Joseph McCarthy was an American hero. He was slandered and defamed by the same type of people who practice the same types of tactics on their enemies today.
I was one of those people who unthinkingly believed about McCarthy what my teachers taught me in school, and what I saw in the newpapers, magazines and on television.
When I read Ann Coulter’s book “Treason”, I was perplexed. I was puzzled why her account of the famous encounter between Joseph Welch and Joseph McCarthy was so completely and diametrically different from the accounts I had grown up with and been taught.
It wasn’t just a little different, it was COMPLETELY different. So I did what the Internet allows you to do these days: I researched. I obtained the transcripts of the actual hearings, and read them.
Ann Coulter was spot on in her characterization of that hearing, and the others as well. After I read that, I began to read everything that didn’t appear to be completely slanted against McCarthy. I read three separate books on Venona, and then capped it off with the book that was, for me, the most important political book I have read in my life.
“Witness”, by Whittaker Chambers.
I was completely astounded by that book, and it explained a lot of things for me. It explained why the Left viewed Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy the way they did, and why all three of them, Chambers, Nixon, and McCarthy were villified and slandered by a poisonous and biased media.
I have a web page on my site devoted to this issue at:
http://web.mac.com/rlmorel/iWeb/Site/Whittaker%20Chambers.html
What is perhaps most disturbing of all is to see that the Left practices the exact same form of character assassination warfare today that it practiced fifty years ago against Whittaker Chambers. Exactly.
I admit freely that it was a disillusioning time for me. To realize that all my teachers, people I had no reason to distrust, fed me a steady diet of falsehood regarding Joseph McCarthy. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.
The good thing about it is that I now view everything political with a grain of salt, which I think is healthy. I am also now completely biased towards the right of the political spectrum. I have no use for the Left.
This was cemented for me last March at the Gathering of Eagles down in Washington, D.C.
I saw with my OWN eyes what happened that day, and I watched the news with ten other people afterwards, and was stupefied by the way the media presented it on television. Everyone in the room, all of us who had actually BEEN there and seen what went on, looked at each other in disbelief. I will say that there was not one person who was surprised by it, but...that didn’t mean we had to accept it. That was the first time I had seen on my own, the bias of the media.
I remember March 17th, I was at GOE as well,and I agree with you about the MSM. The media coverage was a gross distortion of reality. The media could not nor will it ever report the truth of that wonderful day.
I admire your courage in admitting your mistake!
My own journey of political awakening followed a path of increasing skepticism of America's typically conservative political villainy that "everybody knows" about. I actually started laughing out loud at the absurdity of Halberstam's over-the-top caricature of Nixon as a pure evil one dimensional cartoon cutout villain.
Yet [Nixon] was of a different class, he was not of [the Chandlers, publishers of the Los Angeles Times] Buff [Chandler] had always found something lacking in him, and years later, when it all had gone sour and he had disgraced himself, she would remember the she always thought he was a little tacky. Indeed, the first time she had met him, on election night in 1946, when all the good winners dutifully came by the Times building (as they now go by the television studios) for the anointing by Palmer, she had not liked him. Nixon with his parents and brothers had gone upstairs to the Chandlers' private suite in the building, where there was a buffet. Someone asked the Nixons what they wanted to drink and the Nixon women said milk, so the Nixon men also said milk, and then as Buff was going out the door for milk, Nixon had taken her aside and asked for a bourbon - "Can you get me a straight? I don't want my mother to see me drinking it." It was a quick flash, but she did not like, a grown man concealing a drink from his mother.
"Witness" is the most important book ever written about Communism's impact on America. No one can claim to be informed on the subject without reading it and several other prime sources. I wish it could be required reading in every college in the country but of course we know why that will never happen. For that reason it's very important for people like us to spread the word.
Like you, other readers will learn how history has been suppressed and how character assassination has been a Marxist tool in America for about 80 years. It might make them wonder about people other than McCarthy who've been savaged by the Marxist machine. J. Edgar Hoover, for instance. Anyone who's fought effectively against Communism/Marxism in this country has been utterly destroyed. I don't know for certain Hoover was such a victim but have strong suspicions. He was largely the source of McCarthy's information and probably the most effective anti-Communist in American history.
I checked out your website but it doesn't seem to work with my latest Firefox browser. Heading text is superimposed on body text and it's impossible to read. Hope you get it fixed and more power to you!