The Enemy Within

Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe Mc Carthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies, by M. Stanton Evans (Crown Forum, 672 pp., $29.95)

DURING the past decade we have seen a bold new attempt to resurrect the reputation and stature of Sen. Joseph Mc Carthy of Wisconsin, whose Senate investigations into Communism in the 1950s led to the word “Mc Carthyism,” a term used ever since to describe those who smeared their opponents falsely, ruined their careers, and practiced guilt by association. The reevaluation began with a 1996 column by liberal journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, who dared to claim that while Mc Carthy “got it all wrong” he was still “closer to the truth than those who ridiculed him.” In 2000, Arthur Herman produced a revisionist biography of Mc Carthy. And, most recently, Ann Coulter wrote that Mc Carthy was right: Liberals back then (as now) were “systematically undermining the nation’s ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken Mc Carthy’s name.”

RR

About the Author

Ron Radosh

Featured Tags

Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe Mc Carthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies, by M. Stanton Evans (Crown Forum, 672 pp., $29.95)

DURING the past decade we have seen a bold new attempt to resurrect the reputation and stature of Sen. Joseph Mc Carthy of Wisconsin, whose Senate investigations into Communism in the 1950s led to the word “Mc Carthyism,” a term used ever since to describe those who smeared their opponents falsely, ruined their careers, and practiced guilt by association. The reevaluation began with a 1996 column by liberal journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, who dared to claim that while Mc Carthy “got it all wrong” he was still “closer to the truth than those who ridiculed him.” In 2000, Arthur Herman produced a revisionist biography of Mc Carthy. And, most recently, Ann Coulter wrote that Mc Carthy was right: Liberals back then (as now) were “systematically undermining the nation’s ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken Mc Carthy’s name.”