When I was in Catholic grade school in the early 1950s, we prayed every day in class for "the conversion of Russia," which apparently meant that we wanted all those godless commies to become members of the One True Faith.
One of the nuns also made a point of informing us that Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the famed commie-hunter from Wisconsin, was a good Catholic who merited our respect.
These and other influences at such a tender age made budding right-wingers of me and presumably at least a few of my classmates.
It was not until I had been in high school a few years that I finally came to the judgment that McCarthy, who died in 1957, was a drunken scumbag and demagogue whose campaign of hysterical red-baiting had ruined countless lives.
All of this comes to mind with news reports today that Milo Radulovich, a victim of those times, has died at age 81.
1 comment:
Unfortunately we're getting close in our current politics to the scare tactics of McCarthyism. If Joe were alive today, he'd be leading the charge against Islamofacism and the "coddling" of Muslims in our country. Didn't Ann Coulter say we have too many Mosques in the U.S.?
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