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Joseph McCarthy | |
|---|---|
 McCarthy in 1954 | |
| United States Senator from Wisconsin | |
| In office January 3, 1947 – May 2, 1957 | |
| Preceded by | Robert M. La Follette Jr. |
| Succeeded by | William Proxmire |
| Chair of the Senate Government Operations Committee | |
| In office January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1955 | |
| Preceded by | John L. McClellan |
| Succeeded by | John L. McClellan |
| Judge of the Wisconsin Circuit Court for the 10th Circuit | |
| In office January 1, 1940 – January 3, 1947 | |
| Preceded by | Edgar Werner |
| Succeeded by | Michael Eberlein |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Joseph Raymond McCarthy November 14, 1908 Grand Chute, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | May 2, 1957 (aged 48) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Resting place | Saint Mary's Cemetery |
| Political party |
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| Spouse |
Jean Kerr (m. 1953) |
| Children | 1 (adopted) |
| Education | Marquette University (LLB) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | United States Marine Corps |
| Years of service | 1942–1945 (Marine Corps) 1946–1957 (Reserve) |
| Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Distinguished Flying Cross Air Medal (5) |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United States |
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Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death at age 48 in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion.[1] He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry,[2][3] and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was censured by the Senate in 1954 for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.[4][5]
Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1942, where he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron. Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major. He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use "Tail-Gunner Joe" as a term of mockery.[6][7][8]
A Democrat until 1944, McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946 as a Republican, narrowly defeating incumbent Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary, then Democratic challenger Howard McMurray by a 61% – 37% margin. After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950, when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department.[9] In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.[10] This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals, whose illicit sexual activity was presumed to make them vulnerable to blackmail by communists and others.[11]
With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt that same year,[12] McCarthy's support and popularity faded. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. He continued to rail against communism and socialism until his death at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957, though doctors had not previously reported him to be seriously ill.[13] His death certificate listed the cause of death as "Hepatitis, acute, cause unknown",[14] which some biographers say was caused or exacerbated by alcoholism.[15]
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For a history of this period, see, for example:
Caute, David (1978). The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22682-7.; Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective |. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504361-8.
Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-77470-7. - ^ Youngblood, Denise J.; Shaw, Tony (2014). Cinematic Cold War: The American Struggle for Hearts and Minds. United States of America: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0700620203.
- ^ Feuerherd, Peter (December 2, 2017). "How Hollywood Thrived Through the Red Scare". JSTOR Daily. Archived from the original on August 2, 2020. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
- ^ Publishers, HarperCollins. "The American Heritage Dictionary entry: McCarthyism". www.ahdictionary.com. Archived from the original on December 23, 2023. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^ Onion, Rebecca, We're Never Going to Get Our “Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?” Moment Archived August 1, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Slate, July 26, 2018
- ^ Garraty, John (1989). 1,001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History. New York: Doubleday. p. 24
- ^ O'Brien, Steven (1991). Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, p. 265
- ^ "Connecticut Cartoonists #5: The Philosopher of Okefenokee Swamp". The Comics Journal. June 22, 2016. Archived from the original on June 23, 2016. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
- ^ "Communists in Government Service, McCarthy Says". United States Senate History Website. Archived from the original on July 8, 2023. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
- ^ McDaniel, Rodger E. (2013). Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. Cody, WY: WordsWorth Press. ISBN 978-0983027591.
- ^ Simpson, Alan K.; McDaniel, Rodger (2013). "Prologue". Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. WordsWorth Press. p. x. ISBN 978-0983027591.
- ^ McDaniel, Rodger. Dying for Joe McCarthy's Sins
- ^ Ted Lewis (May 3, 1957). "Joseph McCarthy, the controversial senator, dies at 48 in 1957". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on February 24, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2017. Reprinted May 1, 2016
- ^ "McCarthy's death certificate". Archived from the original on December 7, 2022. Retrieved August 19, 2017.
- ^ See, for example: Oshinsky, David M. (2005) [1983]. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York: Free Press. pp. 503–504. ISBN 0-19-515424-X.; Reeves, Thomas C. (1982). The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography. New York: Stein and Day. pp. 669–671. ISBN 1-56833-101-0.; Herman, Arthur (2000). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. New York: Free Press. pp. 302–303. ISBN 0-684-83625-4.