'McCarthy's Ghost'

Dr. Rudolfo (Rudy) Acuna is an historian and a professor at my alma mater, Cal State-Northridge. He’s perhaps the foremost scholar of Chicano Studies and the author of the seminal work of Chicano history, Occupied America: A history of Chicanos. Yesterday La Prensa San Diego ran Acuna’s essay, “The Ghost of Joe McCarthy” :

McCain should know better he lived through the forties and the fifties and knows the evil of smearing someone through guilt by association, using the patriotism as a shield. They rationalize that the smears are justified because they love America. Those of us who lived through the McCarthy Era remember the self righteousness of patriotic Americans who manufactured half-truths and outright lies; we also remember the lives that were destroyed.There is little doubt that McCain/Palin have intentionally smeared Obama. As in the case of the Iraq war, associations are made between him and terrorist. He is a Muslim! Obama is foreign.Take the incessant harping on William Ayers who today is a respected professor working for school reform in a city that is heavily black and Latino…