Well, no. He resembled Hitler in two instructive ways: He was a mendacious demagogue who exploited people's fear of Communism, and he got away with it longer than he should have because respectable people thought they could use him.

But look at the difference: In McCarthy's case, the respectable people were right. He was pretty much self-limiting. They let him rant until he had made enough respectable enemies, and then they got rid of him. It didn't take a war to bring him down; all it took was a senator & a college president with some residual decency.

The other day I was reading a review of some books about Mao, which was decorated with a picture of him & Nixon. That inspired me to think a wicked, nay patriotic, thought: We are lucky to live in a country where Nixon counts as a nasty politician. The same might be said with McCarthy in Nixon's place.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: In German there are no regular nouns, and in psychology there are no normal minds. :||