McCarthy and his colleagues. (Worth Repeating).(Joseph McCarthy)

Many Americans have been led to believe that Senator Joseph McCarthy was a loathsome bully who misused the power of his office to unleash a reign of terror against innocent individuals. But many of McCarthy's Senate colleagues -- like millions of his other contemporaries -- held the senator in much higher esteem.

In my judgment, Joe McCarthy was a courageous American whose Irish background and religious convictions could not leave him complacent in meeting a challenge which all our people agree represents a continuing and constant threat to our American way of life. He challenged us to pursue an effective course in meeting the menace which faces us still after he has gone, the menace to freemen in free societies born of the godless international Communist tyranny. It was against this menace to freemen everywhere that my colleague, the junior Senator from Wisconsin, devoted his efforts and, indeed, his life....

Senator Joe McCarthy was not the first and, I pray, will not be the last to warn of the dangers to our society that are inherent in the philosophy of peaceful coexistence with the followers of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev. Although Joe McCarthy has gone, the danger to our Nation and the free world remains.

Senator William Knowland

While Senator McCarthy fought fiercely and to the bitter end for any cause in which he believed, he was still a kindly and deeply religious man.

Senator Milton Young

All of us owe Joe McCarthy a great debt of gratitude for the fact that he did help us focus, through a considerable period of time, the attention of a great many Americans, and the attention of people in many other countries of the world, to the fact that Communism is here and needs to be destroyed and cannot be ignored, and that Communism must be fought with different types of rules than can be used in fighting against the ordinary type of conspiracy or the ordinary type of criminal groups which seek to destroy America.