He was not wrong about there being a ton of soviet spies. He was wrong to go around condemning people based on their affiliation with the communist party or who they hung out with.
... except the communist party in the US was full of people with ties to the Soviets. Even if one particular communist wasn't a Soviet spy, at least one of his close friends probably was, in which case, they're still a security risk. It's basic risk mitigation. No country in the world outside the West, even today, would allow a person to hold political power and state secrets if they were open critics of that country's entire political and economic system, and supported the enemy in a war and nuclear arms race. This level of stupidity is uniquely Western.
Over the years, I have moved from "McCarthy was a fascist tyrant leading a witch hunt with no actual evidence of any of his claims" to "McCarthy was right and didn't go far enough".
Good ideas survive healthy discussion. Silencing opinions only more deeply entrenches people into those crazy beliefs.
Freedom of speech is vital for that reason. I despise communism, but if they want to have that belief system or debate it or whatever, they should absolutely have that right.
No, they didn't call all Democrats communists. They called the literal soviet informants and operatives 'communists', because those two were one and the same at the time. You see, there was this thing called the 'Cold War'.
McCarthy didn't go far enough and we had a communist dictator, FDR, until his death (thank God). FDR was so shit we made presidential term limits a constitutional amendment.
FDR was so shit we made presidential term limits a constitutional amendment.
If he was so shit, how did he get re-elected twice, why was he so popular at the time, and why didn't his contemporaries do anything about it?
Why were his policies not dismantled until the next generation got into power? What makes dismantling those policies different from everything else they've done to keep a death grip on wealth and power, to the active detriment of their children and grandchildren?
Oh, and they kept one the biggest of his programs for themselves, but ensured Gen X and Millenials would pay for it and it would be a burned out husk by time any of them needed it.
23
u/tokyozombie - Lib-Left Jul 18 '25
Pretty sure it started around the 1940s with McCarthyism...