Posted on 02/16/2015 9:06:03 AM PST by rktman
The act of waving lists to decry an injustice is as old as the Republic. But when Senator Joseph McCarthy waved his list, almost exactly 65 years ago, it became much more than the usual political gesture. On February 9, 1950, during a speech he gave in West Virginia, McCarthy waved a list of 205 names of men he alleged were “known Communists” — known as such by Secretary of State Dean Acheson. With this gesture, he worsened an already panicky situation, gave the angry public a ready-made explanation for why the country was losing the Cold War, helped foster class divisions in the country, and dealt anti-Communism a blow from which it did not recover for decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
He was more right than he was wrong. The libs rewrote history to villify him.
This is how the Rosenbergs were exposed. The fact that the Soviet code had been cracked was a closely guarded national security treasure, and so the moles were not outed with unerring accruacy, lest the Soviets suspect.
McCarthy was right about communist subversives, but *why* he was right could not be disclosed at the time.
Joe McCarthy was right.
That’s why they must continue to villify him.
Look up the Communist Goals read into the Congressional Record in 1963.
They have accomplished most of them, including capturing one or both of the political parties.
The Left hated Richard Nixon for essentially the same reason—Nixon was successful in nailing commie Alger Hiss.
Thanks for the info!
The irony is that the Soviets knew about the Venona intercepts almost immediately, because both the U.S. and British governments had been penetrated at very high levels.
I have never read much about J. Edgar Hoover, but I wonder how much of his behavior may have been driven by the realization that his own government had been compromised and that he couldn't trust the chain of command.
I hadn’t heard that he had access to the Venona transcripts. Do you have a source for that?
“However we understand the history of anti-Communism, it’s hard not to see that the Left was complicit in the rise of McCarthy.”
BS
” The libs rewrote history to villify him.”
Yes. And this wishy washy NR ass clown helped not a bit.
NR = RIP
McCarthy was right and now the “communists” effectively have the Presidency and half the supreme court and half the US Senate and far too much of the US house. Reagan was absolutely right in his well known speech “A Time for Choosing”. Do you know one of the self styled “moderates” that would give a speech so clearly damning socialism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY
It appears to me that National Review is rewriting history, too. This article appears to me to be nothing but "Damning by faint praise."
Although Capshaw’s intention are good, he needs to read “Blacklisted By History.” Claiming that McCarthy waved a list of 205 names plays into the left’s meme. There’s no existing proof, as the book takes great pains to explain; and the book seems very scrupulously researched and footnoted.
There was a book called "The Venona Secrets", available on Amazon. It's not the only source - it's all over the internet. Googling McCarthy Venona yields plenty of material.
They couldn't beat Nixon so they just assassinated his character. Every time there is a media reference to Nixon, there is some modifier intended to assure we remember how they disgraced him.
National Review should be ashamed of itself.
Sorry, but it’s very unlikely indeed McCarthy had direct access to intelligence from Venona, though I suppose it’s possible somebody was leaking him results.
Truman himself didn’t have access to Venona, so it seems unlikely an at the time obscure senator from WI would.
Also, Venona was almost entirely from 42 to 45, with a very few as late as 48.
McCarthy was more or less right when he talked about the number and penetration of Soviet agents. It is very unlikely he had any clue who they were.
I’ll order the book. In the meantime I googled McCarthy and Venona and couldn’t find anything suggesting that he had access to the transcripts, beyond one person In a blog post speculating that it would make sense. I’ve read a couple books on McCarthy published long after the transcripts became public. Plenty of people write about the transcripts vindicating McCarthy but I haven’t see any evidence produced that he had access to them. There’s also an anti-McCarthy article on frontpage that argues he couldn’t have access because so few of the relevant names match his own lists. But I didn’t find that convincing either.
It lasted until 1980 according to Wikipedia.
The left screams about Joe and all he did and accused people of. And today, they are EXACTLY like him. Everything they complained about him, they do now. They are a perfect mirror of what they accused him of. They are as guilty of it as they claim he was.
Nixon destroyed himself, by not having enough faith in himself. He should have been more confident in his ability to win the 72 election without resorting to extra-legal means.
But he allowed the left to rattle him and his self-confidence crumbled. And America paid a huge price for Nixon’s self-made vulnerabilities. Not to mention the price paid by Iran... and by extension, paid by the world.
If Nixon had just learned to breathe...
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