By DOUG SHAVER
June 28, 2020
I was alive during the McCarthy era but too young to be aware of it. By the time I could understand what I was hearing about it, it was history, albeit very recent history.
It was almost universally condemned as a bad time for the United States. Almost. But then, most of what I read while I was coming of age was written by liberals.
As I moved on to young adulthood, I discovered that a small number of smart people took issue with the conventional thinking about McCarthy's character and the nature of his activities. At the time, I thought their endorsement of him was an instance of motivated reasoning. I did not suspect, at the time, that the accusations against him were likewise motivated. McCarthy's adversaries, I thought, just cared a little more about free speech than his supporters did.
Most of the unpleasantness referred to generically as "McCarthyism" had little to do with the senator from Wisconsin. People in positions of power everywhere were afraid, and not because he was telling them to be afraid. They were afraid because certain other people were saying, "The United States is an evil nation, and we will do whatever it takes to end the evil."
Those other people were called Communists or Communist sympathizers. Most did not call themselves by either label. They did hold, or were seeking, positions of power or other influence within the government, within academia, and within the journalism and entertainment industries. But they could not be entirely honest about where their sympathies lay because of the common knowledge that Communism was inconsistent with certain of the nation's most cherished values. Communist ideology did say that America was evil, and it did say that the evil should be destroyed. You could not say any of that, though, if you cared about your economic security or social acceptability.
And so, whatever one's place within the commentariat, one was expected to declare one's opposition to Communism. We had become engaged in a Cold War against a Communist superpower, and tribal loyalty required a disavowal of any sympathy with our enemy. Thus it was OK to be anti-Communist. What was not OK, though, was to actually advocate any anti-Communist activity, i.e. to declare one's support for any action intended to oppose the propagation of Communist ideas or achievement of Communist objectives. For most intellectuals throughout the Cold War, the real orthodoxy was neither Communism nor anti-Communism (though both were acceptable) but anti-anti-Communism.
In other words, it was OK to say you were anti-Communist, but not to act as if you meant it. So stated, this does seem a bit incoherent. It has been many generations, though, since the nation's intellectuals in general have concerned themselves with the coherence of their ideologies.
McCarthy was among a few powerful people who were both sincerely anti-Communist and indifferent to the consensus that they should never act accordingly. Being in a position to act on his convictions, he proceeded to do so. A handful of executives in various other government agencies and private enterprises followed his example. Perhaps they were emboldened by the publicity he gathered. Perhaps, given the political climate, nobody needed any emboldening. In either case, the collective national behavior called McCarthyism happened, and its detractors characterized it as a metaphorical witch hunt.
In due course, even McCarthy's conservative allies, beginning with William F. Buckley, had to admit he made some mistakes. Their admission says nothing about his intentions. He was a zealot by anyone's metric, and zealots always make mistakes. Buckley and his colleagues would have been foolish to pretend otherwise. More problematic is the conservatives' apparent argument that (a) the Communist threat to the nation's survival was real and (b) considering that existential threat, McCarthy's actions were justified even if a few innocent people had to suffer as collateral damage.
There is no war without collateral damage. In a shooting war, noncombatants are killed or wounded. In a metaphorical war, nonparticipants lose their jobs or suffer other extreme hardships. Anyone's judgment about the moral acceptability of these casualties seems invariably to depend on which army they think ought to have won the fight.
The collateral damage our military forces inflicted during World War II was horrendous. But, we won that war, and we were the Good Guys, and so the civilian casualties, however regrettable, were necessary and thus excusable. But there are those who say we actually started the war ourselves for ignoble reasons, and so in their minds the term "collateral damage" is just a euphemism for mass murder.
I think the first metaphorical shots have been fired in our next civil war. The casualties are beginning to fall, and some of the victims were not engaged in the hostilities. Their ultimate classification as collateral damage or victims of naked aggression would usually depend on who eventually wins. This time, it is not obvious that there will be any winners.
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(This page last updated on June 28, 2020.)