Liberal Anti-Communism Got It (Mostly) Right

Do we need another mammoth biography of Joe McCarthy? Fervent defenses of the man and “ism,” and equally partisan denunciations, have appeared over the years, beginning almost as quickly as he rose to prominence, starting with William F. Buckley and Brent Bozell’s McCarthy and His Enemies, and Jack Anderson and Ronald May’s McCarthy: The Man, The Senator, The ‘Ism.’ He has been the subject of several critical biographies, two of which, Thomas Reeves’ The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy and David Oshinsky’s A Conspiracy So Immense, received justified praise from reviewers. A recent hagiography by Anne Coulter, Treason, and two admiring but occasionally critical accounts by Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy, and M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History, all generated controversy. Scores of books about the Red Scare of the 1950s feature McCarthy as the central figure from Ellen Schrecker’s screed Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America to Ted Morgan’s more nuanced Reds: McCarthyism in America.