Read the documents attached to this thread and respond to the questions. You will want to use your textbook in helping you to formulate your answers.
1.) Was McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare a reasonable response to a legitimate
threat? Or, was it the result of manipulation by cynical political and social leaders?
– What to the majority of historians seem to think about this?
– What is the role of paranoia in American politics?
– Was the anti-communist “hysteria” more a result of popular ideas, or was it controlled by agencies within government?
– Are there similarities between how our society responded to communism and how it has responded to terrorism? Have we done an appropriate job of balancing security with civil liberties?
2.) What was the “Cold War,” and to whom have historians assigned blame for its origins?
– Whom did American historians initially blame for the Cold War? (Orthodoxy)
– What was the “revisionist” approach? What ideas and events inspired this approach?
– What was “post-revisionism?”
– What seems to be the current interpretation?