McCarthy’s death. He was in his 40s when he died on May 2, 1957. He died at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the same hospital from which that other great Patriot, Secretary of the Navy, Forrestal, fell or was thrown to his death. Senator McCarthy’s death certificate reads “Hepatitis Unknown.” There were so many conflicting reports concerning his death that it is very confusing. Medford Evans, the man who wrote “The Assassination of Joseph R. McCarthy” was convinced that the Senator had been murdered, and I’m inclined to agree with him. But I hope his life will encourage others to learn the truth, and I pray that the truth will lead America back to a Christian government.<<<<
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