Political Climate of the 1950s

Essay by tbraswellUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, June 2009

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

What was the impact of McCarthyism in the US?Aside from ruining many careers with the "smell" of communism, loyalties were challenged. McCarthyism involved making charges of communist affiliation or influence. In some cases there charges were legitimate, but in many cases they were basically random attacks on people by their enemies. It is hard to invalidate a negative, and often the Communist Party would have taken a stand that others, quite innocent of communist influence, might concur with. For example, in 1946 Joe Stalin denounced abortion, and claimed it was a bourgeois plot to enslave women. The point is that the validity of a political case cannot be determined exclusively by who supports it. When this was done in the 1950s, many constitutional rights were strictly infringed and limited, including people losing jobs or having to use pseudonyms in the case of some Hollywood script writers. The irony of course is that Communists value no constitutional rights also.

But somewhere it is written that in the end we become that which we fear (Yahoo, 2007).

(What is dynamic conservatism?)Dynamic conservation was Eisenhower's economic philosophy which favored a continuance of the chief New Deal programs cohesive with the effort to move the federal government out of some areas. Some people explained it as "conservative when it comes to money and liberal when it comes to human beings". Budget cutting was a high priority for new administration, set out after domestic programs and national defense. Although he chipped away at the New Deal programs, his presidency in the end served to legitimize the New Deal.

(What is meant by the term politics of consensus?)The politics of consensus is democracy or when politicians cater to majority rule. However, there are related issues and pitfalls of an untainted democracy, and concessions have to be...