"True believers don't have regrets." Evil is never having to say oopsie.

McCarthy was to the search for Communists in government in the 1950s what Randall Terry was last month in the fight to keep Terri Schiavo alive -- someone who may be on the correct side of the issue, but through their own reckelessness and self-serving publicity seeking, does more harm than good to the overall cause.

Also, the Peress' ongoing paranoia 52 years after the fact, and 12 years after the final fall of the Soviet Union, is a window into the fears of many on the left that a facist state is just around the corner. The modern version is the deer-in-the-headlights look Paul Krugman gets any time he's in the same room with a conservative, apparently due to fears he's about to be assassinated in the middle of the Meet the Press panel roundtable.

John:

He effectively silenced American Communists though and made even the slightest taint anathema. McCarthyism worked.

McCarthy did more to aid and abet Communist infiltration of America, by being either a Nazi or a laughingstock depending on whom you talked to, than a thousand Commie dentists could have done.

Since Krugman very rarely looks up, I don't see how how could look like a deer in the headlights.

His interviews give me the creeps. He can't maintain eye contact.

Hmmm, I'm assuming, a dr. who lived the privileged American life while being concerned about "the little people."

How come very few walk their talk?

OJ --

His tactics offset his successes, and allowed the left to make being anti-anti Communist a source of pride for the next two generations (let alone subjecting the American public to all the gawdawful Hollywood blacklist movies that have been churned out since then).

Sandy --

OK, deer-in-the-headlights may be giving Krugman a little too much credit for looking into the camera. But his face and body language do show a man preparing to either dive under the table or run like crazy when Laura Ingram, Bill O'Reilly or whatever conservative he's across the table from finally pulls out their semi-automatic assault rifle he knows they're carrying around and starts firing away at Paul. In contrast -- and iroically, given their support of Communism -- the Peresses seem more fearful of that late night knock on the door.

John:

Pride? Where are they?

Now? Either dead or finding new ways to package their message under a different name. But if you lived in New York from the 1960s through the 1980s, the celebration of anti-anti Communism in the media was insuffrable, and to that group those targeted by HUAC or McCarthy's committee were the equivalent of living saints.

What remnants you see now were among the grumblers when Reagan died -- that Screen Actors Guild fight will forever stick in their craws -- and those who run in the Soros/DU/Air America/MoveOn.org circles would love to keep the flame alive, except that virtually no one under the age of 55 gives a damn about how wonderful they think Dr. Peress and a few others were for defying the Senator from Wisconsin.

Then? It was a few intellectuals in the City who no one outside ever heard of.

But thanks to the media echo chamber and the lack of alternative news sources at the time, their influence (albeit short-term, as it turned out) carried much greater weight culturally than it had any business achieving.

The fact that the left's efforts to portray people like Peress as secularism's holy martyrs failed to hold the interest of the masses is testament to the common sense of the American public. But it wasn't for a lack of trying on the media's part, and flyover country wasn't immune to being swamped with tales of the evil of Joseph McCarthy.

McCarthy was just a dupe of the Catholic bishops, he didn't care about Communists.

He did, however, distort the issue so that no one was able to discuss it sensibly. That error of policy persists, as we see here in innumerable posts by Orrin.

He also cleared the way for Hoover, the greatest criminal (in terms of number of felonies committed) in our history.

Harry:

Yes, it worked.

Isn't it funny. Time after time, McCarthy has been proven right and his detractors proven wrong, but it doesn't seem to matter. The same old lies continue to be told half a century later. McCarthy was not a falling down drunk as depicted in the media, he was a brilliant well-educated man who was totally destroyed by the worldwide communist movement. Ann Coulter has it right.

Laugh as you will. Just thank McCarthy. He was sacrificed, but not before many were exposed and the public given a head's up. This was the MSM finest hour. They had complete control of information. What they said, was truth. Nobody contradicted them. Black list? Sure there was one, but it was against those who cooperated with the committees like Larry Parks, not those who defied them who were lionized in the media and won prestigious prizes like Dashell Hammet and Lillian Hellman, two of the most prominent of the lying lefties.

This subject just set me off. This isn't the place to go into it. Lots more like me lived through this era and know it to be true.

The complete history of how we were a hairs-breadth away from becoming a Soviet puppet hasn't been written yet. When it is, most of the icons of the 20th century will be shown to have been complicit in the plan for our complete take over by Moscow. It is time now for the definite book about the putative communist takeover of the U.S. in the post world war two era to be written.

Anyone care to guess who this guy supported in the '04 election?

McCarthy's first foray into politics was as 'the Divorce Judge of Appleton, WI.'(My mother's family is from the Green Bay area and McCarthy's antics and alcoholism were common knowledge throughout NE Wisconsin.) He was going to lose his office before he found the cause of anti-Communism. His attacks on Communists were so scattershot and unsubstantiated that he harmed the cause of real anti-Communists for decades, virtually until the Reagan years. He found Communists at State, about as difficult as finding a mobster at Rao's restaurant in Upper Manhattan. Lots of decent Americans got called to the carpet for nonsense, and lots of people lost jobs, livelihoods and careers for no intelligent reason.

Erp, don't play the age card. My parents lived through it too and saw how McCarthyism wrecked lives. Both my father and my uncle were investigated in the 50s and, given how they conducted their lives from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact onward, that was just plain nuts.

the Pact is the cut-off for decency, but if they were Communists they should have been investigated.

The truth is that the heavy lifting had been done before McCarthy by Nixon.

It just that MCarthy was such a loose cannon that he became a by-word on the left. Even 50 years later they trot out McCarthy every time they get in trouble. The problem with using McCarthy as a synonym for persecution is the distinct lack of deaths and injuries among the investigated.

Well, he didn't get to set up a gulag, true enough.

Faint praise.

McCarthy did not 'find' anticommunism. The American bishops looked for a stooge and found him.

It is not clear how much they knew about his drunkenness, dishonesty etc.

Either they didn't bother to investigate, which would have been really stupid.

Or they knew and didn't care, which would have been really stupid.

God's instruments are imperfect, but this one served his purpose.