“McCarthyism” — A Term That Libels a Dead Patriot
While the term “McCarthyism” gets slung about as a damning label meaning, essentially, unjust persecution, Joseph McCarthy was correct in his claims and just in his actions.
The continued use of the term “McCarthyism” as a way to tar one’s political opponent 60 years after the death of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (he died May 2, 1957) has descended into even deeper levels of absurdity. Defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “the use of indiscriminate, often unfounded, accusations, sensationalism, inquisitional investigative methods, etc., as in the suppression of political opponents portrayed as subversive,” the term is now used as a weapon not only by the political Left, but also by far too many on the political Right. Whoever uses it, and however it is used, it is at best done out of ignorance, and at worst, by someone who is knowingly perpetrating a falsehood.
For, rather than being a person who made wild accusations “without proper regard for evidence,” McCarthy was a patriot — a man who was trying to protect his country from a totalitarian menace.
There are far too many current examples of people using the term “McCarthyism.” A recent opinion piece defending Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted, “Sessions is the victim of the type of McCarthyite character assassination that the Left used to condemn.... In fact, what Sessions faced may be worse than McCarthyism.” In the state newspaper of a large, conservative Christian denomination, an article about former NFL football coach Tony Dungy, who is also a well-respected Christian, reported that Dungy had been attacked for offering a view that did not coincide with the accepted liberal position, and the article was entitled, “Christian McCarthyism: Tony Dungy.” The article began, “There is a new McCarthyism sweeping across our cultural landscape,” asserting that those who hold to a biblical worldview are the victims of this “Christian McCarthyism.”
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