carrying Communist, a member of the Communist Party, or loyal to the Communist Party (Matusow 67).
             McCarthy's extreme and irresponsible statements called for emergency measures. As Senator Wherry told Emmanuel S. Larsen in January 1951, "Oh, Mac [McCarthy] has gone out on a limb and kind of made a fool of himself and we have to back him up now." Starting with nothing, Senator McCarthy and his supporters plunged headlong forward, desperately seeking to develop some information which, colored with distortion and fanned by a blaze of bias, would forestall a day of reckoning (Matusow 54).
             As a result of McCarthy's Communist witch-hunts, the character of private citizens and of Government employees was virtually destroyed by public condemnation on the basis of deliberate untruths. For example, McCarthy was responsible for stripping Robert Openheimer, the "father" of the atomic bomb, of his security clearance. Because Openheimer had publicly questioned the ethical implications of the atomic bomb for years, he was a suspect of subversion. McCarthy was unstoppable; politicians dared not criticize him for fear of being accused of Communism themselves (Matusow 85).
             By the mere fact of their associations with a few persons of alleged questionable proclivities, an effort had been made to harm people whose only asset was their character and devotion to duty and country. This had been done without the slightest vestige of respect for even the most eleme
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