Reply #18: Actually, for the time that was a fairly gutsy response. [View All]

[yardwork]

The House Unamerican Activities Committee, run by Joe McCarthy, ruined people's lives. Expressing anything other than total condemnation for communism resulted in being fired from one's job and never hired anywhere else. I know people who were professors at universities who were fired just because somebody *rumored* that they *might* be communists.

Gary Cooper would have been safer to say something like, "All communists should be shot immediately." For him to admit that he didn't know a thing about it was fairly brave of him. Although, on second thought, maybe it was safer to profess ignorance.

Those were bad times. Too bad they've come again.