The world, in general, is abandoning the past two centuries in which freedom has risen, to become illiberal, and enforce intellectual orthodoxies. It is more obvious and markedly so in in places like Turkey, but even here in the US we see those who would blacklist all political enemies and dissenters. These efforts will ultimately fail here, but not before grave harm is inflicted; history will judge us as harshly as we judge the McCarthy era.

There were Communists in the government in the McCarthy era. There were quite a few Communists, much as there is still racism at large in the USA today. And yet you will note that successfully rooting out spies is not why McCarthy is remembered, but rather, for his self-aggrandizing campaign of paranoid repression.