Well I wanted to go to Neiman-Marcus today but my nanny didn't show up...
Ryan- Generally, I enjoy your blog posts, however, I did not enjoy this one at all.
Are you insinuating that if the illegal immigrants obtain citizenship they will then seek to impose communism on us? Or just that these people are communists? Either way it sounds exactly like Fox News logic to me.
Also, I hope the photograph of Joseph McCarthy is not displayed as an endorsement of his character or his methods.
To quote a broadcast by Edward R. Murrow, McCarthy, through his position on the Tydings Committee, "stepped over the line repeatedly," confused "dissent with disloyalty," and violated the due process rights of his fellow citizens by allowing "accusation without proof to replace conviction upon evidence."
McCarthy exploited the rampant fear of Communism in the 1950s for his own aggrandizement, and in the process he destroyed lives. He deserves our scorn, not our respect.
Today is May Day, which is "International Worker's Day," and also the day upon which thousands of people who should be arrested just for being in this country organized a march for. Certianly there is some connection. Hard for me to buy a coincidence there.
McCarthy recognized the evils of communism, and did what he could to get it out of American government. Recently declassified papers have shown that McCarthy did properly identify a number of communists. His picture is on this post in honor of a man who believed that the ends justify the means, and did what he could to end communism domestically.
...thousands of people who should be arrested just for being in this country...
...and I have here in my hand a list of their names!!
McCarthy is scum. I don't often advocate spitting on one's grave...but I make an exception for him. Throwing around the term "unpatriotic" is second nature to some conservatives. I rarely participate in such slander, but McCarthy was an unpatriotic fool. He should have been hung at the stake. Alas, the bottle took his life.
Ahem...that should read "burned at the stake," though a hanging would have been nice, as well. And, if it were correct, it should have read "hanged at the stake." Wow...I've gone flat today.
Mike, I think what you meant to say was "staked through his black heart, and then burned."
Boy howdy, does the Left hate Joe McCarthy! Unfortunately for them, Tailgunner Joe was right about the Communist threat and Soviet sympathisers in the State Dept and other branches of government. Going after Hollywood, though, was sheer demagoguery. Cohn and Saypool were the real witch hunters, but "Cohnism" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Ryan- First, yesterday was also the three year anniversary of the day Bush declared the mission in Iraq was accomplished. Does that mean the President is a Communist and his war in Iraq has communistic overtones? In addition, May 1st is a day traditionally set aside by lawyers to reach out to the community in order to draw attention to the role of lawyers in our society and how "justice and the rule of law make democracy possible." Does that mean all lawyers are Communists? If this is the logic we must labor under, then I guess we all better stop doing things on May 1. If not, we may be accused of being Communist sympathizers.
Second, I am shocked and appalled to read that you support McCarthy, and I cannot believe that anyone would believe that "the ends justif[ied] the means" used by McCarthy. If ever there was a man who used his power to defile the Constitution it was this man. I guess I just expected a more enlightened view from you, Ryan. Your previous posts have always seemed to eschew blanket statements like the one made by this post.
G Rex- Left or Right, everyone should dislike McCarthy and what he stood for. His "means" were intended to play on the rampant fear and distrust in this country at the time. Even if it is not wrong to do that, it is wrong to use that fear to gain power for yourself at the expense of the lives of others and at the expense of freedom of speech.
Mike M.- I am with you. I make the same exception for McCarthy, his tactics, and his supporters. They just light my fire.
I am not sure I would have supported McCarthy at the time, but I feel that he is viewed in a much more negative light than he should be.
And I have heard that ANSWER, the group that organized the May Day Boycott, has communist ties.
ANSWER is a fringe group at best. No sane person believes the crap they dish out.
Yeah, but they are a fringe group that has been the core of these Illegal Immigrant rallies.
Umm, I think you'll find that ANSWER and Move On are at the core of the disloyal opposition, not the fringe. Everything from Cindy Sheehan sitting on the side of a road to anti-globalization window smashing to illegal immigration demonstrations figures them prominently.
To let you all know, although Joseph McCarthy was not a noble figure, his view of Communist infiltration was proven correct by the release of the Venona Documents from the former USSR.
"The decrypts include 349 code names[4] for persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. It is likely that there were more than 349 participants in Soviet espionage, as that number is from a small sample of the total intercepted message traffic."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sig...cance_of_Venona
Once again, I am not supporting McCarthy or McCarthyism, but I am suggesting that he knew more than people ever give him credit for.
Your own link points out that there is no evidence that McCarthy posessed the VERONA intelligence when he made his accusations and began his unconstitutional witch hunt. Also, he accused people of being COMMUNISTS, not SPIES. Morever, even VERONA only confirmed a few of the accusations; a vast majority of those accused were innocents, guilty only of not being as radical as Joe McCarthy.
To support McCarthy and his tactics is to deny the validity of the Constitution and the right of the American people to disagree with their leaders. That is not a camp with which I would want to associate myself. Of course, quashing patriotic dissent has become a common tactic of Republicans these days, so it really comes as no surprise
No, the Verona docs prove he was right about Communists in our government at a time when Communism was the enemy. Supporting the enemy's cause is hardly patriotic dissent.
I'm not one to comment on misspellings, but it is not V-E-R-O-N-A;
it's V-E-N-O-N-A.
My apologies on the spelling - amazing how they eye sees things familiar even though it wasn't.
It might be the enemy's cause, but part of why we disagree with Communism in the Soviet model was it tendency to supress free thought and expression. By doing just that in our opposition to Communism, we become hypocrites and lose credibility.
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