Joseph McCarthy rose to fame during the 1950s fighting communism on American soil. The ever lingering fear of Soviet spies spreading un-Americanism in the US during the cold war hit a nerve and quickly made him popular in the republican political field. With time though more and more inconsistencies and paranoid outings surfaced concerning the gravity of the imminent communist threat which should ultimately lead to his downfall. To this day the dispute stands, was Joe McCarthy a paranoid egoist or a patriotic protector of state?