There’s a revival play running off Broadway right now, revisiting one of the more combustible chapters in American political history: the anti-communist hearings of the McCarthy era.
You know the phrase.
“Are you now or have you ever been…”
For younger Americans, the entire period feels almost mythical. Grainy black-and-white footage. Angry senators. Witness tables. Careers destroyed. Whispered accusations of communist sympathies and Soviet infiltration.
My friend Michael Riedel—the longtime Broadway columnist for the New York Post—is hosting audience talkbacks after performances of the show. He joined me on the air Friday to discuss it, and what struck me all over again is how fundamentally different America was then from what it is now.
Back then, Marxism, communism, socialism, and totalitarianism were not fashionable campus accessories or podcast aesthetics.
They were despised.
The American public had watched tens of millions die under Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and fascist regimes spreading across Europe and Asia. They had fought a world war. They had buried sons. They had watched free nations nearly disappear under authoritarian boots.
So when allegations surfaced about communist influence inside institutions, Americans took it seriously.
Now, let’s be fair about history.
Joseph McCarthy and some of the investigators absolutely went too far in certain cases. Innocent people were smeared. Careers were ruined based on flimsy associations or hysteria. Fear can metastasize quickly in any society.
But here’s the part modern revisionists often ignore: The broader American rejection of communism itself was morally correct.
Communism was evil.
Marxism was destructive.
Totalitarianism murdered human beings by the millions.
And Americans—Democrats included—understood that instinctively.
In fact, what’s truly astounding to many younger Americans is this: McCarthy himself was not some rogue Republican caricature operating alone. Many investigations were bipartisan. Democrats participated. The political consensus of the era viewed communist ideology as fundamentally incompatible with American liberty.
Now fast forward to today.
An openly Marxist mayor now governs New York City, and his First Lady has publicly expressed sympathies and associations with actual Islamic radical causes and anti-Western rhetoric that previous generations of Democrats would have considered politically radioactive.
Yet now it barely causes a hiccup inside the modern Left.
Meanwhile, in Maine, Democrats are lining up behind candidates with openly extremist imagery and rhetoric attached to them. And in California, voters just watched a self-described Marxist female political figure claw her way into contention for a runoff spot against what may already be the most catastrophically incompetent mayoral administration Los Angeles has ever endured.
And somehow this is all supposed to be normal now.
That’s the astonishing thing.
The Democrat Party didn’t merely soften its resistance to radicalism.
It absorbed it.
Incrementally at first.
Then all at once.
Today, the modern Left openly romanticizes ideas their own grandparents would have viewed with horror.
Government control of speech.
Government control of industry.
Government-managed truth.
State-directed outcomes.
Class warfare rhetoric.
Open hostility toward capitalism.
Suspicion of religious belief.
And increasingly, sympathy for movements and ideologies openly hostile to the West itself.
You can call that “progressive” if you want.
Previous generations would’ve called it dangerous.
And let me say something else plainly because Americans are getting tired of being manipulated emotionally every time extremism is discussed honestly.
I know a lot of veterans with tattoos.
A lot.
Sleeves. Flags. Unit markings. Memorial ink. Crosses.
Eagles. Names of fallen brothers.
None of them are Nazis.
None.
So when actual extremists with openly authoritarian or anti-Semitic affiliations begin surfacing politically, and suddenly parts of the modern Left seem oddly comfortable minimizing it, normal Americans notice.
They notice because the standards only seem to move in one direction.
The old Democrat Party once hunted communist influence aggressively because they believed America itself was worth protecting.
Today’s Democrat Party often seems more interested in accusing ordinary patriotic Americans of extremism while making endless excuses for actual radicals standing inside their own coalition.
That inversion didn’t happen accidentally.
It happened because principle was slowly replaced with power politics.
Winning became more important than moral coherence.
Coalition math became more important than shared values.
And once a political movement abandons objective standards, eventually it begins absorbing whatever ideological toxins happen to be useful in the moment.
That’s where we are now.
Marxists.
Communists.
Open anti-capitalists.
Authoritarian sympathizers.
Radical anti-Western activists.
People who openly resent the American founding itself.
All are increasingly comfortable under one political tent.
And before someone screams “McCarthyism,” spare me.
Nobody is calling for blacklists or speech tribunals.
Quite the opposite.
The point is that the modern Left no longer even recognizes these ideologies as morally disqualifying.
That’s the frightening part.
The Democrat Party that once feared communist infiltration now appears unable—or unwilling—to distinguish between legitimate liberalism and outright anti- American radicalism.
And history teaches us something uncomfortable about societies that lose that distinction.
Eventually, they stop defending themselves altogether.
That’s why this matters beyond politics.
Because America is approaching her 250th birthday.
Two hundred and fifty years.
That is a miracle in human history.
Most nations do not survive that long with this much freedom, this much prosperity, and this much diversity held together under constitutional order.
But anniversaries are not merely celebrations.
They are opportunities for reflection.
And maybe this one arrives at exactly the right moment.
Because somewhere along the line, too many Americans stopped asking what kind of nation we actually want to remain.
A free republic?
Or a permanently aggrieved ideological battlefield where every institution eventually falls under the control of whichever radicals shout the loudest?
Previous generations fought world wars to stop authoritarian ideologies from swallowing civilization.
Now, many Americans flirt with those same ideas casually because they were fortunate enough never to experience their consequences firsthand.
That should terrify us.
America’s 250th should not simply be fireworks and speeches.
It should be a national moment of moral clarity.
A reminder that freedom is fragile.
That self-government requires virtue.
And that once a society loses the ability to recognize destructive ideologies for what they are, history has a brutal way of teaching the lesson all over again.
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