The Cold War wasn't just about faraway Europe and Asia: it impacted Americans at home, too. 

Most Americans believed that "the American Way"—democracy and capitalism—was the only way to go. Americans were ready to prove to the world they were a happy, wealthy, God-fearing, and united people. If the U.S. had to use its atomic weapons on the godless Soviet Union, then, boy howdy, that was how it had to be.

Most Americans didn't think it would come to that. They believed that the rest of the world would see how self-evidently great the American Way was and ally themselves with fun, free America against the scary, communist Soviet Union.

The U.S. claimed that communism was no match for the American Way, but at the same time, Americans were constantly warned that communists were infiltrating the U.S. on a daily basis and bringing it down from the inside, with stories about traitorous American citizens becoming Soviet spies and leaking all our atomic secrets to the Kremlin. You couldn't tell who was a real American and who was a commie-loving traitor—it could be your own wife!

This fear, called the Red Scare, even showed up in Hollywood horror movies, of all places. Movie after movie from the 1940s through the 1950s told stories of aliens invading the Earth, starting with America, of course. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the classic example: Aliens who look just like you and me sneak into every city and suck out people's minds and souls. One lone American who has not yet been taken over tries to warn everyone else: "Can't you see, everyone? They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

Americans who staggered out of movie theaters in a panic weren't scanning the skies for flying saucers. They were scanning their fellow movie-goers for "commies."

And so as the postwar years progressed, the U.S. would find itself with a kind of double-identity. It really was rich and powerful and thriving, as its population and its economy grew to heights never seen before. But it was deeply afraid of being wiped out by a communist sneak attack started by its own traitorous citizens. 

All in all, the Red Scare led to some terrible violations of our Constitution before Americans came to their senses.

Until the Cold War, communists never made much of an impact on American life. There were never very many of them, and their dream of leading a proletarian revolution in the United States seemed so far-fetched that it bordered on the unthinkable. Most Americans were against communism, but they weren't particularly preoccupied with them.

Then, a few years after World War II, the United States found itself locked in a potentially-mortal confrontation with the Soviet Union. Suddenly, American communists, that tiny fringe of wannabe revolutionaries, came to represent a major problem in American society.

But uh, there still weren't many of them. They still had little power or influence. They still had a snowball's chance of creating a United Soviet States of America.

But what if they were agents of the Soviets, boring from within our open society to destroy us? What if they were spies? What if they were secretly seeking positions of influence within our society, subverting the work of our government, miseducating in our schools, propagandizing in our movies?

Can you smell the fear?

Fear transformed American communists from a minor nuisance into a national obsession. Fear created McCarthyism, an intense effort to root out communists from every corner of American society by any means necessary—even if those means violated traditional American values. You know, like due process, civil liberties, and constitutional rights. Important things like that.

The culture of fear created a society of conformity and a politics of repudiation. The results weren't always pretty. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the most prominent communist-hunter of the period, was a reckless alcoholic demagogue. Unknown numbers of innocents had their lives ruined by a loyalty-security apparatus that knew few checks or balances.

But the culture of fear was also effective. The Communist Party U.S.A. disintegrated. Soviet spies were brought to justice. Leftists were even purged from Hollywood. But was it worth it and was it necessary? 

"Are you now or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?" Would you answer?