# McCarthyism Justified! (or Why Some Neo-Conservatives Give Me the Creeps)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccarthyism-justified-or-why-some-neo-conservatives-give-me-the-creeps/158001>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [February 27, 2003, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccarthyism-justified-or-why-some-neo-conservatives-give-me-the-creeps/158001 "2003-02-27T22:56:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2003, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccarthyism-justified-or-why-some-neo-conservatives-give-me-the-creeps/158001/21 "2003-03-01T00:40:41Z")

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Gee. Good thing he didn’t extol the virtues of Roy Cohn.

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**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccarthyism-justified-or-why-some-neo-conservatives-give-me-the-creeps/158001/22 "2003-03-01T05:40:47Z")

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**OM:** \*Even in light of that, I agree with several posters that the investigation into Hollywood was abusive and ultimately a side-show. But the sad reality is that there were communists in the State Department, who were spying for Stalin, one of the most hateful despots the world has ever produced.

To me, the failure to take anti-communism seriously is predicated on a failure to take communism seriously, a mistake often compounded by anachronism.\*

Not admiring or wishing to emulate or rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy is not the same thing as “not taking anti-communism seriously”. There were plenty of people in McCarthy’s time—a number of them former Communists, even—who were able to recognize and repudiate the evils of Stalinism without imitating McCarthy’s self-serving, demagogic, and ultimately counterproductive hysteria. As [this article](http://www.prospect.org/print/V10/43/marshall-j.html) notes,

> [@](#):
>
> In fact, one of the many ironies of the 1950s Red Scare is that the really effective work of purging communists and fellow travelers from the corridors of power and influence was done in the middle and late 1940s, first in the public arena by men like Schlesinger and Reuther, and simultaneously by George Kennan, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and other cold warriors in the Truman administration.

McCarthy, let us recall, [said](http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1951mccarthy-marshall.html) that George Marshall and Dean Acheson were in “the highest circles of this conspiracy…The President? He is their captive.”

C’mon folks, if the neocons want to defend 1950’s Republican anticommunism, **surely** they can find a better poster boy than this raving loon.

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**Author:** ![KSO](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@KSO](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KSO)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2003, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccarthyism-justified-or-why-some-neo-conservatives-give-me-the-creeps/158001/23 "2003-03-01T18:40:22Z")

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I’m curious: how many of you read the essay, the whole essay, beginning to end?

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