Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator

Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator Arthur Herman Free Press, 2000 The consensus in the United States for almost half a century has been that Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a loose cannon and extremist, who in his crusade against "Communists in government" used despicable methods to vilify innocent people. To summarize the accepted view of him in such strong terms is in no sense an exaggeration. The noun "McCarthyism" often appears in the writings even of American conservatives when they want to characterize something as grossly unfair or unfounded. At no time has this been a true picture of the man or his career. The caricature was as obviously false in the 1950s as it is to an objective observer today. A "reexamination of McCarthy's life and legacy," as Arthur Herman is attempting in this book, is made necessary only by the fact that the Left won in the battle with McCarthy, leaving its perspective occupying the field of public opinion. That even conservatives accept that perspective is itself an indication of the extent to which American society has absorbed the ideological coloration of the Left. What would an "objective" reexamination of McCarthy's career require? Before we can answer that, we must make some fundamental decisions about what objectivity demands. Is objective opinion the same thing as respectable opinion, as most people will implicitly insist? Does it, require staying within the myths - the immense mental constructs according to which people understand social reality - that set the parameters of our thinking? To a thoughtful,person, objectivity requires this conformity to the myths only if those large mental constructs are correct. If the myths are fashioned out of a selective perception that ignores much that is essential to understanding, a true (as distinguished from a merely apparent) objectivity will require taking full account of the realities that have been ignored. This is indeed the situation so far as McCarthy and the antiCommunism he championed are concerned. Here are some of the realities that are ignored by the conventional wisdom and that an objective view will have to take into account: 1. That if Nazism was morally and intellectually despicable, Communism was no less so. The consortium of French intellectuals who recently wrote The Black Book of Communism estimate from 85 to 100 million victims killed worldwide during its 72 year reign of terror. 2. That an appreciation of this fact requires a fundamental reorientation of our thinking. It means moving radically away from the nearly universally-accepted double standard that interprets countless events through a prism that condemns everything Nazi while either minimizing the role of Communist ideology or crediting Communism forbearingly as a misguided idealism. If we were to set aside that double standard, the events of much of the past century would look considerably different to us than they do. 3. That the predominant intellectual subculture in the United States and Europe from 1917 through 1947 was profoundly infatuated with "the Soviet experiment." This was so regardless of whether the particular intellectual was formally a member of the Communist Party ("a card-carrying member") or not. A reading of The New Republic during the 1920s and '30s reveals countless "pilgrimages" to Moscow for May Day. Even though anti-Communists dared not say it, the predominant intellectual subculture was deeply implicated. For some, the infatuation continued well past 1947; for others, it gave way to the forbearance that is reflected in the double standard. We know that a few, of course, developed a strong revulsion to Communism and came to provide most of the leadership to the anti-Communist opposition. 4. That these first three realities were very little perceived by the elites and professional classes that have held the reins of "respectable opinion" within the United States and Europe. …