During a recent trip to Las Vegas, I noticed that various signs still identified McCarran International Airport, which was named for U.S. Senator Pat McCarran, one of the strongest anti-communist Democrats in history. Officially, however, it has been renamed Harry Reid International Airport, after Senator Harry Reid. Liberals forced the name change because of McCarran’s conservative politics and anti-communist orientation.

McCarran was considered by some to be even more anti-communist than Senator Joe McCarthy, a Republican. Reid, a Democrat, may be best known as the Senator who injured himself on an exercise machine, sued the maker, and lost. He also became an advocate of spending millions on government UFO research.

The communists hated McCarran, chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, because he authored the Internal Security Act, requiring registration with the Attorney General of the American Communist Party and affiliated organizations. It was passed over the veto of Democratic President Harry S. Truman.

Democrats largely continued a tradition of bipartisan anti-communism until the advent of the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972.

In my column, “JFK’s Anti-Communism,” I pointed out that John F. Kennedy was an anti-communist determined to stop communism’s advance around the world by making the U.S. the strongest military power on earth. This was the main subject of a speech Kennedy never gave because he was assassinated.