Senator Joseph McCarthy died 48 years ago today. Historians tell us that he led one of the great witchhunts in American history. History tells us that many of the witches were real.

REDHUNTER! not the most tactful but he was right on the big picture.

Redhunter, and the sore loosers still writing the history know it.

McCarthy was part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!!!

This is great. Dan, you hit this subject's talking points square on the head. I'm going to pass this history lesson on to all my liberal friends and relatives today.

Here are some comments on McCarthy from HUAC star witness Whittaker Chambers. They were made privately in letters to Wm. F. Buckley (and appearing in Odyssey of a Friend, a collection of WC's letters to WFB). I find them curious since Chambers was probably the most eloquent anti-Communist voice of the era, and since he seems to have made them in good faith - that is, not to betray any individual, but to bolster a cause:

"... the crucial question about Senator McCarthy [is] not whether his aims are ultimately good or bad, but whether his intelligence is equal to his energy." (January 14, 1954)

"For the Right to tie itself in any way to Senator McCarthy is suicide.... [H]e can't lead anybody because he can't think. He is a rabble-rouser and a slugger." (August 2, 1955)

This critical review by David Horowitz of Ann Coulter's Treason makes several complex points about the McCarthy era and its relation to our own time:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8793