First off, I was comparing Senator McCarthy to the McCarthy from your book - not to you. Second, the notion that McCarthy's witch hunt had any significant benefit or served any purpose beyond bullying individuals for their political beliefs is really quite absurd. Even if the commie threat was real (and it was) and even if there were secret commies in areas of the country (and there were), McCarthy and his "secret list" did almost nothing to actually help improve our security.
Utter nonsense. What is really quite absurd is your attempt to perpetuate the hoary myths that Joe McCarthy engaged in a "witch hunt," that he "bullied" people because of their political beliefs, that he had some "secret list," and that what he did served no significant purpose. It betrays that you are completely ignorant about this subject.
The factual evidence proves beyond any doubt that the officials McCarthy investigated were in some cases even worse than he or anyone else thought at the time. A number of them were outright Soviet agents, much like the Cambridge group in England--Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and Anthony Blunt.
McCarthy never had a "secret list." Evans devotes quite a few pages of his book to debunking that fairy tale, detailing how confusion about various lists and numbers of persons McCarthy and others had referred to publicly--57, 205, etc.--was purposely generated and used to try to make McCarthy out as a liar. That was an important tactic used by Democratic politicians and others who either were anxious to whitewash the enormous breach of national security that had been allowed to take place during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, or were sympathetic to the international Communist movement. They did not want security risks investigated, so instead they ignored this country's security and attacked the man who was trying to protect it.
Neither you nor anyone else can name a single person, with the possible exception of General Marshall, that Sen. McCarthy persecuted, defamed, or otherwise unfairly mistreated. The usual person leftists name, when presented with this challenge, is Annie Lee Moss. Evans devotes an entire chapter to debunking the myth that McCarthy bullied an innocent woman. In her testimony to a congressional committee, Mrs. Moss acted the part of a frail, confused simpleton who had no idea why she had been summoned. In fact her claim that she was the victim of mistaken identity was a lie. The Annie Lee Moss who testified so deceptively was the very same Annie Lee Moss who was a longtime Communist sympathizer who subscribed to the Daily Worker and whose post in the Signal Corps involved her in handling encrypted messages.
The persons Joe McCarthy and his researchers--one of them a young lawyer named Robert Kennedy--were investigating should have been investigated and dealt with before McCarthy first started his efforts in 1950. Some were outright traitors, and in one way or another all of them were working for Moscow and against this country's interests. It's no surprise that leftists today continue to try to defend these other America-haters who came before them by slandering McCarthy.
Contrary to your assertion, McCarthy accomplished a great deal. As a result of the pressure he applied by making the American people aware for the first time of the scandalous and even criminal negligence of our national security that had taken place, quite a few Soviet moles were driven out of federal agencies or forced to leave the country. Because of McCarthy, these people at long last were prevented from inflicting even more damage on this country. I would be happy to list these people and detail what they had been up to, if you want to dispute the point.
Please stop it with the back-handed implication that I don't care about my country or the security of its citizens. That pisses me off.
Your anger is not relevant to the points being debated and does not interest me. I respect the rules of these forums and am careful to abide by them. At the same time, anyone is free to draw whatever conclusions they see fit from my comments
I want my country to use the wealth and power available to the world's most powerful nation to help improve itself both morally and economically by making use of doctors, mechanics, engineers, mothers, and children that are fleeing this war torn nation and giving them a new home and a new life.
If some of those mothers and doctors and engineers butcher a lot of Americans some day, because we have no way of knowing who they are or what they may be up to, I suppose that's just too damned bad. The mass murders in San Bernardino should have made clear to any sentient adult that jihadists are able to hide their true nature, enter this country, and go on to slaughter innocent Americans.
