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Whoaaaaa misinformation.
A. HUAC investigated Hollywood; the 'H' is for House, as in '...of Representatives.' McCarthy was a Senator, and came to national prominence after the blacklisting and all those unpleasantries that befell Hollywood's Communist elites. He had nothing to do with them whatsoever, and therefore has no place being mentioned in 'The Majestic' thread. But, since we're on that topic...
B. McCarthy also had nothing to do with the Rosenbergs, though he eventually hired as a legal assistant Roy Cohn, the who led the case against the couple.
C. A list existed, though it was certainly not what you describe. In 1946, Secretary of State James Byrnes wrote to a Congressman that 284 persons in the State Department had pro-Communist leanings blatant enough to make them unfit to be furnished with security clearances during a cold war. 79 of them were fired or resigned voluntarily, leaving 205 unanswered for. McCarthy's complaint at Wheeling was that the State Department was still employing possible loyalty risks. As for the number 57, that was the number of names McCarthy had of people of those 205 who were enlisted in the Communist Party of the USA, and 81 was the number presented to Congress; 57 members of the CPUSA and an additional 24 of the 205 who were otherwise deemed unfit for security clearance (people who got drunk often or who weren't generally trustworthy with top secret information, not necessarily Communists).
D. The ,,butchers of Malmedy", like every other human being, deserve a fair trial. McCarthy never actually said they were innocent, though there is a good chance that Germans brought to trial (neither Nazi-faithful nor officers, any of them) were not in fact guilty. What he WAS championing in that episode was the fact that some of these men had been tortured, both physically and mentally, in order to obtain confessions. McCarthy maintained, as I hope we all do, that nobody deserves to be tortured, especially if it is to obtain confession, and ESPECIALLY if it is BEFORE a person's actual trial.
E. As for not finding ,,any truly subversive elements", an article in the New American disagrees. One must list these: ,,Lauchlin Currie, Gustavo Duran, Theodore Geiger, Mary Jane Keeney, Edward Posniak, Haldore Hanson, John Carter Vincent, Owen Lattimore, Edward Rothschild, Irving Peress, and Annie Lee Moss." Not to mention that finding subversive elements wasn't McCarthy's point to begin with.
F. Whose lives did he destroy, and whose careers did he ruin? Please give one name. And make sure not to confuse McCarthy and HUAC. The only person destroyed by 'McCarthyism' was McCarthy.
G. McCarthy died of acute hepatitis. Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan noted that, if you drink on a consistent enough basis, you can avoid hepatitis, a disease rampant in the region and particularly threatening to foreigners (that's us). Though it can also be causes by alcohol poisoning, there is a greater change that McCarthy's death was viral.
H. McCarthy was anything but 'alone' when he died. He was married to a beautiful woman, Jean Kerr, with whom he adopted a baby girl. 30,000 people attended his funeral in Wisconsin, which is to say nothing of the wake in D.C. Senators spoke glowing eulogies to McCarthy, even some of those who had voted to censure him. He was also far from insane; he continued, after the fall of the Republican Congress, to give speeches and perform loyally the duties of a U.S. Senator.
Facts next time, facts!
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