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Ten thoughts.....

1.   McCarthy was a fraud, a boor, a self-promoter, and an opportunist. He was also eccentric and his favorite snack was a stick of Wisconsin butter and a pint of whisky.

2.   McCarthy did not believe his own BS until late in the game when the momentum of hysteria convinced him he hit on an unlikely truth. The term “a laundry list” does appear to relate to the claim he was literally holding a laundry list when he said he had a list of Communists in high-ranking domestic positions.


3.   The Cold War was a brutal conflict (yes, it was a war) with the future of the world at stake and it’s too easy for us in our perches of safety to dismiss fears of Communism as hysteria, when it was not unfounded, only exploited by Democrats and Republicans here in the US, and in reverse terms by Communists in the East Bloc.

4.   We now know in hindsight that slightly before McCarthy’s infamous press conference Stalin had boasted to his inner circle that he had infiltrated each branch of the US government. He turned that achievement into one of the last celebrations of his life. Whatever was made of what McCarthy set in motion, Soviet intelligence was operating from deep within US government, industry, the sciences and society, and it did so largely with varying degrees of support from sympathizers here at home. That was not a myth, however politically exploited the efforts against that infiltration soon were.


5.   What resulted from McCarthy’s power grab can be fairly termed a witch hunt but the extent to which the left has tried to enshrine all of those ruined by HUAC is misplaced whining, since total innocence against suspicion was rare and consequences were minor in comparison to the mythology that’s arisen that has it that victims of McCarthyism were destroyed for life. Most went on to lead successful careers that soon saw them back at work in fields like education and entertainment, which is where most of the famous “victims” were. After the social explosion of McCarthyism, life mostly went back to the way it was before HUAC’s witch hunt, and in the 1960s the mentors of the counterculturalists boasted of having been targeted by HUAC. Since many went on to publicly boast of the very sympathies HUAC was seeking out, were they all truly victims? Some people were, most were guilty as presented.

6.   HUAC (which pre-dated McCarthy, having been founded in the 1930s) went way too far, went in the wrong directions, and became vote-grabbing theater very fast.  In doing so it surrendered its chance to be useful to the US in serving the role it set out to undertake.


7.   It was not illegal to be a Communist in the United States, and if you were one and said so, HUAC had no real power to do anything to you. True you likely faced social ostracism and impoverishment but that’s far nicer than what the Soviets did to their dissenters. Those punished by HUAC were either perjurers or those who took the high road and refused to answer the question. Compare that to someone refusing to publicly condemn racism today. Arguably Communism did much more harm than racism and was a more potent threat, yet in our own times we have an ongoing witch hunt, as well.

8.   At first HUAC actually did have enough tactically behind it to concern the Soviets. When it became apparent how silly HUAC had become, the Soviets were deeply relieved. Long before the American public figured it out, the USSR was aware that HUAC was at heart a political spectacle serving the ends of the vote-hungry politicians who ran it. (It was about far more politicians than McCarthy alone, and Democrats profited from it alongside Republicans, including liberal Democrats in the Senate.)


9.   HUAC went wrong fast but at its heart its ideals were not as insane or cruel as posterity likes to think. HUAC hurt very few Americans. The left has always exaggerated its negative impact. Most of its targets….well, when there’s smoke often there is fire. Hollywood then was as radical as Hollywood now, and why shouldn’t Communists with anti-American sentiments have been revealed as what they were? Jailed? Certainly not! That’d be un-American. Beaten up? No. But made to stand in the light of public judgment for their convictions? Why is that atrocious? They were what they were. Why at the height of the Cold War should enemy-sympathizers within the US have been rewarded by benefitting from the fruits of an American nation toward which many of them were not supportive?

10.   Here is a thought for you. The wrongs of seventy years ago can’t be retroactively righted, but today Americans are equally hunted down and similarly persecuted, their lives ruined, in an ongoing PC witch hunt against such blanket offenses as “racism” “sexism” “homophobia” that most Americans get behind as ardently and shallowly as their grandparents did HUAC’s witch hunt, though as yet the outcry against the 21st century witch hunt is not strong enough turn the destructive tide. We may well live to see a comparison drawn between McCarthy-ism and what is happening right now, but at this moment are you insightful enough to see what’s happening, or are you swept along in the current like your forebears were? Are you really any more of aware than they were?

All i'm going to say here is response to this bait is that anytime a group is  established and defined  as "the enemy"  then anyone and everyone who disagrees with the people who have defined that group as the enemy becomes part of that targeted group.

In modern america democrats are called "Muslims" and "pedophiles" with zero evidence whatsoever by the conservatives.  Those groups have been defined as "the  enemy" so anyone who disagrees with the republicans is now a Muslim and a pedophile.  Alex Jones has openly said that Robert muller rapes children with not one iota of proof because Muller is on the other side of the fence.

Conservatives have a long history of demonizing anyone who disagrees with them,  using the government and law to harass,  person cute and terrorize those who agency part of their little collective.  To heart  them snivelling over people who have traditionally been victims of harassment and abuse fighting back is annoying st best,  disgusting at worst.

There are vile people in all political camps and none should be supported for their wrongs. I've heard and read rhetoric from left and right, Sven, that's disgusted me. Extremism on both ends of the spectrum is a threat to liberty.

I'm being genuine when I say I think there is a witch hunt in our culture today, and it's wrong.

I don't know how much Bradbury you've read, Sven (or anyone here) but I read a lot, and something that made a big impression on me as a teenager was that the book burners in Fahrenheit 451 and the suppressors of books in The Martian Chronicles were not fascists or Communists, they were ordinary people who took up the idea that society had to be protected from offensive ideas. Anything sound familiar about that today?

I've read some Bradbury. I've never read Orwell's '1984' although a couple of weekends ago I almost did. I had picked the book up and was on the way to the checkout when I decided, no. If I read this I am going to find too many parallels with todays society. Just as a side note, I replied to a post a friend had made about why we are currently seeing an upsurge in far right activity. When I get home, I'll cut and paste it over here. I'd be interested in hearing other peoples views on my thoughts on it.

I do business with Germans daily and have gotten to know some as friends and have had talks on this subject (most of them tend toward the left, which is fine, whatever), and I am a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, having lived a chunk of my life there, with most of my maternal family there now, and I think much of the rise of the right in leftist-controlled Europe is in reaction to the cultural displacement going on with the influx of immigrants coming into Europe under the EU's short-sighted policies.

The typical reaction among the left in Europe and in the US as a whole has been to blame the natives for xenophobia, but I know the other side is that many of these immigrants are not the sort of people you'd want living in your city, let alone your neighborhood.

In Ireland during the Celtic Tiger of the 1990s, Poles flooded Galway, many stayed, and honestly, I wish they were not there because crime soared, drug use soared, and much of that came with Polish gangs coming into that quiet corner of Ireland. I saw with my own eyes how Polish gangs were destroying the east side of the city and Polish workers were coming in and undercutting Irish laborers, stealing jobs. Tensions naturally rise in those situations, and are the locals wrong to not want foreigners there?

In short I sympathize with some of the right-wing resurgence in Europe, it's just people trying to hang onto their nations, especially against the evil that comes with the presence of Islam, though I don't get behind anyone advocating violence, just think immigration policy in the developed world needs to be changed.

The west does a terrible job of reporting how many hate crimes immigrants are committing against citizens native to the countries they have moved into.

Funnily enough, on the west coast of Scotland during the same period we had the same problems with Irish immigrants. I really struggled getting work between my college courses and after leaving school. You couldn't even rent a house, as they were all rented in bulk, then shared between the work gangs.

The Poles we have at the moment, although accused of taking jobs are actually taking ones that native people were refusing to take (such as working in a local fish processing plant), and we now are having major problems filling the jobs these people used to do as with Brexit looming they are increasingly heading homewards. Trouble is that this isn't just affecting low level jobs, but other things too. For example, the local hospital has had to close its maternity ward as they can't get people to relocate here, despite offering wages around the £100,000 mark.

I fear the Brexiteers dream of controlling our own borders is going to lead to many more such problems, then when its seen it isn't working they'll have to relax the laws and then we'll end up with a flood of people.

Mostly the Poles here have not been a problem. Crime rates amongst them are, well slightly less than the native population, but not to any big degree (I think 0.01% difference, although it has been about 4 or 5 years since I last looked at the local crime figures).

I do agree than Germany made a mistake with its completely open door policy, and they've paid for that. I can see how given their history though they would do things that way. I think Finland has the best integration of immigrants, possibly due to all incomers having to attend a course on the Finnish lifestyle and values (something I think every country should do for immigrants as a requirement for entry).

I heard somewhere the whole thing started because McCarthy was jealous of Nixon for the conviction of Alger Hiss....

The is the post I mentioned earlier.


Basically I think one section of society has been trying to force their views onto everyone (and I am not arguing here the rights and wrongs of each viewpoint here), and what we are now seeing is the inevitable backlash against it. The wheel turns round again, and no one really learns the lessons of the past. I think in many countries we will see a reversal of progress in human rights and equality for a while and rather than pushing for more, work has to be done to defend existing rights now.

Anyway, hopefully I am wrong but it is how I think the world is going to be going until the wheel turns round again and we end up repeating other previous mistakes.

That's a lot to think of in the mroning
I mostly think about taking a s**t and drinking coffee-not always in that order.
But either one or the two.

...Either one or two...

Because some times I need coffee to make me s**t. It's like a Catch-22.

If you think about it, s**tting and coffee compliment each other much like Laurel and Hardy.

And I will stand by that statement!  :hot:

I'll add this to the thoughts of the OP here:
 

For all his posturing and bluster, McCarthy never caught a single Communist spy.  In fact, he probably did more damage to the cause of anti-Communism in America than any Communist agent ever did!

And for all his vilification by the left, Nixon actually did uncover a very highly placed Communist agent (Alger Hiss) who had, as Undersecretary of State, passed many secret documents to the Soviets, including most of President Roosevelt's notes at the Yalta Conference.

HISS went to prison for perjury.  He was not charged with espionage.  NIXON is vilified by the right, too. 

He went to prison for perjury, but evidence has shown that  he was, in fact, a Communist agent, as Nixon and Whitaker Chambers said all along.
Nixon is an incredibly complex figure; he ended the Vietnam War, gave us the EPA, opened relations with China,  signed the Clean Air and Water Act into law, supported the 26th Amendment, and is the only American besides FDR to be nominated for national office FIVE times.  But he also violated the law and was rightly forced to resign in disgrace.

I think that historians will be debating his rightful status as a President a century from now and be no closer to finally deciding than we are today.

Nixon tried to sabotage democracy, which is one of the highest forms of treason against America even if it's not legally recognized  as such. In fact among many sabotaging democracy s looked upon as a funny thing to do.

Karl Rove bragged early in his career he hired people to constantly call the local democrat office during campaigns to jam up their phone lines and make it hard or impossible for them to manage their campaigns. He bragged about this and his fellow conservatives think he's just the cleverest little thing. He was actively sabotaging democracy and should have been imprisoned.

He also liked to leave flyers in poor neighborhoods saying the democrat campaign office would be giving out free food and beer on election day to attract a crowd of them to disrupt the office. Again more sabotage of democracy, again looked u[on as a great idea.

Actively trying to sabotage democracy should be considered a crime against america as a whole, instead its looked upon with respect when something like turd blossom does it.

Years ago a friend of mine in Austin lived in the same community as Karl Rove and was pulling in one evening and Rove was standing in the street talking to some people and when he told me about the encounter I asked my friend, "Did Karl Rove's eyes shine unnaturally in your headlights?"

I guess he could hide his mortal disguise better than that.

Rove backed GWB's constant second-guessing of the intelligence community to the point yes-men took over operations and an edge gained in the Clinton years was lost. Believe it or not (sigh) things in that way got much better in the Obama years.

Rove was so loathed by much of the mid-level and under figures in US intelligence I am surprised he didn't have a "heart attack" long ago.

He (Chambers) was also right about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White

lester is right.

Honestly, however exploited the Red Scare may have been, the United States was infested with Soviet agents all throughout the Cold War, with many operatives early in the period having helped the Soviets during the war out of questionable good intentions, since the Soviets were our allies at the time, and some were then unwillingly entrapped by the Soviets into continuing their work. I wouldn't be surprised if for every turncoat we know about, several more got away with it. While HUAC was picking on the secretaries of movie studio execs, real spies were quietly burrowing into everyday life.

I'll say it again, the world has never seen an intelligence agency like the KGB. It was an espionage factory. Blackmail, bribery, coercion, extortion, infiltration, confidences based on sexual relationships, they made an industry out of it all the size of General Motors, and being open the West made it much easier for them to operate here than they ever did for us to get inside over there.

I once heard a terrifying, credible story about how the KGB had stores of nuclear waste buried across the US, waiting to be used on our homeland in time of war.

And that's just the Soviets. The East Germans were over here in startling numbers too and were if anything more daring and vicious. At one point in the late 1980s the Stasi directly threatened the families of CIA employees here in the United States, even in the heartland, and got what it wanted as a result. Namely, a number of American operations within East Berlin were shut down.

It's a wonder we came through the Cold War as unscathed as we did.

I think that is overstating it.  Let's be blunt: Nixon cheated to win an election he was going to win anyway.  There was simply NO WAY George McGovern was going to win in 1972.  He stood no chance.  But, that wasn't good enough for tricky Dick.  He wanted a landslide, and manipulated the process until he got one.  It was stupid and it was criminal and frankly, he needed to resign over it.
But it's not like it changed the result of the election.

I think your passionate hatred of all things conservative and Christian blinds you to much of the good that conservatives have done.

The main thing I don't like about Nixon is yes- he ended the Vietnam war, but before he did that, he ramped it up it to a covert war. And that is real wrong! Your sending someones son out to die-and they're mothers don't even know wtf he's fighting for?
Nixon used connections even before he won the election to extend the war until he got elected.
And he dragged it out on the premise "America has never lost a war!"
He did't want to lose face.
Tricky Dick!

As far as his forgien policy goes- (i.e. China), Kissinger took care of most of that.
But, even after all that, I respect the man because when he knew the jig was up, he resigned.
I was p**sed at first when I heard on the TV that Ford was pardoning him, but I respect Ford's judgement now because he was right- dragging the country threw a big trial would be not f**king good. So he pardoned him. It was actually a brave thing for Ford to do.

I would give you karma for that if I could, RC!
BTW, I highly recommend Conrad Black's NIXON - A LIFE IN FULL.  It is the best biography of the man I have ever read.

While I'm having ADHD, could somebody tell what that REM song was about?

"it's the end of the world as we know it-and I feel fine!"

Well, that's pretty self explanatory.

No, I was asking about the song Exhuming McCarthy.....
And while I've got Document by REM on my mind, the music from Disturbance At The Heron House is ripped off from I Hear The Call by The Unforgiven.

Nixon is an underrated O. Stone movie

So is JFK, by Stone.
I have always questioned the government report, though if the truth resembles this movie-I dunno. I don't think we will ever really know.

I don't think the truth resembles that movie. 

I've gone full circle on JFK; I used to be 90% convinced there was a conspiracy that killed him, now I am about 75% sure that Oswald did it alone.

I don't either. It's a f**king movie. Nothing in movies resemble the truth of anything.
It's ONLY A MOVIE
ONLY A MOVIE.
ONLY A MOVIE.

the JFK conspiracy is at least a real theory. ask one of these types about it and they can give you a scenerio of what they think really happened and why.

I've never talked to a 9/11 truther who actually had a counter theory. Why would random arabs give their lives to do something for the US or Israel or whatever its supposed to be and how could they have done it logistically like were air traffic controllers part of it? and their wives and families?

I think I read one thing that said they were remote control planes or something. thats ridiculous but at least they tried

 :bouncegiggle: @ "at least they tried."

I been thinking about MCCarthyism, and I like it!

http://youtu.be/qlQY9m4M0b4 (http://youtu.be/qlQY9m4M0b4)

I had one of these in 1973. I burned it in the burning barrel in 1975. That was cool! I watched his face melt!
I still have one. About 15 years ago my sister Brenda found one at a garage sale. Scars the s**t out of my grand kids.