# Joseph McCarthy: Did he serve a positive purpose? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 27, 2008, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445 "2008-06-27T15:36:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/21 "2008-06-27T19:03:38Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m no expert, but it seems to me that most of his hunting was for communists, not necessarily communist spies. the black mark that his reign leaves on our history is the fact that in this country you’re supposed to be allowed to believe what you want to believe without being persecuted for it (at least by the government). The whole episode cuts away at what is to me the fundamental American value, freedom of thought. Exactly right. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/22 "2008-06-27T19:07:48Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] What was he ever right about, WRT his Communist-hunting? From [Wikipedia:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_mccarthy) [/QUOTE] Wow! A Wikipedia entry that uses Coulter as ammo to show that McCarthy is evil! I"M CONVINCED! Tell you what, how’s about you take some time away from your OP addiction and read the book and I will too? ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/23 "2008-06-27T19:08:03Z")
A branch of my family was wrecked and stripped of employment by McCarthy and his henchpersons. This began a family legacy of secrecy and fear that continues to this day. I shall continue to villianize the histrionic, lying punk, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/24 "2008-06-27T19:09:57Z")
[QUOTE=susan] A branch of my family was wrecked and stripped of employment by McCarthy and his henchpersons. This began a family legacy of secrecy and fear that continues to this day. I shall continue to villianize the histrionic, lying punk, thank you. [/QUOTE] Were they Communist spies working for the government? If so, boo-fucking-hoo. If not, let’s hear some details. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/25 "2008-06-27T19:10:59Z")
Details, please. Frankly, there are times there it is entirely appropriate that a communist loses his job, so I can’t comment about the justice about your family’s particular situation without knowing the circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/26 "2008-06-27T19:30:49Z")
Meh, find me one person that McCarhy accused as a communist spy with actual evidence to back up the claim. If they were not a spy, then his accusation amounts to an abuse of his power. If you can find that, I’ll consider reevaluating him. Without that, he’s still a person who ended up being a false accuser, one of the worst things to be in a modern society. A person that does that brings the government to bear on the accused, and they rarely have the resources to fight back. The fact that he was a former judge and elected official makes the crime especially horrifying. And when you find that one, before you pipe up, remember the rest of the people he accused. For the reconsideration to end in a reversal of his legacy, its really gonna take more than one, but you’re gonna have to start somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/27 "2008-06-27T19:52:14Z")
Yeah, perhaps. But as was pointed out, a lot of the people who lost their jobs never ran afoul of McCarthy at all - they ran afoul of the House committee, or the McCarran Act, or George Meany. The whole thing got called “McCarthyism” even though had McCarthy never been around, it still would have happened to some degree. When the Espionage Act and the Palmer Raids and the imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs took place forty years before this - did McCarthy have anything to do with that? He was about ten years old at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/28 "2008-06-27T19:55:46Z")
[QUOTE=scabpicker] Meh, find me one person that McCarhy accused as a communist spy with actual evidence to back up the claim. If they were not a spy, then his accusation amounts to an abuse of his power. If you can find that, I’ll consider reevaluating him. Without that, he’s still a person who ended up being a false accuser, one of the worst things to be in a modern society. A person that does that brings the government to bear on the accused, and they rarely have the resources to fight back. The fact that he was a former judge and elected official makes the crime especially horrifying. And when you find that one, before you pipe up, remember the rest of the people he accused. For the reconsideration to end in a reversal of his legacy, its really gonna take more than one, but you’re gonna have to start somewhere. [/QUOTE] In fact, modifying history’s verdict on McCarthy would require a showing that the overwhelming majority of his accusations were based on reasonably sound evidence, with any unfounded accusations being occasional errors not representative of his usual pattern. That’s about as likely as a showing that the six million Jews who disappeared from mid-20th-century Europe were actually teleported to Mars rather than murdered by the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/29 "2008-06-27T20:00:52Z")
No, my family members were not communist spies. They were public school teachers who believed in socialism. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/30 "2008-06-27T20:08:21Z")
Was there an issue with a loyalty oath? Details are important here. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/31 "2008-06-27T20:15:20Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] Details, please. Frankly, there are times there it is entirely appropriate that a communist loses his job, so I can’t comment about the justice about your family’s particular situation without knowing the circumstances. [/QUOTE] **Moto** , this sounds as if you assume they must have been communists. I don’t know how you can safely assume that from the information given; all I can detect is that they were likely _accused_ of being communists. Sounds like you still buy into McCarthyism’s central premise, that accusation = proof. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/32 "2008-06-27T20:20:20Z")
Red-baiting was seldom primarily about Reds. It was about _branding_ people as Reds who are typically progressives, liberals, pacifists, dissidents, or members of out-groups (typically Jews or gays, who are overrepresented in any leftward cultural or social movement). ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/33 "2008-06-27T20:24:19Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug] (typically Jews or gays, who are overrepresented in any leftward cultural or social movement). [/QUOTE] Like _Roy Cohn_? 🆒 (I keed- he’s been described by one biographer as a “self loathing Jew, a self loathing homosexual and a self loathing homosexual Jew”, though I don’t think there was anything self-loathing about the bastard.) ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/34 "2008-06-27T20:30:42Z")
No issues with a loyalty oath. The accusations were sufficient to wreck their livelihoods. That’s as detailed as I think this thread warrants. The OP asked a question, and on the basis of family history, I gave my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/35 "2008-06-27T20:37:53Z")
[QUOTE=Fish] Sounds like you still buy into McCarthyism’s central premise, that accusation = proof. [/QUOTE] I think he’s just saying that there’s no way to know whether or not the firings were justified without knowing the whole situation. And if they were public school teachers, McCarthy didn’t have anything to do with getting them fired. His hearings all had to do with Communists in the State department and the Army. This isn’t to say that they weren’t fired because of some anti-Communist witchhunt, or even that they weren’t fired unjustly. But like **Mr. Moto** has been pointing out, anti-Communism was bigger than McCarthy. In fact, I’d go further than that. I’d say that McCarthy had learned from his race against LaFollette that making wild accusations was a good way to get media attention, and had learned from his defense of the Malmedy defendants that accusing the US government of corruption and coverup was an even better way to get media attention. So he looked for a cause he could do that with, found anti-Communism, noticed the Lee list and just ran with it. I’d say that the post war anti-communist hysteria doesn’t even deserve the name McCarthyism. All the big events…the investigation of Hollywood and the blacklist, the Bentley revelations, the Hiss trial, they all predated McCarthy. McCarthy just latched onto the movement when it was peaking to try to get fame. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/36 "2008-06-27T20:38:27Z")
[QUOTE=susan] No issues with a loyalty oath. The accusations were sufficient to wreck their livelihoods. [/QUOTE] That seems to be the most damning thing. Communism in the '50s seems to be on par with ‘child molesting’ now in that just the accusation is enough to wreck a career. A few years ago you’ll remember that Pee-Wee Herman/Paul Reubens was arrested on charge of possessing child pornography and that he was actually _cleared_ of the charge [I think it was a single page from a book of nude photography that got him in trouble] and yet there’s always going to be that asterix by his name; communism seems a similar brand in the historical context. Off point, but I wrote an encyclopedia article on the Rosenbergs for a reference book a few years ago and in the research of course I called up a lot of newspapers from the period on microfilm. What I thought was interesting was that the first mention of Julius Rosenberg in the NYT (at least in connection with spying), telling of his arrest (July 1950), shared a front page with a story about how several senators wanted McCarthy censured. This was years before Welch and McCarthy’s for, years before his heyday even, but I thought it was an exceptionally historic juxtaposition- you can see how he used the Rosenberg/Harry Gold ring scare to ride out of whatever trouble he was in and then trample his accusers in the panic. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/37 "2008-06-27T20:40:16Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing] And if they were public school teachers, McCarthy didn’t have anything to do with getting them fired. [/QUOTE] That’s not quite fair. The House and state agencies and others did the burnings but their torches were lit from McCarthy’s bonfire. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/38 "2008-06-27T20:49:57Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] Details, please. Frankly, there are times there it is entirely appropriate that a communist loses his job . . . [/QUOTE] But, there are no times when it is appropriate that a Communist loses his job for being a Communist, unless, perhaps, the job was with a conservative political but **nongovernmental** organization; agreed? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/39 "2008-06-27T20:58:49Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] That’s not quite fair. The House and state agencies and others did the burnings but their torches were lit from McCarthy’s bonfire. [/QUOTE] No they weren’t. That’s what I’m saying. McCarthy didn’t cause the anti-communism…it was already going on. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445/40 "2008-06-27T21:21:37Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] But, there are no times when it is appropriate that a Communist loses his job for being a Communist, unless, perhaps, the job was with a conservative political but **nongovernmental** organization; agreed? [/QUOTE] I don’t quite agree here. If the government position was a sensitive one where you handled classified data and required a TS clearance, I think exclusion based on being a communist would be perfectly valid. That doesn’t mean I support witch hunts, but if it were to come out that a CIA agent with access to the names of moles were a member of the communist party, I would support his dismissal or at least his removal from such a sensitive spot. I would feel the same way about a CIA agent who was a member of the Nazi party or expressed sympathy for Al Qaeda. Public school teachers? Phhbbt, let 'em keep their jobs. They probably have more to fear from their students than any of us have to fear from them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joseph-mccarthy-did-he-serve-a-positive-purpose/454445.md?page=3)