On reading all the above, I think the answer to Deckman's question is that there are very few people around here who were active in the Left during the McCarthy era, which was the early 50's. This is a very special group, and probably not well represented in Mudcat. They get very intense. They are not represented here.

McCarthy was not a "great" demagogue. He was a momentary phenomenon. He represented Wisconsin, whose population included lots of peopleof German and Irish descent, some of whom felt that we fought on the wrong side in World War II. He attacked the State Department, which was the bete noir of the extreme right. Then he attacked the Army. He was intolerable, he had to go, and he went. He was pilloried in a popular film, the "Manchurian Candidate," which portrayed him as a Chinese agent. If Eisenhower had had the cojones to stand up to McCarthy, he would have gone earlier. His only legacy is the practice of referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat party, which still seems to be around."

Unless I misremember, it was not McCarthy but HUAC who called Pete Seeger. HUAC was a different matter.