McCarthy

I recall watching the McCarthy hearings on TV and they were, in retrospect, the beginning of the end to McCarthyism. The spectacle of accusing people of un-American activities based on what they did in their youth was eye opening and taught me to understand that youthful indiscretions should not be the measure of a man's life. Many people were deemed guilty not based on evidence but rather by accusations, hearsay an innuendo. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and labor union activists. Many reasonable people felt it was necessary to uncover communist, especially those in government but it was the extremism as witnessed in the hearings that awakened people to the injustice of it all. When it seemed that the presumption of innocence was being trampled upon, many were taken a back, and demanded that McCarthy be stopped and he was.