"He was noted for claiming that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers, engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the United States, inside the federal government."
With emphasis on claiming. All his witchhunts did was destroy the lives of innocent people who merely didn't toe the line, politics-wise, at the time. Supported the unions? COMMIE! All for civil rights? COMMIE! Didn't go along with the Red Menace paranoia, and had an opinion to the contrary? COMMIE TRAITOR! LYNCH HIM!
Oh, how I loved it when I read about (and watched on documentaries) McCarthy's hubris, when he turned his attentions to the US military, and the whole thing blew up in his face. After that, his close political contacts suddenly deserted him. Nobody took him seriously anymore. He became an alcoholic. He became a nobody. He was shunned, even by his own Repubican party.
He became the very thing he did to many innocent Americans: a pariah
The irony was (and still is, when I read about such) exquisitely sweet. And to this day, I gloat over him, and any Repubican/Neocon/Religious Right types who think he was the best thing since sliced bread. It only serves to prove that left-wingers (like me) are superior in every way to the likes of Joseph McCarthy.
And everyone on Conservapoodia.
...oh, and the ultimate irony? There still exists, to this day, a Communist Party of America:
http://www.cpusa.org/
And Federal law means that they can't even be touched.
All your paranoid posturing, bluff & bluster availed you naught, McCarthy. Read that URL above, Andy Schaftafly & co., and weep, subhuman right-wing cunts.
