According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which keeps track, more college professors are being punished for things they said now than during the McCarthy Era.
No, that article is ridiculous. McCarthy earned his place on the trash heap of history. We forget his bad example at our peril.
- The Venona Project and the KGB Archives revealed the Soviets had extensive spies (300+ people) and infiltrated the State Dept, Treasury, OSS, the Manhattan Project, and the White House staff.
- McCarthy had access to precisely ZERO of that intelligence. The Venona Project was a tightly held Army SIS / FBI program; even President Truman was not reliably briefed.
- The high-level cases (Bentley, Gouzenko, Chambers/Hiss, Fuchs, the Rosenbergs) were already exposed, fled, or under prosecution *before* McCarthy's Wheeling speech in February 1950.
- McCarthy's "205 card-carrying communists" claim was based on an entirely separate, and outdated, bureaucratic watch list of people that might be susceptible to bribery or blackmail or had left-leaning political views.
- A small number of actual targets identified by the Venona Project did appear in McCarthy's attacks, but his demagoguery let real sympathizers credibly claim victimhood and discredited the legitimate counterintelligence effort.
tl;dr: Government infiltration was a real problem *and* McCarthy made it worse.
This quote sums up the deeply flawed gist of that whole article:
"[M. Stanton Evans] argues that in the vast majority of cases those accused by McCarthy of being communists were exactly that. Some were out and out spies. Some were agents of influence. Some were happy to help in the running of communist front groups. But the argument still stands: they were aiding a power that was hostile to the United States."
The author gleefully conflates four very different things. It is illegal to spy for a foreign government or provide material support to a foreign hostile power -- those are **acts**. It is not illegal to be a socialist or communist. The only legitimate response to ideas you consider flawed or dangerous is to explain why and argue with their proponents. The moment you reach for censorship of **beliefs** you become the thing you set out to oppose.
The defining advantages of our system over communism are freedom of speech (and thus freedom of association), due process, and civil liberties. McCarthy trampled all three.
The point of arguing isn't to convince the extremist minority that they are wrong, but rather to convince the majority of normal people who are listening to the argument that one side is dangerous and leads to authoritarianism.
Arguing is never "pointless" because the thing that follows when arguing has failed is violence.
You don't prove that Bolsheviks are scary and authoritarian by using state censorship and being scary and authoritarian yourself.
> rather to convince the majority of normal people who are listening to the argument
The majority of normal people aren't listening to the argument.
> Arguing is never "pointless" because the thing that follows when arguing has failed is violence.
The exact point is that for totalitarians, violence is the default & *indispensable* tool (hence *revolutionary terror*). The Mensheviks & Socialist Revolutionaries attempted to argue with the Bolsheviks, but they got eliminated politically & quite a few of them physically.
> using state censorship and being scary and authoritarian yourself
> The majority of normal people aren't listening to the argument.
Citation needed.
> attempted to argue with the Bolsheviks, but they got eliminated
You missed my point entirely. The purpose of debate is to prevent escalation to violence. If you've reached the point of violence then you've lost the debate by definition. If you're the side working to escalate toward violence then you are (also) the bad guy. Paraphrasing Captain America: I'll fight the Bolsheviks, and if you think authoritarian censorship is ever appropriate then I'll fight you too.
In this country we're still squarely in debate territory.
> It worked out for Pinochet's Chile.
Define "worked out". In the words of Jarvis, "Uh, I wouldn't consider him a role model."
McCarthyism was the epitome of self-censorship and weaponized rhetoric.
Much like the Sophists of ancient Greece, McCarthy realized that truth can be outmaneuvered by emotion. I wrote a piece on this a while back:
"The Sophists taught that in a democracy, the one who controls language controls reality. McCarthy proved the same nearly two millennia later. Both flourished in moments of fear and flux, when citizens craved certainty more than truth."
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which keeps track, more college professors are being punished for things they said now than during the McCarthy Era.
The worst thing about McCarthy is that he was also correct. The institutions have been overtaken by socialist traitors.
This is ridiculous. McCarthy was right. https://www.samizdata.net/2015/12/joseph-mccarthy-was-right/
No, that article is ridiculous. McCarthy earned his place on the trash heap of history. We forget his bad example at our peril.
- The Venona Project and the KGB Archives revealed the Soviets had extensive spies (300+ people) and infiltrated the State Dept, Treasury, OSS, the Manhattan Project, and the White House staff.
- McCarthy had access to precisely ZERO of that intelligence. The Venona Project was a tightly held Army SIS / FBI program; even President Truman was not reliably briefed.
- The high-level cases (Bentley, Gouzenko, Chambers/Hiss, Fuchs, the Rosenbergs) were already exposed, fled, or under prosecution *before* McCarthy's Wheeling speech in February 1950.
- McCarthy's "205 card-carrying communists" claim was based on an entirely separate, and outdated, bureaucratic watch list of people that might be susceptible to bribery or blackmail or had left-leaning political views.
- A small number of actual targets identified by the Venona Project did appear in McCarthy's attacks, but his demagoguery let real sympathizers credibly claim victimhood and discredited the legitimate counterintelligence effort.
tl;dr: Government infiltration was a real problem *and* McCarthy made it worse.
This quote sums up the deeply flawed gist of that whole article:
"[M. Stanton Evans] argues that in the vast majority of cases those accused by McCarthy of being communists were exactly that. Some were out and out spies. Some were agents of influence. Some were happy to help in the running of communist front groups. But the argument still stands: they were aiding a power that was hostile to the United States."
The author gleefully conflates four very different things. It is illegal to spy for a foreign government or provide material support to a foreign hostile power -- those are **acts**. It is not illegal to be a socialist or communist. The only legitimate response to ideas you consider flawed or dangerous is to explain why and argue with their proponents. The moment you reach for censorship of **beliefs** you become the thing you set out to oppose.
The defining advantages of our system over communism are freedom of speech (and thus freedom of association), due process, and civil liberties. McCarthy trampled all three.
That is the sad legacy of "McCarthyism".
> The only legitimate response to ideas you consider flawed or dangerous is to explain why and argue with their proponents.
When those proponents are Bolsheviks, arguing is pointless.
For details see Gary Saul Morson's essay *Leningthink* in *The New Criterion*: https://newcriterion.com/article/leninthink/
The point of arguing isn't to convince the extremist minority that they are wrong, but rather to convince the majority of normal people who are listening to the argument that one side is dangerous and leads to authoritarianism.
Arguing is never "pointless" because the thing that follows when arguing has failed is violence.
You don't prove that Bolsheviks are scary and authoritarian by using state censorship and being scary and authoritarian yourself.
> rather to convince the majority of normal people who are listening to the argument
The majority of normal people aren't listening to the argument.
> Arguing is never "pointless" because the thing that follows when arguing has failed is violence.
The exact point is that for totalitarians, violence is the default & *indispensable* tool (hence *revolutionary terror*). The Mensheviks & Socialist Revolutionaries attempted to argue with the Bolsheviks, but they got eliminated politically & quite a few of them physically.
> using state censorship and being scary and authoritarian yourself
It worked out for Pinochet's Chile.
> The majority of normal people aren't listening to the argument.
Citation needed.
> attempted to argue with the Bolsheviks, but they got eliminated
You missed my point entirely. The purpose of debate is to prevent escalation to violence. If you've reached the point of violence then you've lost the debate by definition. If you're the side working to escalate toward violence then you are (also) the bad guy. Paraphrasing Captain America: I'll fight the Bolsheviks, and if you think authoritarian censorship is ever appropriate then I'll fight you too.
In this country we're still squarely in debate territory.
> It worked out for Pinochet's Chile.
Define "worked out". In the words of Jarvis, "Uh, I wouldn't consider him a role model."
> Citation needed.
You haven't cited anything for the proposition of "the majority of normal people who are listening to the argument".
> The purpose of debate is to prevent escalation to violence.
The point is that it can't be done with totalitarians.
> In the words of Jarvis, "Uh, I wouldn't consider him a role model."
That's your problem; Chile avoided the path of Venezuela under Chavez+Maduro.
McCarthyism was the epitome of self-censorship and weaponized rhetoric.
Much like the Sophists of ancient Greece, McCarthy realized that truth can be outmaneuvered by emotion. I wrote a piece on this a while back:
"The Sophists taught that in a democracy, the one who controls language controls reality. McCarthy proved the same nearly two millennia later. Both flourished in moments of fear and flux, when citizens craved certainty more than truth."
https://www.spiritandsword.com/p/the-one-who-controls-language-controls