Tidying up the facts

It's time to set the record straight -- again. I wrote about Joseph McCarthy in this paper on Dec. 4, 2004, but I still hear the demonization.

I cringe every time I hear the word "McCarthyism" because history got this all wrong. McCarthy was painted as a demon mostly by liberal academics, liberal media and Democrats. Yes, Joseph McCarthy, senator from Wisconsin (1947-57), was a Republican.

For those who don't go back to the '50s, Joe said there were lots of communists (Soviet agents) in America's State Department -- and the facts prove there were hundreds. Instead of commies in our government being the villains, it was Joe portrayed as the villain on a witch hunt. One of the great misunderstood periods in American history.

Part of the problem in the '50s is that many who reviled Joe were actually sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Many thought Joseph Stalin was a great leader, even though he killed more people than Hitler. Too many in this country communism was a good thing. (Now it is Barack Obama's socialism.)

Read M. Stanton Evans' 2007 book "Blacklisted by History." Evans spent six years pouring through FBI files and even Soviet archives that were opened following the Cold War to get to the truth.

Would you believe many documents in the Library of Congress and legislative archives were tampered with, actually destroyed, but as noted above, Evans went to other sources to get to the truth.

In 1995, the government made public the Venona Project. Google it. We decoded messages going to and from the Soviet Union to Soviet espionage agents in our State Department and other departments. We caught the Reds red-handed in the '40s. Absolute, indisputable and undeniable proof that what McCarthy claimed was a fact.

That Sen. McCarthy destroyed innocent lives is a lie. He did not, in fact, he underestimated the actual number of communists in our government.

If you look at the facts "McCarthyism" for America was a good thing, not a bad thing.

Who among us is OK with communists infiltrating our government to bring down this country?

Joseph McCarthy, a lawyer, was a down-to-earth good old boy who did not fit into the D.C. establishment and that is part of the reason he was ostracized. He was a maverick. (Does that sound something like John McCain, the maverick?) "Tailgunner Joe," too, served in the military.

Maverick McCarthy was a devout Catholic, but I could care less if he were Baptist or Methodist or whatever. He was a religious person and my hero because he had principles. If he saw something that needed fixing, he didn't care if it was a cause that would make him popular or not.

This man did not play the games of nuances and shades of gray on critical matters. He did not ride the fence and try to have it both ways. Nor was he a moral relativist. (Maybe more Republicans would get out and vote in November if we had Reps now that weren't all over the place.)

Somewhere I read recently that "he who stands for everything stands for nothing." That's not Joe.

Even though Joe McCarthy might have had his faults (who doesn't?), the bottom line is that his efforts helped to rid us of commies in our government.

Think about it. The story of McCarthy is one of the worst examples of biased historical writing ever for this country and, yes, it was the left who despised Republicans and conservatives that did it.

A good case could be made that Joseph McCarthy was actually an American hero.

Les Knoll

Gilbert, Ariz., and Victoria