Comparison of McCarthyism and the U.S. Patriot Act

Through the 1940s and 1950s, America was beleaguered with anxieties about the menace of communism arising in Eastern Europe and China. Profiting out of such worries of the nation, young Senator Joseph McCarthy made an open charge that hundreds of "card-carrying" communists had penetrate in the United States government. Although his allegations were found ultimately to be false and the Senate reproached him for improper ways, his ardent shakeup heralded as one of the most tyrannical era in 20th-century American politics. While the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAA) had been made in 1938 as a body to resist communists, McCarthy's charges enhanced the political nervousness of the epoch. The suspicious chase for moles, scandalously known as McCarthyism, made the life and work of a number of important cultural names in the U.S difficult, being branded as champions and supporters to leftist causes. By 1954, the zeal had subsided. These short trials remain one of the most disgraceful times in modern U.S. history (McCarthyism, pbs.org). There are researchers and critics who still find the shadow of McCarthyism looming on the present history of the Unites States. About two years ago, in a Presidential Address George Bush, pleaded the Congress to ratify legislation that would prolong the time-bound terms of the notorious anti-terror law, originally planned to end on December 31st, 2005 and later extended. Advocated by Attorney General John Ashcroft and accepted by the Congress in the scared upshot of the 9/11 fanatic assaults, the Patriot Act has been depicted by its critics as the utmost warning to U.S human rights since the Alien and Sedition Acts or the postponement of habeas corpus during the Civil War. The Alien Registrat...

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