The time is now!!! Blackball is a sentence to darkness and isolation. The term McCarthyism described the practice of publicly accusing government employees of political disloyalty or subversive activities and using unsavory investigatory methods to prosecute them. The criticisms of McCarthyism, and of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (pictured here) in particular, are threefold. First, he ruined the reputations and lives of many people by accusing them without credible evidence. Second, he used accusations of communist sympathies to counterattack anyone who criticized his methods. And, third, he argued against freedom of speech because much of his rhetoric assumed that any discussion of the ideas underlying communism was dangerous and un-American. The U.S. Supreme Court has referenced McCarthyism in several of its First Amendment decisions.