Originally posted by Mace2004
You do of course realize that McCarthy was actually right about agents of the USSR operating within the US?
yea and we had agents operating in the USSR as well. So what?
This should come as a surprise to anyone?
But it seems alot of innocent people were also accused in the process
"Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin
Between 1950 and 1954, McCarthy became noted for unsubstantiated claims that there were Communist and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government.Beginning in the late 1940s, as the Cold War escalated between the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, the United States went through a period of intense anti-communist tensions and suspicion.
Many thousands of individuals were suspected of being Soviet spies, Communists, or communist sympathizers . Although the American Communist Party was never illegal under Federal law, membership in the party or support of its goals were regarded by many as tantamount to treason. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of this era of anti-communism. The term McCarthyism was coined that same year to describe and condemn the senator's methods, which were widely seen as demagogic and based on reckless, unsubstantiated accusations. Later the term was applied more generally to the anti-communism of the late 1940s through the late 1950s; today, it is often used even more broadly, to describe public attacks made on persons' character and/or patriotism that involve the sort of tactics associated with McCarthy.[1]
From 1950 onward, McCarthy continued to press his accusations that the government was failing to deal with Communism within its ranks. These accusations received wide publicity, increased his approval rating and gained him a powerful national following.
McCarthy's methods also brought on the disapproval and opposition of many. Barely a month after McCarthy's Wheeling speech, the term "McCarthyism" was coined by Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block. Block and others used the word as a synonym for demagoguery, baseless defamation and mudslinging. Later, it would be embraced by McCarthy and some of his supporters. "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled," McCarthy said in a 1952 speech, and later that year he published a book entitled McCarthyism: The Fight for America.
McCarthy has been accused of attempting to discredit his critics and political opponents by accusing them of being Communists or communist sympathizers. . In the 1950 Maryland Senate election, McCarthy campaigned for John M. Butler in his race against four-term incumbent Millard Tydings, with whom McCarthy had been in conflict during the Tydings Committee hearings. In speeches supporting Butler, McCarthy accused Tydings of "protecting Communists" and "shielding traitors."
McCarthy's staff was heavily involved in the campaign, and collaborated in the production of a campaign tabloid that contained a composite photograph doctored to make it appear that Tydings was in intimate conversation with Communist leader Earl Browder. A Senate subcommittee later investigated this election and referred to it as "a despicable, back-street type of campaign," as well as recommending that the use of defamatory literature in a campaign be made grounds for expulsion from the Senate. In addition to the Tydings-Butler race, McCarthy campaigned for several other Republicans in the 1950 elections, including that of Everett Dirksen against Democratic incumbent and Senate Majority Leader Scott W. Lucas. Dirksen, and indeed all the candidates McCarthy supported won their elections, and those he opposed lost. The elections, including many that McCarthy wasn't involved in, were an overall Republican sweep, but still McCarthy was credited as a key Republican campaigner. He was now regarded as one of the most powerful men in the Senate and was treated with new-found deference by his colleagues.[17]
McCarthy was physically violent toward his critics on at least one occasion. In 1950 he assaulted journalist Drew Pearson in the cloakroom of a Washington club, reportedly kneeing him in the groin. McCarthy, who admitted the assault, claimed he merely "slapped" Pearson."
