The Red Scare
The Red Scare
Senator Jo McCarthy
Sources:
Source: Harry Truman, 1945
“We want to see the time come when we can do the things in peace that we have been able to do in war. If we can put this tremendous machine of ours… to work for peace, we can look forward to the greatest age in the history of mankind.”
Source: Harry Truman, 1947
“Totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.”
Source: Army Attorney Joseph Welch, to Senator Joseph McCarthy, 1954
“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Source, Truman speaking in 1953, after he had left office, about McCarthyism.
It is now evident that the present Administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism. I am not referring to the Senator from Wisconsin. He is only important in that his name has taken on the dictionary meaning of the word. It is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise to power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society
Links
PBS. This page looks at the way that McCarthyism impacted on the arts.
USA People. A biography of McCarthy and numerous links to useful sites.
Wisconsin University. Lecture about McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare.
Eisenhower Archives. Documents and speeches relating to McCarthy and the Red Scare.
