Larry,

While that confrontation in Congress was the first real opposition to Sen. Joe McCarthy, what he never recovered from was an expose done by CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow, who revealed to America the lies his zealotry had driven him to create and believe. In his commentary about McCarthy, Murrow observed that Communism was "the great evil of our time" and that it was based on a web of lies. Then he pointed to the scriptural principle of becoming like what we behold and concluded that, by paying such attention to evil and the lies used to promote it, the Senator had become like it while trying to uproot it from America.  

Some say McCarthy's early death was hastened by his public shaming and personal disappointment. Christians can take a lesson from him: by trying to uproot what we think are evils in the church we are in danger of becoming just as evil because our focus is on it instead of Christ.