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This book is a clever analysis of McCarthyism and the Truman administration.
The author explains clearly that McCarthy's attack on the loyalty of some government employees was in fact an attack on the New Deal. By putting the reputation in doubt of the administration which had forged the social and economical reforms of the ND, he could stigmatize the latter as of communist inspiration. McCarthy's backers wanted a return to the policies before the ND with as limited as possible governmental intervention in the social and economic issues.
McCarthy was helped by the general atmosphere of the Cold War and timely events like the nuclear bomb testing by the USSR or the discovery that the far Eastern part of the Yalta agreements had been held secret.
But the author also shows that the way to McCarthyism was also paved by the rhetoric of the Truman administration itself and by the Department of Justice.
Truman's foreign policy became totally unilateral, solely based on US national interest. With its military power, Truman believed that the US could impose its will on the whole world after World War II. But this goal was sold to the US public as `a mission' to fight communism: good (Christian faith) against evil (atheism) and freedom against slavery (although dictatorships favorable to the US continues to be supported). Unloyal employees would constitute a grave international threat.
The Department of Justice established a permanent employee loyalty program, which laid the seeds for a rationale for abusing individual rights and civil liberties.
The fact that McCarthy was backed only by a minority within the Republican Party was revealed by the nomination of Eisenhower and not their man, Taft, as the republican candidate for the presidency.
Part of this book is still very actual. It is a must read for all those interested in US history.
For an evaluation of the impact of McCarthyism on the US population, see H.H. Hyman's `England and America' in Daniel Bell's `The Radical Right'.
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