yr13_ia_2007_kirby_b

=Summary of Evidence (500-600 words)=

Senator McCarthy, a former chicken farmer from Wisconsin, went on to epitomize a deeply embarrassing part of American history wherein fear of communism reached such fever pitch that people were persecuted under deeply dubious claims about their political leanings and normally irrelevant probes into tenuous links in their backgrounds.

Senator McCarthy spent his first years in the senate achieving very little. He rose to national fame in 1950 when he claimed, in a speech now known as the 'wheeling speech’ that he had a list of "205 members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department. This accusation, and similar ones, would dominate American politics for the next decade. The exact number of communist party members he claimed to know about was never quite certain.

McCarthy was never able to properly substantiate these anti-communist tirades. In the coming years, McCarthy made increasingly bizarre accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Truman, Voice of America, and the United States Army. He used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.

During this time thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or being in cahoots with Communists. They became the subject of incredibly aggressive investigations and questioning before government and even private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The principal targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry (actors and suchlike), educators and especially union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite completely inconclusive or questionable evidence. Many people suffered loss of employment, destruction of their careers, imprisonment and in one case suicide. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that would later be declared unconstitutional or dismissals for reasons which were later deemed illegal.

The democrats, headed by Truman, were made politically weak by republican claims that they were 'soft' on communism. Fear of socialism and specifically communism reached such a high level that any approximation to being slightly socialist or even being associated with communists and Marxists in any way was tantamount to political suicide. Some historians have argued [QUOTE] that the republicans, and specifically Joseph McCarthy attempted to enrich themselves from this sense of paranoia.

The preoccupation of the American public was not the issue of a select few but instead an issue that seems to represent an illogical preoccupation of the American public as a whole that allowed power hungry conservatives to abuse the fear with the aim of advancing themselves politically. It is true that there was a certain amount of Soviet infiltration in the American political system, as was made obvious with the Alder Hiss affair.

With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to wane. In 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vast majority; he was the first senator ever to be censured. McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The official cause of death was acute hepatitis; it is widely accepted that this was brought on by alcoholism.

About 500 words Imagine it all backed up with footnotes, it will be.

[**OK - Although a few quotes built into the actual narrative would convince me MUCH more. Don't just include loads of footnotes to books after sentences that demonstrate no real evidence that you have read them!!!**]