Despite the presence of some real spies, McCarthyites greatly exaggerated the threat from domestic subversion and thus left themselves open to the justified taunts that they were paranoids fearing communists under every bed.
Although there are certainly not terrorists under every bed today, I have often found it unsettling that what the McCarthites feared in the 1940s and 1950s, though off base then, is in some respects not so off base today. And of course the threat today far more threatening than a few moles stealing secrets.
Thus, it seems to me that just as today’s liberals often respond to Iraq as though it were Vietnam, they often respond to measures like the Patriot Act, phone intercepts, tracking of foreign financial transaction, etc., as though those measures are the second coming of Joe McCarthy, thus confirming in both instances the wisdom of Mark Twain’s adage about learning the wrong lessons from history (“Once a cat has sat of a hot stove it’ll never do it again. But it’ll never sit on a cold one again, either”).
Just yesterday no less a liberal than former President Bill Clinton provided a good example when he commented at a rally for Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, trying (and with his crowd, successfully) to be funny:
“But what the heck. We’re in power. What’s the law? You know, we’ve got a lot of problems, but you’ve still got to vote for us. Because my opponent is a slug, and they’re going to tax you into the poorhouse. And on the way to the poorhouse, you’ll meet a terrorist on every street corner. And when you try to run away from that terrorist, you’ll trip over an illegal immigrant.”
I, too, might find this rather funny … if there weren’t in fact so many illegal immigrants and if there weren’t in fact actual terrorists who actually do want to do us harm.
And Democrats wonder why so many people regard the prospect of Democrats being in charge of national security and securing our borders a bad joke.
