OF COMMUNISTS AND WITCHES Over at the Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh says:

"At the same time, I balk at casual condemnations of McCarthyism as a "witch hunt." Witch hunts are unambiguously bad because we know there are no witches. If there were witches, in the standard sense of people who could use black magic to harm the rest of us, then of course we ought to hunt them."

I concur. That said, the problem with McCarthyism isn't that there weren't any witches. It's that McCarthy and HUAC weren't any good at catching them, and their bluster and bullying distracted from any actual efforts at witch hunting and did much to discredit the very idea of witch hunting for future generations. When there are witches in our midst, or genuine subversives in the service of some foreign power, by all means they should be uncovered and prevented from doing us harm. But ruining the lives of innocent people for political gain or just out of spite (Roy Cohn, anybody?) doesn't help us do that, it hurts us.

I'm sure Professor Volokh probably agrees with that; I'm not trying to criticize him. I just think it's always worthwhile whenever McCarthy comes up to remember why McCarthyism actually was bad.

PS - If you scroll up at the Volokh site, there's more in-depth discussion of the philosophical problems that would be cause by the actual existence of witches (and also of telepaths). The web is such a strange, strange place.

PPS - I actually do (sort of) believe in witches. I figure I believe in lots of other kooky things that can't be empirically verified using the scientific method - the soul, God, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, angels, demons - why not toss witches into the mix? (Plus they're in the Bible!) I don't exactly stay up nights worrying about them - I figure they can't do me any harm in the long run - but I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out they're still around.