When I was growing up in the dark ages we were taught that Senator Joe McCarthy was the incarnation of evil and cruelty. McCarthyism was added to the dictionary to describe the process of destroying innocent victims of a hectoring and cruel attack by a snarling senator. To correct the record I have been spending a lot of time this year reading about the Cold War and the Communist menace to the United States. I recently saw the late M. Stanton Evans on a C-Span program promoting this book. I was intrigued so I ordered his large 663 pages book on Joe McCarthy. My eyes are now open to new interpretations on gunner Joe.
Joe McCarthy(1908-1957) was the blue collar former judge and attorney who was elected as the junior senator from Wisconsin. McCarthy was abrasive and steadfast in his attempt to root out red weeds growing in the grass of the American meadow. McCarthy was felled and censored by the United States Senate. His charges of communist infiltration in the State Depart, US Army Signal Corp and in the China mission were not met with approval by the Eastern Liberal Elite. His name became anathema in the Truman and Eisenhower administration who prevented files from the White House being examined by McCarthy and his team of investigators led by Roy Cohn and a young Robert F. Kennedy. Evans was a strong conservative but I thought this book took an honest and extremely detailed look at McCarthy warts and all. My conclusion is that McCarthy was a patriot who called the nation to an awareness of the red threat in the early Cold War.
The book is not easy to read due to the extensive footnotes, long accounts of congressional fights and vast cast of historical figures to try to keep straight in your mind. It is, however, one of those books which linger in memory and it does provide a valuable counterbalance to the almost universal scorn for McCarthy in the academy. The book is an essential for any student of Joe McCarthy and his tumultuous times.
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