Joesph McCarthy killed in World War II

Blair152

Banned
I know there are a couple of Joseph McCarthy threads here. This one's different. In John Birmingham's Axis of Time Trilogy, book two, Designated Targets, I think it is; one of the "uptime" characters reads a story about Joseph McCarthy, in the AOT universe, is an insignificant, very minor, historical character, and the article, in the Los Angeles Times, says that Joseph McCarthy was killed by the Japanese. When I studied the 1950s in high school, we studied the McCarthy era. Joseph McCarthy was turned down
by the Marines for service in World War II. I don't know the reason why but he managed to con his way into a tailgunner's position on a B-24 Liberator.
He was a civilian, not, REPEAT, NOT, an active duty Marine, so if he'd been shot down and captured, I can't believe I'm saying this, the Japanese would
have been within their rights under the laws of war, to shoot him as a spy.
What if Joseph McCarthy was killed in World War II?
 
When I studied the 1950s in high school, we studied the McCarthy era. Joseph McCarthy was turned down
by the Marines for service in World War II. I don't know the reason why but he managed to con his way into a tailgunner's position on a B-24 Liberator.
He was a civilian, not, REPEAT, NOT, an active duty Marine, so if he'd been shot down and captured, I can't believe I'm saying this, the Japanese would have been within their rights under the laws of war, to shoot him as a spy.

????

Blair152 said:
What if Joseph McCarthy was killed in World War II?

Obviously the man is important, but without him the red scare era still takes place, only it's HUAC (which so much popular history mistakenly conflates with his own Senate sub-committee) that is synonymous with the era.

The rise and fall of MacArthur's fame after his dismissal, and the failure of the Bricker Amendment in the early Eisenhower years, jointly take on the significance that is otherwise attributed to the Army hearings. Perhaps.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
Magniac's right; the Red Scare was already in the cards by the late '40s and was going to happen with or without McCarthy, only this time headed by somebody like William Ezra Jenner or Herman Walker or somebody equally as nasty.

Hell, the Red Scare may even become worse if somebody competent was leading it instead of a bumbling alcoholic demagogue. Also, the Army-McCarthy hearings served as a deathblow to the Red Scare by dispelling the credulity it had accumulated. Without McCarthy, I doubt that Roy Cohn would rise to prominence. Without Roy Cohn, there'd be no Army hearings, which means the Scare could last a couple more years.
 

Blair152

Banned
Magniac's right; the Red Scare was already in the cards by the late '40s and was going to happen with or without McCarthy, only this time headed by somebody like William Ezra Jenner or Herman Walker or somebody equally as nasty.

Hell, the Red Scare may even become worse if somebody competent was leading it instead of a bumbling alcoholic demagogue. Also, the Army-McCarthy hearings served as a deathblow to the Red Scare by dispelling the credulity it had accumulated. Without McCarthy, I doubt that Roy Cohn would rise to prominence. Without Roy Cohn, there'd be no Army hearings, which means the Scare could last a couple more years.
Unless there are people like Margaret Chase Smith who stand up to those
people you mentioned. She was no backbencher in the '50s. She was right
out in front. Maybe not the leadership, but she was prominent enough that
she was listened to.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Unless there are people like Margaret Chase Smith who stand up to those
people you mentioned. She was no backbencher in the '50s. She was right
out in front. Maybe not the leadership, but she was prominent enough that
she was listened to.
Too bad nobody cared about that Declaration of Conscious thing. People bring it up now because they like to make it out to be some massive backlash and triumphant stand against McCarthy. These same people conveniently forget that nobody cared about the damn thing after it was issued. Ike, his administration, and most of Congress didn't pay any mind to Chase and didn't do a thing to stop McCarthy until the Army-McCarthy hearings ruined him. Hell, McCarthy's popularity only ever rose after Chase's declaration until, again, the Army-McCarthy hearings.

That being said, Chase does deserve credit to standing up to McCarthy, and it's a pity her declaration didn't have any effect.
 
One of my favourite parts was RFK's interrogation of Schine about the Plan. Oh how I wish that was televised and readily YouTubable. :D Not just that but the near-violent aftermath...

Otherwise I agree with Wolfpaw. As LBJ said, "you don't get in a pissing contest with a polecat."
 
The Red Scare was already well under way by the time McCarthy made his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1950.

Hell the famous hearings of the Hollywood people that led to the infamous blacklist was in 1947 and as Roguebeave pointed out McCarthy being a Senator had nothing to do with HUAC, which was in the House.

However, without McCarthy going after the State Department, the DOD, and the US military, anti-communism might not have been so thoroughly discredited and the blacklisting of academics, hollywood types and others might have lasted much longer.

Keep in mind that while the Hollywood Ten hearings were appalling and IMHO un-American, virtually all the screenwriters, directors etc. who were blacklisted were members of the American Communist Party at a time when the party openly supported Stalin, declared itself to be Stalinists and took orders from the Soviet Union.

McCarthy was destroyed because he overstepped his bounds and went after people who weren't communists.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
The Red Scare was already well under way by the time McCarthy made his famous speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1950.
Very true. McCarthy was actually quite amazed at the buzz that his speech created.
Keep in mind that while the Hollywood Ten hearings were appalling and IMHO un-American, virtually all the screenwriters, directors etc. who were blacklisted were members of the American Communist Party at a time when the party openly supported Stalin, declared itself to be Stalinists and took orders from the Soviet Union.
We should also keep in mind that most Communists outside of the Soviet Union were kept in total ignorance of what Stalinism and the horror house it created really were. And since most criticisms pertaining to how bad communism was (calling it a totalitarian slave empire rather than a run of the mill dictatorship) were made by people like McCarthy, it's really all not that surprising that such accusations were dismissed out of hand as hyperbolic, paranoid, and ignorant.
 

Blair152

Banned
Too bad nobody cared about that Declaration of Conscious thing. People bring it up now because they like to make it out to be some massive backlash and triumphant stand against McCarthy. These same people conveniently forget that nobody cared about the damn thing after it was issued. Ike, his administration, and most of Congress didn't pay any mind to Chase and didn't do a thing to stop McCarthy until the Army-McCarthy hearings ruined him. Hell, McCarthy's popularity only ever rose after Chase's declaration until, again, the Army-McCarthy hearings.

That being said, Chase does deserve credit to standing up to McCarthy, and it's a pity her declaration didn't have any effect.
May not. However, before the Senate Ethics Committee could act on Mc-
Carthy's case, he died from alcohol poisoning.
 
It didn't matter- McCarthy had imploded in 1954 and reverted to what he was before 1950, namely a drunken, deadbeat, useless backbencher who rarely said a word in the Senate.
 
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