Czech Republic Essays - McCarthyism, Free Essays, Term Papers

Czech Republic Essays - McCarthyism, Free Essays, Term Papers Czech Republic Senator Joseph McCarthys political career was in danger when he walked into the Colony Restaurant in Washington, DC for dinner with three of his friends. The date was January 7, 1950. A month earlier, he had been voted worst U.S. Senator in a poll of Senate correspondents. In his earlier years as Senator, he had been known for taking loans and funds from businesses totaling $30,000. This included the Pepsi-Cola company, which earned him the nickname Pepsi-Cola Joe1, and the Lustron Corporation, which dealt in prefabricated houses. About this time McCarthy was also deemed responsible for the resignation of Senate subcommittee chairman Raymond E. Baldwin, who left politics citing McCarthys abuse towards him during the Malmedy WWII hearings the last straw 2. Not only was his political career in danger, but McCarthy was also suffering from financial troubles. He had squandered all the money from his political funds into soybean investments and horse racing, which left him nearly broke3. With these things in mind, McCarthy and his three associates- William Roberts, a Washington lawyer; Charles Kraus, a political science professor at Georgetown; and Father Edmund Walsh, a dean also at George University set out to discover that fateful night what could possibly rejuvenate the political career of Joseph McCarthy before the upcoming election of 52. The trio of Roberts, Kraus, and Walsh recommended that McCarthy should try taking up a cause, and to do so seriously and passionately. But what should it be? Ideas and issues were tossed about the group concerning old age pension to the St. Lawrence Seaway. McCarthy dismissed them all. But then Walsh suggested communism, and McCarthys ears realized that they had just struck gold. Thats it! exclaimed an excited McCarthy. The government is full of Communists. We can hammer away at them. 4 And with that statement, Senator Joseph McCarthys witchhunt against communism had begun. 33 days later in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy stood on a podium before the Ohio Valley Womens Republican Club. I have in my hand, he began, a list of 205 card-carrying Communists who are now employed in the State Department and whose identities are well known to the State Department as being members of the Communist party. 5 On that night his life, as well as the lives of many other Americans, would forever change. McCarthy would begin a brief but astounding crusade against the so-called Communist infiltration of the U.S. government. During a span of about 4 years, McCarthy accused hundreds of government and former government workers of being Communist with little or no concrete evidence. Even so, McCarthy was able to win many convictions and victories without much protest and opposition. Why did McCarthy go relatively unscathed throughout his witchhunt until he was finally censured by the Senate in 1954? According to a nationwide poll taken during the era of McCarthyism, 50% of those polled said they approved of his methods, with 21% undecided6. What allowed him to do this for so long with the approval rather than the condemnation of the people? The key to the success and tolerance of McCarthy was due to a combination of several things. First, there was the recent espionage cases of Hiss and the Rosenbergs. McCarthy also greatly benefited from the pro-McCarthy media, which took up and glamorized his cause. There was also the fact that communism was in many cases a viable scapegoat for a frightened and restless people. McCarthyism was also Americanism; it represented the duty of the patriotic American. McCarthyism became an offensive tool against the threat of the spread of communism. At the time of McCarthys infamous Wheeling speech, the nation had just learned that the threat of Communists in high level positions in Washington was in fact real. Alger Hiss, a former State Department official and at the time President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had been convicted of perjury just one month prior to McCarthys speech7. Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist himself, had charged Hiss with supplying classified information to the Soviet Union. The guilty verdict in this case rose many eyebrows and gave many people cause for alarm. A couple of months later, McCarthys cause was helped along even more by the arrests of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg8. Julius Rosenberg, an army electrical engineer, and his wife, Ethel, were both arrested in the spring of 1950. The two had given sketch blueprints of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union back in 1945, which had accelerated Soviet development of the atomic bomb. The Soviets managed