University of Virginia Library

Joe, Not Gene

It's time to face up to the fact that
something dangerous is happening in America,
that the distinguishing characteristic of the
1970's may not be the war, pollution or the
urban crisis. If Spiro Agnew has his way, and
thus far no one has sought to stop him,
America may divert its attention from the
problems at hand and go off on another
McCarthy-type witch hunt. In fact, it may be
starting now.

Few of the student generation of today
have any personal recollections of the era of
Senator Joseph McCarthy; to many it seems
like a quaint little aberration in the course of
history, the fairly harmless folly of a deranged
man. But to those who lived through it, the
McCarthy era was a frightening time of
repression and fear, a time that ruined the lives
of many men whose only crime was a passing
affiliation with a Communist front-group at
the height of the Depression.

The seeds of that era's renaissance are
being planted now. Last weekend, the Vice
President made another attempt to cow the
media and he spoke of the threat to America
from "the enemy within." That's a phrase
that hasn't been heard since the heyday of Joe
McCarthy; and it is pregnant with the spectre
of repression.

It may be that the pendulum is swinging
the other way; Americans have always
indulged themselves in attempts to explain
away the country's failings by blaming a
convenient villain. If the cycle is indeed
coming full circle, plug in Spiro Agnew for
Joseph McCarthy, SDS for the Communist
Party, and all the ingredients are there.