Nov 26 2007
Who was Joseph McCarthy?
Being raised for the most part to a politically liberal education, I have often heard of the ‘Red Scare’ of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In my high school history books, Senator McCarthy was decried as a demagogue, a dangerous man who used our fear of the Communist menace to accrue power onto himself and to destroy and smear others.
In my English classes when we read Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, my teacher resorted to historicism and suggested that the play about the famous Salem Witch Trials of New England was Miller’s satire/commentary on Senator Joe McCarthy’s ‘Red Scare’.
I swallowed all this whole. Every bit of it. Joe McCarthy is held up universally as the shadow of America, the prototypical Right Wing, warmongering, unscrupulous demagogue. Over the years this idea became not just a description of one man’s actions as US Senator, but as the caricature of fear mongering. It disappeared into a foundational premise, an assumption, upon which other ideas are based in my mind and in the mind legions of others.
Last night, that all changed.
As you may or may not know, I am a C-Span Book TV junkie. Late Saturday night and much of the day Sunday is devoted to watching authors pontificate about their studied subjects and to listen to their prolonged reasoning and debates other others on the show.
Last night Book TV had on M. Stanton Evans, a veteran journalist of the Washington circuit. He was on to discuss his new book, “Blacklisted By History.” He has spent the past five years studying the events around Senator McCarthy’s short tenure as US Senator.
He dug into the archives of the then Warsaw Pact countries and KGB Soviet archives. He dug into our FBI files, which was made available since the Freedom of Information Act passed, and he interviewed numerous people who were there at the time of the ‘Red Scare’.
The conclusion he came to after five years of exhaustive research was this: Joesph McCarthy’s part in the ‘Red Scare’ never happened. It was an entire fabrication from start to finish.
It’s become accepted truth that Joseph McCarthy smeared the reputation of poor innocent people by accusing them of being secret Communists.
Evan’s answer to that is: Name one. Name one innocent individual.
After five years of research, he has not found one poor innocent person that McCarthy named. FBI and KGB files, the raw evidence, have proved Senator McCarthy correct. Every time. The people he accused as communists were indeed communists.
I can go on about this C-Span broadcast, but I think I’m going to save further comments on this until I actually read the book. But as it stands right now, everything I thought I know about Senator McCarthy is up on the air.
I wonder: So much of accepted history, or the history I’ve been raised to, have been debunked over time, and they have been largely ignored by the media and our academic institutions. The main way to discover the truth is by reading history and doing independent studies. Ironically, by doing so, a reader debunks the history of the history books by (oh MY!) inducting the facts. As the number of readers collapse to virtually nothing in this visual technologically age, I wonder how many things like these are going to pass us by?
Mr. M. Stanton Evans’ Book TV lecture took place in a pizzeria surrounded not by high-powered academics, but by cherub-cheeked youngsters who were either still in college or were new to the Hill. I conclude from this that he couldn’t get a better hearing elsewhere.
Who will listen?
I always thought that he had gotten a bad rep and that there had to be to his charges. I’ll check out the book if I get the chance.
Vegas,
Evans’ revelation about McCarthy changes a whole slew of intellectual conclusions. Many of our currents beliefs hinge on the demonization of McCarthy. Perhaps those premises have to re-examined, eh?