“McCarthyism” is the second favorite epithet (after “fascism”) of liberals who would sooner donate money to Palin for President than utter a word that would violate political correctness (which, in Edmund Burke’s phrase, “feels a stain like a wound”). And yet this same sensitive, compassionate group still uses an Irish Catholic name as a term of abuse to describe political practices that are not unique to the Irish, to Catholics, or even to the late senator. In fact, Joseph McCarthy was a victim of those same practices at the very time his critics — of various ethnic and religious backgrounds, including many Irish Catholics — were damning his methods. (See Bill Buckley’s Up from Liberalism for details.)
The fact that Irish Catholics did not immediately complain when the word was coined in 1950 by Herb Block, the hard-left cartoonist of the Washington Post, is a mystery to me. In any event, acceptance of the term “McCarthyism” by Irish Catholics over the decades is not proof that the word is legitimate; it only serves to demonstrate the truism that if you don’t get what you like in politics, you start liking what you get.
Consider the following thought experiment: In 1953, around the same time the term “McCarthyism” was coined, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiracy to commit treason by passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Suppose that some hard-right anti-Communist polemicists had coined the word “Rosenbergism” to describe such acts of treason. We know what would have happened: Men and women of good will — left and right, Christian and Jew — would have raised an immediate and justifiable uproar over the slur. Editorials would have quite properly pointed out that the word served to degrade politics by attaching ethnic connotations to a terrible act — treason — that transcends ethnicity. There would be thundering sermons from pulpits from coast to coast reminding congregations that even if the word was used merely in a descriptive sense, its ethnic specificity put it beyond the pale. Why didn’t this happen to “McCarthyism”?
Two comments. National Review had its origins in MacCarthyism. Founder William F Buckley's second book was McCarthy and His Enemies (1954). Written with his brother-in-law, Brent Bozell, it present a robust defense of the Wisconsin senator's tactics.
Second comment. Jews didn't and don't need "Rosenbergism" as a term of opprobrium. People like the white, male, Anglo-Catholic types at National Review have plenty of terms that serve the purpose. In 1997 Buckley ruled out his one-time protege (now New York Times columnist) David Brooks because he was a Jew.
'Nuff said.
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