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Primary source: Joseph McCarthy, “Communists in Government Service,” testimony to Congress, 1950.
Caption: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, an unremarkable member of Congress from Wisconsin, burst onto the national political scene in 1950, after announcing to a West Virginia audience that he held in his hand a list of 205 American Communists who worked in the U.S. State Department.
. . . Today we are engaged in a final, all–out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down, they are truly down.
Six years ago...there was within the Soviet orbit 180 million people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at that time roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only six years later, there are 800 million people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia—an increase of over 400 percent. On our side, the figure has shrunk to around 500 million. In other words, in less than six years the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in favor to 8 to 5 against us. This indicates the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, "When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without but rather because of enemies from within.
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Senate, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "Communists in Government
Service," testimony given on 9 February 1950, Congressional Record (3
February–4 March 1950), Proceedings and Debates of the 81st Cong., 2nd sess., 96, pt. 2:1954.
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