Review of “America’s Retreat from Victory” by Joseph R. McCarthy

This excellent review makes me think this will be an interesting book to add to my reading list. Has anyone else read it? I probably should add this statement as a sort of disclaimer:

A rationalist has a hard time not reviewing history from that period and concluding that for all intents and purposes McCarthy was right about the extent of communist infiltration and may have indeed grossly underestimated and misunderstood the nature of intellectual sympathies for communism and how deeply rooted those sources of sympathy where in American elite intellectual tradition.

He basically though he needed to eliminate some foreign sources of corruption and that he would be helped rather than sabotaged by well meaning Americans in positions of great power at least after they where made aware of the extent of the problem. He was wrong. For his quest to have been less quixotic he would have needed to basically remake the entire country (and at that point in time, the peak of American power that basically meant by extension the remaking of the entire West).

Actually that whole thread was a very interesting one with many cool posts by various people so go read it!