ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the author's experience of growing up under McCarthyism which taught him something of what it is like to be part of a despised and persecuted group. While their lives were never in danger, his parents could easily have lost their livelihood and, had his father been called by the Jenner Committee and refused to testify, he might well have been sent to jail. Political repression and tyranny were not distant evils, but ones that he experienced directly. He also learned something about what it means to resist pressures for conformity and to remain loyal to one's values, commitments, and associates in the face of public opprobrium. He took pride in being part of a denigrated group and in asserting his identity as part of it. Anti-Communism was part of an amalgam that also included nationalism, patriotism, militarism, religion, and paranoia. The pressures for political and cultural conformity were palpable.
