re: "come and gone"
The Joe McCarthy era has come and gone. But the left puts more mileage on Joe since he succumbed to cirrhosis than he ever covered while he was alive. Digging up Joe and sticking him in the corner of the room is certain to scare off name-callers. He's not much more than a bag of bones now, but there's still a little hair on the skull that even gives me the willies.
Senator Joe has come and gone, it is true. The political psychology that allowed him to thrive has never gone. His disease was as irrelevant as was Nixon's phlebitis, and is no excuse -- that fact remains that he did what he did, and he was not alone. As the easiest example: McCarthy was a Senator, a loose cannon, but over in the House there was an entire committee performing the same inquisition. Together they fostered a national atmosphere of suspicion, if not outright paranoia, that found its way into political and social gatherings, PTAs and Boy Scout troops, all over the country. Remember the John Birch Society? They still exist.
Joe McCarthy was unquestionably the most controversial man I ever served with in the Senate. The anti-anticommunists were outraged at his claims that some of the principals in the Truman and Roosevelt administrations actively served the communist causes.
McCarthy was supported by a strong, nationwide constituency, which included among others, Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of John, Bob, and Edward. A variety of respected, creditable federal employees disturbed by security risks in the national government provided McCarthy with a steady stream of inside information.
The liberals mounted a skillfully orchestrated campaign of criticism against Joe McCarthy. Under the pressure of criticism, he reacted angrily. It is probably true that McCarthy drank too much, overstated his case, and refused to compromise, but he wasn't alone in his beliefs.
-- Barry Goldwater, quoted from his book With No Apologies, as footnote 14 in this excellent biographical article (emphasis added). More information regarding HUAC and the Alien Registration Act can be found here, at the same website.
Yes, McCarthy has been dead for 48 years. The crematoria of the Final Solution have been cold for 60 years. The last victim of the Inquisition in Spain was executed in 1826. No witches have been hunted in Salem for 313 years. That does not reduce the potency of any of them as symbols of how fear and hysteria can affect masses of people, nor of how individuals can manipulate a fearful populace, using nothing more than innuendo.