Herb Block - The coiner of "McCarthyism"

In this video interview (at 8m25) Herb Block explains how he cointed the famous terms, "McCarthyism".

"Yea [I invented McCarthyism], apparently so. That's the first use made of that word that I know of. I remember how it originated, because they wanted to put something on that top barrel, and you couldn't call it McCarthy himself, and you wouldn't say 'McCarthy techniques" or so on. I thought well we could maybe use just one word, "McCarthyism". And it caught on."

Video in full here.

Moderates versus extremists

1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater's support for ultra-conservatives contrasted with the long tradition of Republican moderates. In the cartoon above Herb Block depicted these moderates as drowning.

In Northern Ireland we have seen many model moderate politicians - constitutional and conciliatory - summarily vanquished by the extremist who practices the most inflexible and pitiless declension of unionism or nationalism.

By contrast in the United States of America, the moderate has often out-played the extremist. As I said in the Huffington Post here:

"Let's look at the DUP. These are the political offspring of Ian Paisley, Ireland's answer to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton. Foaming religious fundamentalists. Except none of these reactionaries made any serious in-ways into political office. Unfortunately ours did."