What we are seeing now, in the ginning up a small percentage of malcontents who live on the edges is nothing new to this country. We have been here before. The sixties is actually a reaction to what happened in the 50's, that dark night of accusations.
Something else we should consider, when the right throws around the hitler meme...Nazis were only 10% of the German people. A rabid minority that cowed the majority. As the rabid right tries to stop Democratic discussions at town halls..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism"There were also more subtle forces encouraging the rise of McCarthyism. It had long been a practice of more conservative politicians to refer to liberal reforms such as child labor laws and women's suffrage as "Communist" or "Red plots."<6> This tendency increased in the 1930s in reaction to the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and saw its policies as evidence that the government had been heavily influenced by Communist policy-makers in the Roosevelt administration.<7> In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in the rhetoric of anti-Communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity."