Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950

Date: This document was created on February 9, 1950.

Author: The author of this document is Joseph McCarthy

Audience: The intended audience of this document was the entire American population.

Why was this document written: I believe McCarthy wrote this speech to inform the American people of the ever increasing dominance of communism and how he believed that these people were involved in the American government. He displays incited anxiety towards communists, which is very evident in showing he is afraid of the worlds split into “hostile” groupings.

Evidence: "This is a time of “the cold war.” This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile armed camps—a time of a great armament race." The above quote I believe backs up my claim as to why McCarthy wrote this speech. McCarthy has become quite paranoid about the movement of communism and believes it is this that is splitting our world apart. He mentions “hostile” and “armed” camps. This is his way of attempting to distribute fear amongst the American people for them to fully believe his bold accusations.

McCarthy’s Wheeling Speech, conveyed at the peak of the Cold War, an era of contradiction amid the dominant philosophies of the two outstanding world superpowers in America and the Soviet Union, exploits the intensely seated aversion of Americans for communism to horrendous consequences. It was this speech that established the cultish succession of allegations and blacklisting that swept the nation in its repercussions, consequentially openly in trials of scholars, politicians, and artists whose ideas and observations McCarthy deemed “Un-American.”

The months leading up to McCarthy’s February speech had been tiresome ones for America's Cold War policies. China had fallen to a communist upheaval. The Soviets had exploded an atomic contraption. McCarthy's untamed incriminations supplied a prepared reason for these unfamiliar policy debacles. Communist subversives were functioning surrounded by the very bowels of the American government.

“Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself.”
The above quote is quite sensitive. You get a sense of unimaginable power being distributed. The word “Invigorated” entails a revitalization of many dangers, something that the people have faced before and desire to evade, but cannot as it is in the course of resurfacing. “Invigorated” additionally proposes a