[MeekandMild]

Recent threads have discussed Joe McCarthy in a defamatory light, which got me to thinking.

Joe McCarthy held Senate hearings indicting various Communists in our political sphere. Many people felt this was admirable and others disliked it. He has been labeled a demagogue for many years. I believe this is an unjust labeling and does not reflect the facts of Communist infiltration which were verified after the fall of the USSR.

He was replaced with Bill Proxmire, a man praised by many people as being an ideal advocate for his state and its people. Others, myself included, believe Proxmire was a Tammany style porkbarrel tax thief who never did anything positive, existing only to line the pockets of the dairy industry. Many of us believe he was the primary perpetrator of the US loss of the final frontier. When Mankind colonizes space the colonists will speak Russian, French, Chinese or Tagalog...but they won't speak English, thanks to Proxmire.

So on the scale of badness who was the worse of the two?

[Tamara]

I have a hard time with this one; my "Suckitude Gauge" says they both went into the red. (Big pun, when you think about it... ;) )

[rock jock]

In the years since Joe McCarthy's red hunt, we have discovered that just about every "delusional" accusation he made concerning the role of communists in the federal governtment and their goal of undermining our country and intelligence gathering was in fact true.

The story of Joe McCarthy best illustrated that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the bastards (or in this case, the commies) aren't really out to get you.

[Tamara]

Even if every single accusation made by Tailgunner Joe had been wholly and specifically true, he couldn't have had a more chilling effect on freedom of speech, freedom of association, and open discourse in this country if he'd been a paid agent of the Soviets.

Joe goes to show that sometimes even when you're right, you're wrong. :uhoh:

[jimpeel]

Some links to pages on the venona Project.

FBI - Freedom of Information Act - VENONA (http://foia.fbi.gov/venona.htm)
This is the entire 73 page Venona Report.

NSA - The VENONA Home Page (http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/)

NSA - Introductory History of VENONA (http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/monographs/monograph-1.html)

NSNL 6 - The VENONA project (http://www.cvni.net/radio/nsnl/nsnl6venona.html)

The VENONA Project (http://www.nsa.gov/museum/venona.html)

AUTHORS DISCUSS BOOK ABOUT VENONA PROJECT - Summer 1999 (http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/newsletter/99summer/venona.html)

[rock jock]

Tamara,

I agree, but I also understand Senator McCarthy's take no prisoners approach. Consider this: the threat he spoke of was in fact real, much to the consternation of the Hollywood elites who dismisively refer to his accusations even today as "paranoid delusions". There was in fact a deliberate and well-coordinated effort by the Soviets to gain access to the highest eschelons of power in our govt. Who knows what additional damage that these well placed spies would have caused had this conspiracy not been revealed and confronted? What would have been the threat to our own freedoms in the long-term had they succeeded in influencing policy and gaining top-secret military knowledge? Keep in mind that this was during a time that the Russians were on par with us in nuclear techonology precisely because of commie spies. It is easy now to laugh at McCarthy's clumsy and crude attempts to thwart the Communists, but we have to remember that we were in a war for our very survival as a country. He did indeed run roughshod over the civil rights of a number of Americans and we should rightly condemn his efforts in that regard, but not his intent.

[Drjones]

I wish they were both alive, well, rooting out and kicking commie butt.

[Waitone]

Ahh, Bill Proxmire! There's a blast out of the past.

Sorta makes me nostalgic for the good ol' days when democrats has principals. Bill Proxmire, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson. Those were the days. Those were real democrats. Men you could admire and disagree with at the same time.

<sniff, dabs the eye>

How would DC be different if we had Humphrey instead of Kennedy. How would the political wars play out if Scoop Jackson stood in Tom Daschle's shoes.

<sniff, dab, honks the hankerchief>

Pat Moyinhan dies and is replace with Hillary Clinton--the picture of the problem.

[Tamara]

I wish they were both alive, well, rooting out and kicking commie butt.

The occasional reminders of your youthfulness are refreshing. :)

[Drjones]

The occasional reminders of your youthfulness are refreshing. :)

Ah, can't prove me wrong so you insult my age, eh? :)

[gunsmith]

successfull,maybe we wouldn't have all these stupid gun laws.

[Monkeyleg]

Bill Proxmire was a liberal in the same vein as present Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold. Proxmire was more popular here than either of the present senators, though. He was constantly "pressing the flesh" at county fairs, church festivals and other places. His "Golden Fleece" awards pointed out goofy public spending, another thing that endeared him to the WI public.

Somehow the shrimpy little pedophile who used his family's grocery store chain money to replace Proxmire just doesn't have the same charisma.

[Tamara]

Ah, can't prove me wrong so you insult my age, eh? :)

No, but there's another reminder of your age.

Why don't you go look up who Bill Proxmire was, and then come back and tell me how you want to see him "rooting out and kicking commie butt." Maybe folks do this after their deaths even though they were socialists in life? Undead status perhaps makes one ardently anticommunist?

I didn't insult your age; you did. :)

[Bruce H]

What better way to further the communist doctrine than claim to be rooting them out. Joe McCarthy just might have been a world class communist sleeper. After joe average finally got fed up with his antics and tactics communists were kind of left alone. Joe was one of the most damaging elected officials in our history. Bill Proxmire was a likable thief. He complained about frivilous spending with his "golden fleece" awards to draw attention away from his own treasury raids. Nothing special or different than the current bunch.

[Art Eatman]

For some perspective: During the 1930s, there were millions of people who seriously wondered if Capitalism had indeed failed. There were Communist Party "cells" all over the country. Many of those who signed up as members took it no more seriously than as joining a socio-political discussion group, and were in no way disloyal to America or under the sway of Joe Stalin's views.

McCarthy never differentiated between those who were mostly curious about the possibility of re-establishing some sort of viable economy, and those who seriously subscribed to the tenets of Communism. In his eyes, they were all the same. That's why so many people suffered--and needlessly--from the emotional climate he created with his "All Commies are always evil!" style.

Funny-odd: My mother, at UT-Austin in the 1930s/1940s, avoided the Communists mostly because they were sorta grungy and unshaven/unshorn, and didn't bathe often enough. :) She was like many folks on campus, concerned about the future of the country. But disloyal? No. The irony is that her own discriminatory taste in people kept her record clean, and enabled her rather high security clearance a few years later...

:), Art