Who's worse: Joe McCarthy or John Ashcroft?

[robertpaulsen]

Just curious, especially from DU members who lived through both scourges of the land. Is the Patriot Act worse than the HUAC? Ashcroft may have sent a Canadian to Syria for 10 months of torture (Maher Arar) but McCarthy (and Cohn) had two Americans executed (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). But who was more damaging to America as a whole?

[Throckmorton]

1. Two peas in a pod

Or two pod people bent on the destruction of the United States. All for their own selfish facist ends.

[bif]

2. It's a tie.

Although I'd give Asscroft a slight edge just because he's currently working his dirty deeds.

[BayCityProgressive]

5. Weren't the Roosenburgs

eventually proven to be spies who gave away our nuke secrets though?

[LeahMira]

7. You decide, Progressive!

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/meeropol-on-rosenbergs.html

[Bertha Venation]

3. I think we'll have to wait a few years for the answer.

But the eras, if one can call them that, are frighteningly similar in that people knew what was going on then, and we know what's going on now -- and they were and we are largely powerless to stop the runaway trains.

[Jacobin]

8. Yep

McCarthy was on a roll there for a while with all of congress (practically) behind his witch hunts.

He ruined lots of people.

The only people Asscrack is ruining so far are brown skinned people and so no one has noticed. That of course will change and then he will be vilified.

[Fenris]

4. Ashcroft

McCarthy was a son of a bitch, but Ashcroft is fucking evil.

[Festivito]

6. What's worse: Pig poop or pig vomit. nt.

[jobendorfer]

9. I'd turn the question on its head

Which congress was worse? The congress of the 1950s or the
congress of today?

Consider this: the congress of the 1950s let McCarthy run
unchecked for a few years, but did eventually put a stop
to him.

The current congress overwhelmingly confirmed Ashcroft,
and has done little, if anything, to challenge his
policies.

J.

[robertpaulsen]

12. Good point, jobendorfer

So far our current congress has been completely subservient to Ashcroft's whims. Ashcroft may have an advantage in that he is the Attorney General whereas McCarthy was a fellow Senator.

But I am more hopeful hearing the Democrats cheer the upcoming expiration date for provisions of the Patriot Act in Dubya's State of the Union address. Also there is another post about Ashcroft being sued by a federal prosecutor. Maybe soon Ashcroft will be asked the question, "Have you no shame?!"

[revcarol]

19. Hate to tell you this, but most of the Patriot Act will NOT expire.

It has to be repealed. Otherwise, it will keep goin' and goin' and goin' just like the energizer bunny.

Source: ACLU seminar at our local college

[robertpaulsen]

29. 17 key provisions due to expire Dec. 31, 2005

I suppose if we have a Democrat in the White House we will chuck the whole thing. But Democrats in Congress can't rely on rhetoric, they have to take a stand so that Rethugs can't stick parts of Patriot Act 2 into our legislation.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040121-072910-4598r.htm

[indepat]

14. As bad as Congress in the 1950s was, this current Congress, IMHO,

is by far the worst for they have aided and abetted the neocons to fully implement their PNAC agenda, the pre-emptive war agenda, and the wholly irresponsible fiscal and tax policies. This Congress also abrogated its sole authority to declare war (Article I, Section 8) by, for all practical purposes, relegating this solemn authority and responsibility to one man who took us to a pre-emptive war seemingly in the absence of imminent threat as required by our Constitution and without the sanction of the UN. Moreover, this Congress voted in virtual lockstep for the mostly unconstitutional so-called Patriot Acts. As bad as the Congress of the 1950s might have been, this Congress is by far the worst in the history of this (former?) Republic, again IMHO. Finally, this Congress could have checked the neocons plans and dreamd, could have stopped the destruction of the economy, the reckless fiscal and tax policies and pre-emptive war in their tracks, but this Congress blindly and shamefully went along.

[justsam]

10. Ashcroft, we all knew what

McCarthy was up to because he couldn'r keep his mouth shut, Ashcroft is doing a lot of things that we may never find out about

[Touchdown]

11. Ashcroft! McCarthy's dead and out of government.

He can't hurt us anymore.

[BiggJawn]

34. Right! What you said.

Until the joint Halliburton/Enron project to re-animate the senator succeeds, let's worry about the LIVE asshole, not the dead one.

[stevedeshazer]

13. Let's compare:

McCarthy was a national celebrity. Ashcroft is much reviled.
Advantage: McCarthy

McCarthy was a vicious drunk. Ashcroft is a vicious fundamentalist.
Advantage: even

McCarthy went public and ruined people's lives. Ashcroft ruins people's lives largely in secret.
Advantage: Ashcroft

McCarthy is a dead guy. Ashcroft lost to a dead guy.
Advantage: Ashcroft

McCarthy went after Alger Hiss. Ashcroft went after Zacarias Moussouai. Hiss was executed, Moussouai was released.
Advantage: McCarthy

McCarthy was censured. Ashcroft has not been.
Advantage: Ashcroft

McCarthy saw Communists everywhere. Ashcroft sees Muslims everywhere.
Advantage: even

McCarthy exploited fear. Ashcroft exploits fear.
Advantage: even

McCarthy feared no one. Ashcroft fears calico cats.
Advantage: McCarthy

Looks like a tossup.

[maveric]

17. Alger Hiss was not executed.

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/who.html
He died in 1996 at age 92.

[robertpaulsen]

18. Whoa, Moussouai was released?!

I don't know how I missed that. Do you have a link?

Great comparison chart, Stevie D! LOL but lots of truth too.

[robertpaulsen]

23. Rather than Moussouai, I think its Farouk Ali-Haimoud

Ashcroft went after him in Detroit and he was acquitted on all counts.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/17/terror/main600677.shtml

[stevedeshazer]

28. Thanks for the help,

maveric and robertpaulsen

Went off the top of my head.

[recidivist]

32. McCarthy had nothing to do with Alger Hiss.

I do not know who first reported Alger Hiss's CP membership and espionage to the FBI and/or the State Department. Whitaker Chambers was simply the first to name him publicly.

Chambers, an ex-communist and ex-Soviet spy who had gone on to become a senior editor of Time Magazine, was called as a corroborating witness to support the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, another former Soviet spy, who was testifying before HUAC. Chambers was asked about communists he had known in government. Hiss was among those he named. Hiss denied the charge, and after a celebrated fandango, went to jail for perjury because the statue of limitations had run out on espionage committed in the 1930's. Chambers, having broken with the Party in '39, could not testify to any subsequent espionage, and prosecutors never attempted to make a case that Hiss was spying through WWII, although that remains a possibility.

There are several twists to the case that many people still don't understand. One is that Chambers had already reported Hiss (and many others) to Adolph Berle, then at State, when he broke with the Party in 1939. He had subsequently been interviewed several times by the FBI and had repeated the charge. When he was called a decade later to testify before Congress, he was simply reaffirming publicly a story he had been telling for years.

A second fact is that Chambers was not the only person informing on Hiss. Hiss had, in fact, become notorious in the counterintelligence circles of the time. He had, nonetheless, been promoted repeatedly during the FDR and early Truman years, which made the case politically explosive in a Cold War context.

Anyhow, McCarthy had nothing to do with it. Read Witness and Perjury for a solid exposition of the case. It is also worth reading some of the pro-Hiss trash published over the years just to see the contrast between evidence seeking and truth telling vs. elaborate lying and systematic evasion.

[PurityOfEssence]

15. boy, that IS a tough one

I'd say Ashcroft, because tyrrany in the name of god is always more dangerous than any other kind of tyrrany; you can't question or refute something held in belief in the unprovable. Toss in a belief in an afterlife, and any version of rationality flies out the window.

Both men operated from the premise that anyone disagreeing with them was by definition evil, but Ashcroft is backed up by the Allfrighty.

[CO Liberal]

16. McCarthy is Dead nad Can't Do any More Damage

Ashchoft, on the other hand, is alive and dangerous.

[Malva Zebrina]

20. I don't think McCarthy had an obssession with religion and a god

that determined his every move.

He did however, have an addiction to alcohol, I believe.

Some who have an addiction to alcohol and beat that addiction, simply replace it with a religion and god addiction.

Either way, it is a deranged person and armed and dangerous person. Ashcroft's recent foray into hospital records to "catch" those having third term abortions in some crime is absolutely a McCarthy move. Somehow, he looks worse to me than McCarthy. Maybe because I am older now and can see how I was influenced by the evil commie thing as a young person believeing fully in my "government"

Yes, I did that once.

[Liberal Classic]

21. Hey, at least J. Edgar Hoover knew how to have fun

After 5.

[randr]

22. Ashcroft

Joe is dead.

[Kagemusha]

24. Both men respect power rather than law.

I don't really think there's much of a difference, myself.

[LWolf]

25. McCarthy.

Ashcroft's a wanna-be. He's working doubletime to catch up.

[TheWebHead]

26. the current state of communications techonology

makes Ashcroft worse in the face of it. McCarthy had the advantage of no internet, no 24-hour cable news, C-SPAN, etc.

[AntiCoup2K4]

27. Tough question

One one hand, you had a paranoid who probably thought his own mother was a Communist (McCarthy)

On the other, you have a delusional fuck who annoints himself with Crisco and actually believes calico cats are agents of Satan :evilgrin:

And then you have Anndrew Coulter, who actually considers both of them as heroes.

Maybe s/he's the most dangerous of all? :scared:

[robertpaulsen]

30. Ann Coulter is sexy if Eva Braun turns you on

Coulter is still the fringe right lunatic that the National Review dismissed after writing that we should invade the Arab countries, kill their leaders and convert the citizens to Christianity. The only way she could be more dangerous than McCarthy was or Ashcroft is would be if she got her own Fox show, like O'Reilly or Hannity.

Scary thing is, that will probably happen.

[ma4t]

31. historical correction

A few corrections:

1. a. McCarthy had nothing to do with the trial of the Rosenbergs.
b. They were guilty.

2. Senator McCarthy was not a member of the House Unamerican Affairs Committee.

[starroute]

33. More people were personally terrified of McCarthy

I was six in 1953, and didn't know much about what was going on, except that McCarthy was a Very Bad Man. It was only decades later that my parents started mentioning some of what they had been going through at the time.

For example, my father said to me only a few months ago that he and my mother were terrified that HUAC would get ahold of the mailing list for George Seldes' newsletter, "In Fact," and come after them when they found my mother's name on it. (I checked this on line, and apparently certain mailing lists had been made public, but they never got that one.)

One of my friends at school was the son of Jay Gorney, who'd written "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" back during the Depression. He wrote a school song for our elementary school, and we sang it at school assemblies all year. Then we came back the next fall, and we suddenly had no school song, and no one ever told us why. I didn't know what had happened I was grown up and my mother explained that Jay Gorney had refused to testify before HUAC over the summer.

If I'm as tinfoil-y as I am, it's because of what happend in the early 50's, when all this stuff was swirling around but none of the grownups were talking about it.

John Ashkroft may be as evil as they come, but he hasn't started reaching into ordinary people's lives and making them afraid the way Joe McCarthy did.