Senator Joseph McCarthy and the McCarthy era of the 1950’s after World War II are quite similar to the era of A. Mitchell Palmer following World War I. Both men were suspicious persons whom made numerous accusations of Communism and threats to Constitutional rights. McCarthy made public claims of people being American communists causing the accused persons to be suspected of doing things unjust or unpatriotic which in turn led to people’s agony, arrest, and sometimes death. Alexander Mitchell Palmer much like McCarthy made claims of people being communist but unlike Joseph he had the authorization to put thousands upon thousands of people under arrest for suspicion of “Non-American” acts.
McCarthy and Palmer were both closely associated with J. Edgar Hoover. Palmer appointed Hoover as his special assistant when Palmer was attorney general and together they created the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act (http://www.biography.com). Both these acts were passed to punish people for disclosing information regarding the nation’s defense or criticizing by speech or writing the American constitution. McCarthy sought Hoover as a friendly source of information, while Hoover was head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations he provided McCarthy with information about political heads and their relations with Communist or non-constitutional associations (http://www.apl.org). This gave McCarthy the supposed evidence proving people to be carrying out unpatriotic acts. Hoover also helped McCarthy in recommending Ray Cohn to be appointed the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate (http://www.apl.org).
The Communist accusations made by McCarthy and Palmer were quite similar but were made in different ways and in two different time periods. The McCarthy era began right after World War II had ended and the time period was not the best juncture in American History, the Korean War was about to begin and there was talk of moving U.S. troops into...