Haven't heard any comments good or bad on Good Night

who was previously unknown? Was his attack on the US Army as subject to Communist influence at the highest levels ever proven to be anything but bunkum? Did his assertion that George Marshall was a Communist bear fruit? Were there "200 Communists in the State Department" and were their names ever released by him? In fact did any of his wild accusations against anybody not previously known to be a Communist ever prove correct?

Please include links or references in Books.

Nixon caught a Communist (Alger Hiss). McCarthy did nothing but cause trouble for his party, his President, and ultimately himself.

Now I am not saying that there weren't Communists around. I am saying that there were essentially none where McCarthy pointed his finger. For a proper understanding of the true Communist conspiracy I reccommend the Venona decrypts in any of their formats: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/701-7106472-8619536

and The Mitrokhin Archive: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/701-7106472-8619536 .

I have read 2 of the Venona books and the Mitrokhin Archive, plus perhaps a dozen other books on the same subject including analyses of McCarthy's baseless accusations. What have you read?

Rob

he was right that commies had infiltrated all levels of our government.

There are really multiple different issues here. Even if McCarthy was right in claiming that the Soviets had infiltrated various parts of the US government (I'll admit he probably was right about that) it does not follow that he was right in any of his specific accusations directed at individuals or that he was right in the methods he used. Nor does it follow that he was even interested in communism as anything more than a political issue he could exploit for gain.

I'm not old enough to remember the McCarthy era, and essentially everything I have ever read on the subject has suspect reliability because so much of what has been written about McCarthy by opponents and supporters alike has obvious political slant. Never-the-less my best guess from the available information is that McCarthy was a demagogue who threatened our democratic institutions even when his claims had a kernel of truth.

Personally I think our nation benefits greatly from freedom of expression and freedom to challenge politically popular views. My impression is that Mr. McCarthy, like some more contemporary political leaders from both parties, did not share that view. It is clear that the 'Red Scare' had a significant negative impact on a number of Americans. It is not clear that very many of the people McCarthy attacked so vociferously were in fact communists. Furthermore, even if they espoused some political views in common with communists, they had every right to hold those views as long as they did not engage in treason/sedition/et cetera.

Therefore I am forced to conclude that Mr. McCarthy was both an embarrassment and a danger to our country even if he was right about the presence of communists in our government.

Then you have essentially proved my point. He was an embarrassment and a threat to democracy.

He would have to have been right about a whole lot more than that to justify his rhetoric and his actions.

I don't think he thought any of the actual members of Congress and the Senate were "Commies" except when he was having DT's.

To reiterate. We know fairly clearly who was acting for the Soviet Union in the 40's and 50's through both the Venona decrypts and the Mitrokhin archive smuggled out of Russia. There are gaps, and people who are not yet identified, but the over all numbers, known and unknown are ridiculously small. Fewer than 100 over all those years.

This whole discussion is such a Red herring since McCarthy himself contributed nothing but paranoia and persecution to the situation, never found a Communist. The ones that were outed, were almost all found during the Truman administration, with the exception of perhaps 4 or 5 covert Soviet originated agents under Eisenhower.

Rob

to US intelligence have come from those motivated by greed (the Walkers) or sex (the FBI agent in Utah). Those, along with plain ol' mental instability, will always be around. Countries will continue to rise and fall, 'My country, right or wrong' will still be the mantra of many. Mt 6:34

Unless, of course, Dan 2:44 has any meaning for today.

to bring in DT's, perhaps your mental state should be in question too.

from acute alcoholism. If I were an alcoholic posting drunken rants on this forum you might have a reason to complain about my posts, unfortunately for you I don't drink, don't do drugs, and havent for nearly 40 years now and only take prescription meds which are off limits for discussion, not least because they aren't particularly a voluntary consumption.

I take meds so I can breathe, so that I can work, and so that my blood pressure doesn't spray out of my ears. Mind you if there was a med for SE I'd reccommend it to keep the delusions of a few others at bay.

Rob

... your prescription drug consumption (which you have VOLUNTEERED is not just for asthma) is "off the table", but you take a swipe at the mental health of others here at SE in practically the same breath.

Mind you if there was a med for SE I'd reccommend it to keep the delusions of a few others at bay.

Glass houses and all. The next time you take prednisone, have your wife secure the computer and keep you off it for a few days so that we can all be spared the next prednisone inspired hyperrant.

Even if true, how many does it really require to take the country down?

If McCarthy contributed nothing but paranoia, invoking "McCarthyism" in the current age contributes nothing but paranoia to the nth! Congratulations

If you total up those mentioned in the Venona Decrypts and the Mitrokhin archive and remove those fired or uncovered by Jan 1947, the year McCarthy took office, I bet it comes out at less than 100 in Public Service or the State Dept or in the Army. But if you're uncomfortable with that, double it to McCarthy's 200, its still negligible.

How many would it have taken to topple the United States, to turn it into a Soviet sattelite which is, I presume, what you're asking? Millions. Or at least virtually the entirety of the candidacy of an electable party, plus a near majority of the Public Service, including most states. Otherwise you'd have a civil war, but even that wouldn't guarantee a Soviet invasion, more likely a gobbling up of Austria and maybe down to Greece.

Or are you saying there was a viable Political Party that held covert Communist views and an agenda to topple the United States? Would that have been Truman's Democrats who carried out the Marshall Plan to resist Communism, the Berlin Airlift to resist Communism and the Korean War to resist Communism, or would that have been the Taft opposition, or the Eisenhower government? Or perhaps you're thinking of Adalai Egghead Stevenson, who faced down the USSR in the United Nations under Kennedy?

Just who are these all powerful agents of the Comintern that we should have hounded thousands and fired thousands, and broken lives and provoked suicides, not because of Communist affiliations or sympathies but because of despair over what the United States was becoming under McCarthy? The man had no evidence, and the FBI had no evidence, otherwise they might have caught more than a half a dozen spies.

Please just read a couple of authoritative books on real Communists in the US as identified in US interception of Soviet communications (which was total even if it took a long time to decrypt it all), and Soviet archival material, and use a calculator. It will surprise you.

Rob

... carried out the attacks of 9/11. Some famous singular spies/double agents/traitors throughout history wrought grave damage on their countries. That was my point.

Don't presume I haven't read up on the subject.

as a whole. The question was how many Communists would it take to subvert the United States. It was your and Duckman's assertion that McCarthy saved the US from rampant Communism to which it was wide open because the government and civil service was riddled with Communist agents. None of that is true.

The number of Communists in positions of influence was virtually nil.

Your thesis that McCarthy saved the US from Communism is nonsense, a thesis impossible to substantiate with any substantive evidence, and is void.

Rob

... I'm challenging your fantasy that less than 100 communists posed no threat to the US. Under the right conditions, all it takes is one individual to subvert.

All DM said was that McCarthy was right about the communists.

It's been years since I heard anyone use "commies" - brings back memories. Weren't our lives simpler then ... in our ignorance?

Someone wildly firing bullets all around him is bound to hit a legitimate target eventually, despite himself, though McCarthy didn't even manage that.

... of this thread.

Try Owen Lattimore

McCarthy was RIGHT about the communists in government. His methods were wrong, but history has proven him right and then some!

http://www.spongobongo.com/em/em9820.htm

I can't comment on the author/source above, but the information checks out.

At the end of the day, McCarthy wasn't paranoid, he was right.

with no moral scruples at all. He had found a convenient and to all intents and purposes specious hobby-horse he could ride to prominence. That there were a very few "Communists" sprinkled through government wasn't exactly new information when McCarthy began his inquisition. There was information from Soviet defectors like Igor Gouzenko, and from real investigations in the mid to late 40's. McCarthy simply exaggerated the numbers, and then smeared both individuals and groups, particularly groups, at his whim. His usual trick was to label an organization as "known to be a Communist front" or "has been identified as doing the work of the Communist Party" which were simply home grown American organizations. The two examples that come most readily to mind are The Lawyer's Guild, and the ACLU, neither of which had ever been on a list of "Communist" organizations either at the Department of Justice, or at the FBI. He then went on from that false premise to flay individuals before his committee destroying lives and careers of innocent men and women.

The next proposition he used was once a Communist, always a Communist. The United States had been through 11 years of turmoil and economic disaster after 1929 and many people searching for answers, and for a lever to right the ship of state, had attended meetings or joined the Communist Party for a short or a long time. Mere attendance at meetings was deemed enough to condemn a person forever, whether they were believers, or merely searching for some way to change the disaster around them.

I have never understood why beliefs or personal inquiry could ever have been used in this way, since the United States was founded on dissent, and that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of thought were all fundamental principles. Communists were never a credible threat to the government of the United States not even when Patton led the Army against the Bonus Marchers in Washington in ?1931?. They should have been left to the relevant authorities rather than the circus in Washington.

There's an incident regarding Murrow where an agent of the Senate Select Committee delivers an envelope containing "evidence" that Murrow had been a Communist agent since 1934. Murrow's record was public and extensive and had been vetted by the FBI and the Army and just about every other investigative organization short of the Department of Agriculture, but his opponents would generate ridiculous charges against him, just as they did against anyone they thought vulnerable or useful to their crusade. McCarthy accused him of being a Wobblie (a member of the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World) and identified that group as a "terrorist organization". Now I will confess that I have not researched the Wobblies sufficiently to know whether they ever were designated as a Terrorist Organization by any government agency or department, but Murrow was never a member.

Perhaps McCarthy got a first crack at one "Communist" in all this multi year process, but his evidence came from elsewhere, most likely the FBI. Just on the off chance that there may actually have been another that he "found", let me say that I bet you can't find a third.

Additionally FBI dossiers were notoriously unrigorous regarding proof. Thousands have been explored following the Freedom of Information act and found to be tissues of gossip, neighbor's spite, and innuendo without a hint of substantiation.

I will refrain from reccommending "Point of Order" to you because you will think it tainted because of the beliefs of the film-makers, but it is a very good documentary on this subject.

All I can say is that, using precisely the terms of reference of the Senate Select committee, if you choose to associate yourself with McCarthy, Cohn and company, perhaps you should be judged on the basis of that company, and not the hundreds of innocent people who's lives were ruined.

Rob

...and didn't really buy into the whole ''Commie'' thing at first; he mainly saw it as a way to make a quick name for himself and get on the fast track to become a potential Presidential candidate. As the thing escalated he became obsessed with it for its own sake, and probably did begin to believe his own rhetoric after awhile.

Was Lattimore an enemy agent? I don't think there has been a conclusive answer; you can read pretty convincing stuff on both sides.

... you should probably check who sponsors the next protest rally you support.

It's NONSENSE that the ''red scare'' was imaginary. You're in the definitive minority to have gleened from Venona/KGB records/etc. that the Communist infiltration was less than charged -- it was worse, or at the very least as bad as the most fervent of those attempting to expose it charged.

Even that hyperventilating anti-Bush/Iraq ''journalist'' Chris Matthews can see it! I only bring him up cuz I know you're a fan

"fellow-travelers (liberals who believed in but did not join the Communist Party)" existed is laughable. A real "fellow traveller" was a Socialist, who believed that Communism would get better and less oppressive if more countries emulated it, at least to the extent of Socialist regimes, a belief I feel was a delusion.

Democracy is a prime liberal tenet. One cannot call oneself a democrat or a Democrat without advocating a government tolerant of other views but based upon a free and fair election process. To attempt to smear liberalism by this false association with Communism is reprehensible as well as false; it is, frankly, a form of McCarthyism, the unfounded and unproven assertion of a connection where none exists about all liberals for the purpose of slandering and undermining the liberal position. It is exactly the same thing as asserting that the Right are Hitlerites.

Additionally the Owen Lattimore memo was from Wartime, the time of the Second World War. Of course we and Great Britain and every other Allied country paid a level of "lip-service" to the less totalitarian utterances of the Soviet Union. This is another thing I can't understand. Have you no discrimination to recognize that sometimes you have to accept an ally that you'd rather see in hell? Winston Churchill, ardent anti-Communist, stood in the House of Commons and made common cause with the Soviet Union after Hitler's attack. His stated reason is justly famous: "If Hitler had invaded Hell I would have found it prudent to say something positive about the Devil". That is precisely the case here, whether Lattimore was a secret Communist or not. Lots of American civil servants and politicians said nice things about the Soviet people and even Stalin, it means nothing about their true feelings or their true allegiance. As it is, I see no proof, just the assertion of a devoutly Right Wing group Accuracy in Media (Isn't L. Brent Bozell, a former McCarthy staffer, a founder or partner in AIM, and isn't the argument regarding Lattimore therefore circular, and tainted? Certainly AIM and Bozell share a political credo and thus the whole thing smells).

Proof is either identification from Soviet records which are copious and are now wide open to us, or from the Venona decrypts which indicate that there were a whole 349 people engaged in helping the Communists at all levels and in all areas. (I still contend that fewer than 200 were in any and all parts of the Government.) Proof is also a case able to be brought before a jury, again with credible evidence, and a conviction obtained. Please remember that civil liberties and legal manoeuvering were considerably less in the 40's and 50's than is standard today. If brought to trial the odds were that you'd be convicted.

Spongobongo is a joke, and a personal opinion without substantiation. Even the Wikipedia article is surprisingly biased given its use of Accuracy in Media rather than the Department of Justice, or the FBI or some other governmental source.

Rob

of perjury (not spying, not being an agent of Communist influence). Both charges dismissed as without foundation.

The judge's ruling says of the charges: "They demonstrate that the Government seeks to establish that at some time, in some way, in some places, in all his vast writings, over a fifteen-year period, Lattimore agreed with something it calls and personally defines as following the Communist line and promoting Communist interests. Jay inquiries would be limitless. No charge by the Court could embody objective standards to circumscribe and guide the jury in its determination of what the witness might have meant regarding words he used. With so sweeping an indictment with its many vague charges, and with the existing atmosphere of assumed expected loathing for Communism, it would be neither surprising nor unreasonable were the jury subconsciously impelled to substitute its own understanding for that of defendant. To require defendant to go to trial for perjury under charges so formless and obscure as those before the Court would be unprecedented and would make a sham of the Sixth Amendment and the Federal Rule requiring specificity of charges. The indictment will therefore bc dismissed."

So much for the allegations in Wikipedia.

Rob

... we know more now thanks to Venona and records from the former Soviet Union.

Neither communism nor socialism is compatible with personal liberty upon which this country's founding rests.

McCarthy was right! There's too much that has come out since to demonstrate that. You and Josh can continue to ignore it. Academia is unfortunately so steeped in liberalism that too few are honest enough to reconsider their erroneous misconceptions. Again, you are in a very small minority that do not see Venona vindicating McCarthy on his accusations. I can accept that this doesn't justify his actions. Why can you not accept that it does justify his charges?

the US government agencies. They never directed policy as suggested by McCarthy, they never held "undue influence" as said by McCarthy. And the vast number of "Communist front organizations" named by McCarthy were never on any government or FBI list. They were just labelled as such at his whim and convenience to try to discredit witnesses and to intimidate the American people as a whole.

Had he been better at this game of intimidation and false accusation, a somewhat more attractive person, a better rabble rouser, and less of a drunken fool, he might have become America's Hitler.

By the way, nobody said that there weren't a few Communists in various places. There just wasn't the vast Machiavellian Conspiracy that McCarthy insisted on, there weren't 200 Communists in the State Department, and he never had a list in his pocket of the names of anyone but his book-maker and his bootlegger.

Read something true before you fall on your face in public again.

Rob