On NPR this morning, Ari Shapiro, discussing the Ukrainian process of “lustration” (the investigation and exposure of citizens’ past involvement with the Soviet regime), mentioned a purported parallel in American history:

Sen. Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee is a prime example of lustration gone bad.

This mistake is comical, but it also reflects the tendency to collapse all American opposition to Communism, which was long-lived, bipartisan, and mostly uncontroversial, to the brief period of prominence of one convenient villain.