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Recently a poster argued to me that what amounted to McCarthyism was a good thing.
Who agrees?
Recently a poster argued to me that what amounted to McCarthyism was a good thing.
Who agrees?
I am not an apologist for McCarthy, in any way, but...
let me ask you this: Do you think that our current , er, heightened awareness of the so-called "Islamic extremism" is a good thing?
Does it help to prevent slaughter of the innocent?
Put yourself in the shoes of, say, a Russian, or Polish, or Latvian immigrant, an American citizen now - who knows first-hand "what it is all about"...and the year is 1950, not 1995 - the happy end is nowhere in sight.
Know what I mean?
To a degree yes, but that is still centered in the framework of being aware and alert against people who have belief, motive and means. McCarthy went after mere beliefs.
Yeah, but the ends do not justify the means. Fundamentally the war we face is not decided by who kills more people. It is decided by who's ideas win out. If we abandon what made America great, we have lost the war.
If we abandon what made America great, we have lost the war.
I couldn't agree more.
But let's have a reality check here: The "victims" of McCarthyism could lose their jobs. The victims of Stalinism were guaranteed to lose their lives - the same goes for their relatives, co-workers and (suspected) sympathizers.
Don't we 'lose the war' the moment we forget what the 'war' is all about, the moment we abandon the sense of proportion, in our moral judgment?
No, it is not healthy, not normal, not rational, to look for a Stalinist - or , say, Jihadist - infiltrator under every bed. But if it will save an innocent life - or a hundred of innocent lives - to hell with health, normalcy and rationality, honestly.
Real people do matter. Abstractions - however noble-sounding - are of limited use.
To be fair, many of the people McCarthy went after actually did have substantial ties to Communist polical organizations which were actively communicating with Moscow. Many (if not most) of these organizations also bsolutely were plotting against the United States Government and offering aid to Soviet agents.
In this regard, McCarthy's little crusade actually did do some good by outing a significant number of potential subversives in positions of high power and influence in American society. The problem was that he took things a tad too far, and the whole thing wound up deteriorating into a circus witch hunt as a result.
I would honestly classify the whole episode as being as being something of a "necessary evil." It was rightly put to an end when it overstepped its boundaries.
We would appear to have "won" anyway regardless of our temporary lapse in ethics.
Of the actual names of McCarthys "list" 9 on the 159 were soviet spies. That would be a 94.3% failure rate. That is not "necessary evil" that is "incompetent evil".
Someone actually interested in hunting spies quietly investigates the situation to avoid alerting the suspects. They don't make wild public accusations accusing innocent people with no evidence whatsoever.
I couldn't agree more.
But let's have a reality check here: The "victims" of McCarthyism could lose their jobs. The victims of Stalinism were guaranteed to lose their lives - the same goes for their relatives, co-workers and (suspected) sympathizers.
Don't we 'lose the war' the moment we forget what the 'war' is all about, the moment we abandon the sense of proportion, in our moral judgment?
No, it is not healthy, not normal, not rational, to look for a Stalinist - or , say, Jihadist - infiltrator under every bed. But if it will save an innocent life - or a hundred of innocent lives - to hell with health, normalcy and rationality, honestly.
Real people do matter. Abstractions - however noble-sounding - are of limited use.
But the 1950s are not the times we face today. Muslims terrorists cannot bring down the West.
And fiscal responsibility. And the Constitution. And the thousands of people we infringe upon who pose absolutely no threat..
. The amount of times in history that a persecuted minority rose up and destroyed a nation are almost non-existent.
Recently a poster argued to me that what amounted to McCarthyism was a good thing.
Who agrees?
Exactly. Still, aren't you inclined, at least on the emotional level and to some degree, to understand (if not justify) the current "paranoia"? Don't you feel - for a moment at least - that the FBI was not paranoid enough, when it received the Russian warning about Tamerlan Tsarnoev, did a perfunctory interview - and excused itself from the picture?
You don't have to tell me. I am a libertarian. I "stand with Rand", and I would "stand" with Margaret Chase Smith if it were 1950.
But before issuing a summary condemnation, we need to understand. Did McCarthyism go too far and do harm? Absolutely. Was it an overreaction to a real, serious threat? Also - yes.
(By the way, why is it always "McCarthyism", and not "Trumanism" or "Martinism"? The Executive Order 9835 dates to 1947).
Almost being the key word. Two "persecuted minorities" - the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazis in Germany - representing rare but rather significant exceptions.
The Nazi's were not a persecuted minority.
The Bolsheviks only rose to power because of the chaos from the collapse of the Tsarist regime and WW1.
The idea that that America was at risk for a communist revolution is a joke.
At some point, they were. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in the Landsberg Prison.
True. But they had been a "persecuted political minority" before that. Even if the persecution they have suffered looks like motherly TLC, comparing to what they have unleashed on their compatriots.
Exact words of the prominent liberal (in the European sense) leader, Pavel Milyukov, in 1912. Of course, he was speaking about Russia.
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