Shooting star

Description:

Joe McCarthy first became visible to the nation on February 9, 1950, when he delivered a Lincoln Day address to local Republicans in Wheeling, West Virginia. That night he declared, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 [members of the Communist Party] still working and shaping policy in the State Department." Anticommunism was already a cause embraced by the Republican Party as a whole; McCarthy tapped into this current and turned it into a flood. Little more than five years later, after countless hearings and stormy speeches and after incalculable damage to ordinary Americans and the nation itself, McCarthy's Senate colleagues voted 67-22 to censure him for his reckless accusations and fabrications. We know today that not one prosecution resulted from McCarthy's investigations into communists in the U.S. government.--Publisher description.

subjects: Politics and government,  Legislators,  Anti-communist movements,  United States. Congress. Senate,  United States,  Internal security,  Biography,  History,  Mccarthy, joseph, 1908-1957,  United states, congress, senate, biography,  Legislators, united states,  United states, politics and government, 1945-1953,  United states, politics and government, 1953-1961

People: Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957)

Places: United States

Times: 1945-1953,  1953-1961,  20th century