7 Reasons You Should Quit Facebook This Year

^ dang right. even when you say something true and something opinion based, or protected by law such as freedom of religion and political choice, folks will attack.

remember the McCarthy era? people's entire livelihoods were destroyed over even the mere suspicion that they might have been *gasp* socialists. mind you, this was waaaay back in the 1940s. imagine what is in place today

Era of Political Conformity and Loyalty

As World War II ended, Americans' fear of Germans and Japanese was transferred onto the communist Soviet Union. Though the Soviets had been their allies during the war, Americans began to see them as a threat. The Soviets had a nuclear bomb and were aggressively expanding their influence into Europe and Africa. China was soon taken over by communists.

The American Communist Party, other left-wing organizations, and minority groups - including African-Americans, Native Americans, and various immigrant groups - became targets of suspicion, surveillance, and infiltration. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's trial and execution for conspiring to steal secrets of the atomic bomb convinced many Americans that communist spies were among them. Propaganda films such as "Red Nightmare" and "Duck and Cover" further fueled this anxiety. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 expanded the battle, authorizing financial support for foreign governments fighting communism.

Domestically, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was charged with uncovering and identifying "anti-American" or "pro-communist" activities. A federal employee loyalty program was instituted in 1947 to preclude the employment of "disloyal Americans." Local governments, public institutions, and private companies, as well as universities and labor unions, quickly fell in line by instituting their own loyalty programs and dismissing employees suspected of having ties to communism.

The FBI played a crucial part by conducting surveillance, pressuring employers to hire or fire particular individuals, and by feeding information to the media to influence public opinion. J. Edgar Hoover created COINTELPRO, a program designed to neutralize political dissidents by sowing seeds of dissention within organizations and leaking derogatory information to the media and law enforcement. The FBI also disseminated damaging information on individuals to members of Congress to influence public opinion about the communist threat.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, dating from 1950 and heightened during his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, rose to legendary ferocity. Although Congress censured the Wisconsin Republican in 1954, the legacy of fear and suspicion McCarthy helped create lived on through the 1970's, as evidenced by FBI surveillance of the civil rights movement and Vietnam era anti-war demonstrations.

[Edited 3/8/15 6:38am]

McCarthy Era

Era of Political Conformity and Loyalty