Hard Years - Antidotes to Authoritarians

About the Author

EUGENE J. MCCARTHY was born in Watkins, Minnesota in 1916, graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1935, and a Master of Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1938.
During World War II, he served as a civilian technical assistant in military intelligence for the War Department. He was acting head of the sociology department at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul when elected to Congress in 1948.
Re-elected four more times, Mr. McCarthy represented Minnesota's 4th District in the House of
Representatives for ten years, serving on Post Office & Civil Service, Agriculture, Interior & Insular Affairs, Banking & Currency, and Ways & Means committees.
Elected twice to the U.S. Senate (1959 to 1971), he served on the Finance, Agriculture & Forestry, Public Works committees and the Senate Special Committee on Unemployment Problems; from 1965 to 1969 he served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chairing the special subcommittee on African Affairs.
His run for the presidency in 1968 electrified the nation and forced a national political debate on issues fundamental to the operation of a democracy. In 1976 and 1992 McCarthy again ran for the presidency to bring forward some discussion of these fundamentals, examined in many of his other books which include:
1968: War & Democracy (Lone Oak Press)
America Revisited (Doubleday)
An American Bestiary (Lone Oak Press)
And Time Began (Lone Oak Press)
Challenge of Freedom (Avon)
Colony of the World (Hippocrene)
Complexities & Contraries (Lone Oak Press)
Dictionary of American Politics (Macmillan)
Frontiers in American Democracy (World Publishing)
Ground Fog & Night (Harcourt)
Hard Years: Antidotes to Authoritarians (Lone Oak Press)
Liberal Answer to the Conservative Challenge (Macfadden)
Limits of Power (Holt) (Lone Oak Press, reprint)
Memories of a Native Son (Lone Oak Press)
Mr. Raccoon & His Friends (Academy Chicago)
No-Fault Politics (Times Books)
Nonfinancial Economic (Praeger)
Required Reading (Harcourt)
Selected Poems (Lone Oak Press)
Ultimate Tyranny (Harcourt)
Up 'Til Now (Harcourt)
From Rappahannock County (Lone Oak Press)



Product Description

In HARD YEARS Sen. Eugene McCarthy gazes into the dismal abyss of the disastrous times from the 1960's through the 1979's explains what went wrong, why, and how we might avoid repeating those catastrophes. Contrary to those engaged in perpetually whistling past the graveyard, McCarthy finds no solace in notions our political system is proved effective because the institutions of the political process, government, law, and the press clanked and groaned until one president, Lyndon Johnson, was frightened away from office and another, Richard Nixon, was forced to resign lest he be impeached. If that is proof of success the voyage of the RMS Titanic was a success too; after all, not everyone drowned. At all the critical points in those decades nearly every responsible institution failed because irresponsible and corrupted individuals cast their lot with forces hell-bent on the destruction of the American democracy and the rule of law; we survived, badly wounded, more through luck than through wisdom. Important lessons about the proper functions of all our institutions and the duties and obligations of office holders and the need for constant vigilance can be found herein, lessons we must learn by heart and remember always since the forces that brought the republic to the brink in the 60's and 70's are still with us, even more powerful than then.