On Oct 17, 2006, at 6:13 PM, Jesse Lemisch wrote:
> And, though I haven't followed this thread completely, I'm not sure
> that the
> point has been made that "McCarthyism" is in some sense a misnomer.
> given
> the general anti-Communist hysteria going back to Harry Truman and
> others.
> The term "McCarthyism" lets lots of Democrats and liberals off the
> hook. A
> Whitney Griswold at Yale, McGeorge Bundy at Harvard, Hutchins at the
> University of Chicago -- many such contributed to what has been called
> McCarthyism.
Finally something we can agree on. In fact, McCarthy made "respectable" anti-Communists nervous, because his lunacy was discrediting their position. Of course, Jonah Goldberg & Ann Coulter want to rehabilitate him.
Doug