Enemies from Within Speech

McCarthy’s anti-intellectualism is evident in the way he distills the complexities of the world into the simple oppositions of good and evil. This dualistic framework extends into the social sphere, where McCarthy pits an idealized “common people” against an equally fanciful image of sinister elites and intellectuals. McCarthy offers a portrait of the intellectual as a subversive who uses his powerful connections and his knowledge of political theory to betray the nation’s interests.

McCarthy bemoans the tendency he sees in the American people to avoid conflict after years of war. For McCarthy, this is not a time for reflection but a time for action, and he is trying to rouse his audience toward a proverbial “showdown fight” (929). The Cold War is framed as a rough-and-tumble Biblical struggle, and McCarthy’s pugilistic rhetoric is ingrained with a morally righteous version of American patriotism. As he declares in the “Enemies from Within” speech, the primary distinction between Christian democracy and atheistic Communism is “not political….it is moral” (829). In McCarthy’s view of that moral conflict, one side is unambiguously right and the other unambiguously wrong. McCarthy is hostile to those who do not adhere to the stark dualism of his Cold War logic, and he considers even those in the democratic establishment to be subversive, and by extension Communist, or at least sympathetic allies of Communism.