******Just because the commie supporters were deluded (which they inevitably were) or "worse" doesn´t mean it is OK to harass them on the state level*****
Umm, many were committing espionage (Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Frank Coe, Julian Wadleigh etc.) That means committing in effect treason against the United States. Since when is that not of legitimate interest to investigate?
******sidestepping lawful procedures and smearing their reputation before any guilt has been established*****
Could we have some specifics, please? The people I listed above were spies, and some of them ended up skipping the country (or in the case of Coe defecting to Red China). But are you talking instead about Hollywood people (which McCarthy had nothing to do with)? The only people who went to jail from Hollywood were the Hollywood Ten, and the reason was because they were held in contempt of Congress, which is a jailable offense that under the law was properly upheld. All they had to do to avoid jail was say, "Yes, I am a communist so what?" but they weren't going to tell the truth there, since that would mean the end of their cushy careers in the business. Or they could have taken the Fifth Amendment, but they weren't going to do that. Instead, as Edward Dmytryk, the one member of the Ten who later recanted, observed, they decided to follow the orders of the Moscow Party line and make themselves martyrs for the Communist Party in order to discredit the anti-communist cause. In short, these people weren't standing by civil liberties, they were trying to score a propaganda point for an evil system of government.
As for other Hollywood people who became "blacklisted"? I'd like to point out that that was entirely the doing of a private industry, and not in response to any government actions or edicts. The people who ran the business thought it would be bad for business to openly employ certain people who held some bad beliefs (or who were in some cases innocently associated with those bad beliefs). That's a practice you can find fault with and be critical of, but it isn't the result of the tyrannical state doing anything, because like it or not, there is nothing that said they *had* to employ these people. After all, they took the view that they shouldn't have to hire an out and out Communist for the same reason they wouldn't want to hire an out and out pro-Nazi person. Nothing inconsistent there.
But here's the irony. The industry STILL engages in this kind of blacklist to this very day, only now it's people of conservative leanings who are blacklisted from getting jobs that involve writing, or breaking in. Sure, the occasional token might get away with his views *after* he has established himself but not before. It's one reason why a conservative like me has little reason to watch anything that comes out of modern Hollywood because I'm usually going to find myself hearing the same-old broken record that emanates from one end of the political spectrum. It's too bad that we can't have a situation where there's more "diversity" of thought in modern Hollywood that can make watching the movies something *all* Americans can feel comfortable doing.
By the way, your sig is real case of a stupid thing. You are taking a moment from Reagan's speech to the 1988 Republican Convention where in quoting John Adams's "Facts are stubborn things" he briefly stumbled and said the line you are quoting. In other words, he acted like a human being at one moment in time. When it comes to mangling words into something nonsensical, you've been doing it a lot more in your posts than Reagan could have been accused of doing at that one moment in time.
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YouMightRabbitYouMight
12 years ago
Do you really believe that "I'd like to point out that that was entirely the doing of a private industry, and not in response to any government actions or edicts.", and that there wasn't heavy government pressure to do just that?
The communist infiltration was a real problem, and aggressive action was needed to address it. But there is never an excuse for quasi-legal actions against US citizens, although they have occurred repeatedly since the nation's founding, and still occur. If people commit crimes, they should be prosecuted if possible. But citizens should never be bullied by government nor maneuvered into committing a "crime".
As for the current anti-conservative bias in Hollywood. I agree it exists, and is reprehensible in its own way. But the key here is that it is carried out by small-minded citizens, and not by force of government.
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