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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <28200443@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Dec-85 21:44:00 EST
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Posted: Sun Dec 29 21:44:00 1985
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[Gabor Fencsik {ihnp4,dual,lll-crg,hplabs}!qantel!gabor]
>[McCarthyism remembered]
>[By the way, there was no comparable witchhunt following the Vietnam defeat:
>the reputations of most of the potential scapegoats are almost intact. 
>MacNamara and Kissinger are respected elder statesmen whereas the 'old China
>hands' were never heard from after the purges of the fifties. What changed?]

This is just a guess, but possibly the relevant difference was not in 
the war just lost (China, Vietnam) but in the *current* international
situation. In the early 50's, cold war at its fiercest; Korea; the Soviet
nuclear threat first felt. In the 70's, detente.

Therefore, the McCarthy syndrome may be comparable not to the post-Vietnam
situation, but to the beginning of WWII: to such things as the suppression
of German-American Bund, spy scares and, of course, the internment
of Japanese Americans. This last single act certainly far exceeds all the
combined indignities of McCarthyism, though it was different in style.

And the *fall* of McCarthy came soon after the first after-Stalin
glimmering of detente.