The postwar Red Scare is often called “McCarthyism,” a name derived from one of the era’s most notorious anti-Communists, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yet the anti-Communist crusade of the late 1940s and 1950s extended both in time and scope well beyond the activities of the junior senator from Wisconsin. Its roots can be traced to the mid-nineteenth century. As far back as 1848, when Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, many Americans viewed communism as an alien ideology. The Bolshevik Revolution only added to such anxieties, fueling an earlier Red Scare in 1919.
The Bill of Rights reflects a key Enlightenment idea because it limits what government can do and it does so in order to protect the rights of the people. According to Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, the purpose of government was to protect the basic human rights of its people.
