McCarthy was both good and bad. There was certainly the potential for Communists to infiltrate the U.S. Government and there was evidence that they had. On the other hand, McCarthy acted like a Communist trying to make his ends justify his means.
Yeah, that's pretty much it. But I'm pretty disfavourable to McCarthy, his supporters over-estimated the DOMESTIC Communist threat, I think. And the means were pretty awful...people like McCarthy might actually have lost the Cold War, at least idelogically.
Exactly. Some people in America's history have been so fervently anti-communist that they've crossed all intellectual and mental barriers. Joe McCarthy is the best example. There are also people like Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice." Extremism is always a vice, I would say. You don't win over extremism with extremism of your own, as Joe Lieberman use to say. (Even if Howard Dean wasn't an extremist. A bit nutty and unbalanced in his view of GWB, yes, but not an extremist.)
The moral collapse of LBJ (among others) during the Vietnam war can be seen in this pattern. Hadn't he been so intensively occupied with the notion that if he withdrew the communists would take over the world (sort of), he might have pulled out of that awful war and saved many lifes and the honor of himself and his country.
