For background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy"Senator Joseph McCarthy...
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 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 is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry,[2][3] and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate. 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]"
(230RN stage-whispters "Control the language, and you control the issue.")
The Rosenberg executions:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rosenbergs-executed"On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them [the Rosenbergs --230RN] to death and the pair was taken to Sing Sing* to await execution.
During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Some people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anti-communist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Many Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. They agreed with President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, 'I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.' ”
The above quotes seem reasonably consonant with my recollections.
So I repeat my previous sentiment that McCarthy had it right, but flushed with success, he overdid it.
Terry, 230RN
* Common slang for the famous prison at Ossining New York on the Hudson River. Hence the expression "sending him up the river" to mean "sending him to prison."