Joe McCarthy: American Hero

Now look, I was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Remember, he was from Appleton, Wisconsin, just 20 miles away. He was a hero.

Isn’t that the spirit of conservative thought? “He was from nearby and he looked like me. Therefore, awesome.”

I looked up the ten planks of the communist manifesto to see which I had heard of being in place in the US. My conclusions are below but then I am a furriner so may have missed something.

I make it one of the ten (free education for children) that you have, one that depends on how you define terms (heavy progressive tax)and one I didn’t know how to answer as it combines several things.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. No

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Debateable, depends on what counts as a heavy tax

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. No

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. No

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. No, the existence of a national bank is not enough to meet this plank, it calls for an exclusive monopoly on credit

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. No

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Debateable, this one is hard to answer as it covers multiple points

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. No

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country. No

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form and combination of education with industrial production. Yes

On the topic of historical revisionism and wingnut postmodernism, I ended up remembering a little conversation that took place on Deep Space Nine:

Dr. Bashir: “Of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?”

Garak: “My dear Doctor, they’re all true.”

Dr. Bashir: “Even the lies?”

Garak: “Especially the lies.”

Why would anyone in their right mind give a shit what Phyllis Schlafly thinks? The only thing more pathetic than Phyllis is her half-wit son.

Although I do occasionally read conservapaedia at lunch when I need a laugh.

Ed Brayton: There has been a very interesting little project among the right wing over the last few years to resurrect the reputation of Sen. Joe McCarthy….

I remember back in 1989 or 1990 or so reading an op-ed by Pat Buchananan where he tries to rehabilitate McCarthy.

Yeah, and I remember doing a double take. I remember being a staunch conservative/reationary just a decade before that, and it never occurred to me then that McCarthy could ever be considered aanything but a dangerous anti-democratic demogogue.

Ah, the naivete of my youth!

I was born and raised in Appleton Wisconsin. Tailgunner Joe was a drunken, abusive, vindictive, arrogant, self riteous, self promoting, power hungry son of a bitch. If there were such a place as hell he would be there turning on a spit.

I don’t think McCarthy worship is anything new. They’ve just recently began doing it in the open after decades of having been shamed into doing it in secret.

If anyone wants to wade through the actual academic disputes considering McCarthy, I would suggest this and this, which are well worth the time. The basis for the right’s claims that McCarthy was a hero is that it later turned out that some of the people he fingered for being commies really were commies, or at least security risks. The problem is, McCarthy had a false-positive rate of well over 90%, which completely undid whatever good might have been accomplished by ferreting out actual communists. In all likelihood, the true positives he scored were total accidents.

McCarthy is a clear example of placing the interests of one’s political party and of personal power over the well-being of the country. He speaks directly to the wing-nut soul.

No private property? My homeowner’s deed must be wrong, then, because it lists me as the owner – no government ownership, although they do “politely request” that I pay them some taxes on the thing every year – which I’m happy to do, especially since my salary comes almost entirely from property tax 😉

…it later turned out that some of the people he fingered for being commies really were commies, or at least security risks.

And why were they commies? Because back then, laissez-faire capitalism and European fascism made communism look really good and progressive by comparison; and because our most important ally in crushing fascism was a certain huge communist country. There was a time when: a) you could not effectively oppose fascism without at least some help from communists; and b) you could not reform capitalism without embracing some facets of socialism. The relentless postwar campaign to demonize “communism” was, and still is, an attempt to whitewash and erase this frightening truth.

I was born and raised in Appleton Wisconsin. Tailgunner Joe was a drunken, abusive, vindictive, arrogant, self riteous, self promoting, power hungry son of a bitch. If there were such a place as hell he would be there turning on a spit.

And he wasn’t a “tailgunner”, either. Oh, he did get to ride in the back of the plane a few times and fire the tail gun, but not on combat missions. All he ever shot up were palm trees. Just about everything McCarthy claimed for himself in terms of his war service was a lie. He wasn’t injured in combat, he wasn’t carrying enemy shrapnel in his body, and the only injury he did sustain came from falling down a ladder on a ship.

Virtually all his claims to have discovered communists in government were also lies. It’s most unfortunate that he was in office during the one sliver of the ’50s where the Republicans had control of the Senate. Without that, he’d never have had a chairmanship, which would have limited his power far more.

How long before the nutters embrace Timothy McVeigh as a hero fighting agin’ big gubmint?

slc1 – so that made McCarthy Ike’s Beria

The Soviets didn’t need devout Communists to conduct espionage anyways. They just needed to find greedy people. Turncoat FBI agent Robert Hanssen was a Catholic convert and a member of the notorius conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, but approached the KGB on his own initiative because he wanted money.

Wow. Just… wow. She really thinks MCCARTHY was a HERO.

Mind, blown.

Don’t forget the number of left wing, Hollywood, academic and homosexual careers and lives destroyed by the Blacklists. For conservatives, that alone was a heroic enough accomplishment for McCarthy.

Re exdrome @ #30

Very true. I went to junior high school with a boy whose father, Paul Jarrico, was a Hollywood screen writer who was blacklisted.