In defense of McCarthy

In your first paragraph, you say, "[McCarthy] employed methods that were both illegal and morally beneath what is expected of a United States Senator." You have given no evidence, much less proof, that what McCarthy did was illegal. You've seen the anger the media holds for McCarthy still, fifty years on. Do you really think that charges would not have been pressed if they had any evidence that McCarthy did anything "illegal?" McCarthy's actions, whatever else they were, were not illegal. Senator Collins examined the FBI files concerning McCarthyism? Interesting. I would be gratified if you would give me a link to that text. That could be a very interesting document. She says, "These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur." She talks about McCarthy's "freewheeling style." Surely, someone is cast out of the Senate for more than a "freewheeling style?" She talks about his "browbeating tactics" of people who "were not involved in the infiltration of our government." Surely, however, this is tantamount to admitting that there WAS infiltration of our government? An interesting point, but one I feel I can't examine further without the full text. I don't want to go too far on something so obviously taken out of context. But she is absolutely right. We should most certainly not forget these hearings, and what they represent. They do not represent a the ravings of a sociopath, going after respectable, upstanding Americans for no apparent reason. On the contrary, they represent a single man and a cadre of aids going up against clear Communist infiltration of the government. McCarthy was not, I repeat NOT, a sociopath. I ask you, if his intentions were not what he repeatedly said they were--to end Red infiltration of the government--then why would he have started them in the first place. Frankly, every other possible motive does not hold up. I can only conclude, then, that he acted out of a sincere desire; what's more, a sincere desire that was backed up by much of the evidence he had available to him. You have brought up President Eisenhower several times, I believe. In 1952, Eisenhower campaigned in Wisconsin with McCarthy, and said that though he agreed with McCarthy's aims, he did not agree with his methods. This, I stress again, is my view. Eisenhower, and Truman even more, wanted to maintain the status quo. Joe McCarthy, being a threat to the status quo, was stonewalled and alienated; in Eisenhower's case by his own party. You say that McCarthy's accusations and hearings "undermined basic rights by using fear and emotional rallying to demonize people and humiliate them in publicized trials." While McCarthy may have been hostile to his witnesses, and it was not his decision to publicize the trials. Indeed this exposure didn't seem to have much effect against the American public until Senator McCarthy himself was put on trial in the Army-McCarthy hearings, where he grew defensive and abusive. You call on me to look outside the view of right-wing authors and accept the views of your "overwhelming consensus of contemporary historians." Frankly, I don't see why my view is any less "supported" than yours is. We both come to our conclusions from the evidence. Perhaps you should look past the "overwhelming consensus of contemporary historians." The "overwhelming consensus" has been wrong before. In fact, I think it was the "overwhelming consensus" of the scientific community that the sun and stars revolved around the earth, and not vice versa, in the pre-Galilean world. McCarthy, in his accusations, generally did not go further than to point out that "such and such was a known member of the Communist Party." Even his liberal contemporaries knew that the Communist Party WAS a front group for Moscow, which is why they denied the truthfulness of his charges altogether, instead of taking your approach. The main point you seem to be missing is that these people did not have a "socialist ideology" or something absurd like that, but were PROVEN MEMBERS of the Communist party. As I have shown, this should have been grounds for dismissal under the Truman and Eisenhower loyalty programs. Interestingly enough, you seem to have ignored my point about that completely. By the way, do you know the difference between socialism and communism? You say that John Foster Dulles asked Davies to leave because he was under "political pressure" from McCarthy. It seems to me that Dulles would not have asked Davies to resign if he hadn't thought him unfit to serve. It seems that this tactic would have only played to McCarthy's strengths if the accusation was wrong. Asking Davies to resign was, on one level or another, proof that Dulles thought Davies was guilty. You say, "A political ideology is not in itself proof that an individual is trying to overthrow the government." This is absolutely true under normal circumstances, but if a member of Al-Qaeda wanted to become a member of the government, we would hardly let him. The government's attitude toward Communism in those days WAS akin to our view of Al-Qaeda, which made McCarthy's original accusations so groundbreaking. I further notice that you have warmed over your argument about Annie Lee Moss. I have already addressed this, but since you saw fit to use your other arguments, I don't see why I can't do the same. The FBI had, by virtue of its extensive counter-intelligence work, a list of CPA members. Annie Lee Moss' name appeared on that list. She also had once subscribed to the Daily Worker, a Communist (not Socialist) newspaper. Mrs. Moss, though she was an "elderly African-American woman," her job with the Army Signal Corps was certainly not as a cafeteria worker, and she was obviously an intelligent person. During the Army-McCarthy-Signal Corps. hearings, the official description of the job Moss performed was such: "[To] examine messages in tape form in code and clear text from Receiving Banks, to determine the coherence thereof, whether numbers are in the correct sequence, correctness of time or date group, precedence and whether complete...Messages received in code must be more carefully scrutinized inasmuch as it is more difficult to detect omissions or errors in coded letter or number groups...Process high precedence messages immediately by hand-carrying to overseas desk for quick routing...[Duties Include] recognition recording and disposition of encrypted messages destined for or received from the Crypto Center...etc." It's obvious that Moss was no simpleton, contrary the impression that Symington, McClellan, and Jackson (who had all, by the way, known the Mrs. Moss' FBI file indicated she was a Communist party member.) Indeed, after Moss stumbled reading a memo the army sent her, McClellan asked patronizingly, "Did you read that the very best you could?" This seems to me rather racist, as well as implying that Moss couldn't perform her job at all since it obviously involved reading and filing priority messages. A humorous footnote to this case was that Moss was actually a licensed Realtor in Washington D.C. She was definitely an intelligent person. Intelligent enough to perform her job at the Signal Corps. And intelligent enough to misuse those messages if she so pleased. You point out that the US funds extremist political parties. I have no way of knowing if this is true or not, because you didn't cite any sources, but the difference of course is that these shadowy parties are IN AMERICA, whereas the Communist Party in America was NOT in the Soviet Union. Thus, the USSR had no business funding the CPA. I don't know where you got these figures about the amount of money that was being sent to the CPA, but I know that whatever funds WERE sent were the backbone of the party's monetary needs, because when funding was withdrawn in 1989, the CPA almost collapsed. Crap. Out of space. I look forward to your response!