Senator Joseph McCarthy And Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy

............. a meeting took place at the Colony restaurant, a four-star establishment in downtown Washington. Attending were four men: Georgetown University politics professor Charles Kraus, attorney William A. Roberts, Fr. Edmund A. Walsh, a Jesuit and the head of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy.Of the four men, of course, the most notorious is Senator McCarthy. Since his downfall in 1954 McCarthy has gone from politician to alcoholic fiend, an all-purpose chimera for anyone warning against everything from illegal searches to mildly aggressive questioning. But the perhaps the more important man to history on the night of January 7 was Edmund Walsh, the Georgetown Jesuit. UNLIKE MCCARTHY, WALSH IS forgotten to history. This no doubt has much to do with the fact that Edmund Walsh was arguably the first American anti-communist (not to mention the fact that Walsh's preached preemptive strikes against aggressors decades before the word neoconservative existed). Walsh's life doesn't provide the delicious frisson of preening pseudo-virtue experienced by liberals denouncing the excesses of McCarthyism. Yet 2006 will mark the 50th anniversary of Walsh's death, and respect should be paid.

Link (here) to read the rest of the fantastic story about Fr. Walsh at The American Spectator