ment's strong public support for this mass violation of
             During World War II, the twin threat of military expansion from
             both the German and the Japanese armies forced a temporary alliance between
             the United States and the Soviety Union. However, the Allied victory also
             saw the rapid deterioration of this relationship. In its place grew a
             Though the 1950s would usher in more affluence, the late 1940s were
             still a time of recovery. There was mass unemployment and labor strife.
             Racial tensions were developing, amid calls for growing freedoms for
             African American citizens. The rapid shift from a wartime economy to peace
             again raised the specter of another depression. For people who were
             promised that the sacrifices of the war would usher in prosperity, the
             initial strife was a frustrating result.
             Government critics took advantage of this dissatisfaction. In 1946,
             the Republicans frequently mentioned the "Red Menace" in relation to these
             social conditions, intimating that any form of liberalism would make these
             conditions even worse. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, his
             successor Harry S. Truman ushered in the end to his predecessor's
             progressive policies. Truman set down the Truman Doctrine, a policy which
             in principle vowed to aid free peoples who were trying to resist
             subjugation. In doing so, however, Truman also set into motion the wheels
             of the Cold War (Fariello 1995, p.32-33).
             One of the results of the Truman Doctrine was the launching of a
             security program in 1947, designed to sniff out espionage activities in the
             United States. Truman launched the Federal Employees Loyalty Program,
             which authorized the government to investigate the beliefs and group
             memberships of its employees. These inquiries were euphemistically
             referred to as "loyalty checks" (Fariello 1995, p. 36). This program,
             more than any other anti-Communist me...