McCarthyism: Another "Progressive" Hoax

Saturday, May 23, 2009 4:34 PM

Criticize a "progressive" like Barack Hussein Obama or Nancy Pelosi and you are likely to be accused of "McCarthyism." We may not be certain what that is, but we know that it's bad. Those of use with more of a historical perspective are aware that "McCarthyism" refers to Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who died in the 1950's after taking on the Truman State Department, the Pentagon, and "squishy" left-wing Republicans. McCarthy's great sin, back in the day, was anti-Communism, a word which is now journalistically out of favor, replaced by the more general phrase "right-wing extremism." Even today's pro-American talk show hosts throw around the epithet "McCarthyism," blurring the distinction between censorship and political incorrectness.

To better understand the extent of the damage done by the "progressives" by introducing the all-purpose mudball "McCarthyism," a word mostly used to suppress free speech and public criticism of a Marxist agenda, I made a Wikipedia search about Senator McCarthy and the people surrounding him. I learned many interesting and surprising things.

For example, did you know that Senator Joseph McCarthy was the godfather of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and former Governor of Maryland? He was reportedly a close friend of Joe Kennedy, father of Jack, Bobby, and Teddy; Tail-Gunner Joe, as he was nicknamed, was criticized by Presidental candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said in a Green Bay speech that while he agreed with McCarthy's goals, he disagreed with his methods.

To better understand McCarthyism, it helps to know the history of the Progressive movement, which began as a reform movement embracing the middle ground between the radical labor movement of the late 19th century and the bully-boy tactics of certain rich industrialists. Theodore Roosevelt embraced Progressivism, but by the time in 1948 that Vice-President Henry Wallace was nominated as the Progressive Party candidate, the hijacking of the Progressive movement by Leninist Marxists was fairly complete. Wallace's party advocated friendly US-Soviet relations.

Today I put quotation marks around the word "progressive," because there is nothing progressive about a "progressive;" and in the US, they do not like to use their former name Communist, dating from an 1836 league of the followers of a French Revolutionary named Babeuf.

Tail-Gunner Joe, popular among Republicans of his time as a war hero, has been accused of many things, including alcoholism, exaggerating or lying about his war record, railroading defendants during a stint as a circuit court judge, and being soft on Waffen-SS troops who massacred US troops at Malmedy in 1944. What is beyond dispute, in my opinion, was that he made a long roster of enemies who were out to destroy him politically, and so they did.

My personal impression is that Joe was a tail-gunner who fired recklessly and missed his target often, making the job of his enemies easier, especially after enraging President Harry S. Truman and Truman's Cold War Pentagon. He probably tended to make public accusations easily and could not back them up with solid evidence.

McCarthy earliest major political battle was taking on the LaFollette dynasty, a father-son enterprise who ruled the Wisconsin Progressive Party (yes, that's what it was called) and had accumulated enormous power. He became Senator by defeating the son.

After a woman Republican from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith, organized a 1950 movement to censure McCarthy, his political star fell and he was virtually shunned and ignored in the Senate. He died of liver disease in 1957.

The "progressive" propagandists in the mainstream media have had a field day conflating McCarthy's grandstanding and ultimately failed accusations against Communists in government with any kind of critique of Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, fuzzy leftism, redistribution of wealth, destruction of the dollar, and flouting the rule of law in the name of "hope and change." In my opinion, much of the weakness and malaise in the Republican Party today stems from fear of an allegation of McCarthyism should a GOP political figure be too bold in his or her criticism of the "progressive" agenda.