Bernstein's Optimism

I find Bernstein's situation interesting because it seems odd to me that someone who is very intimately experiencing the consequences of abuse of power by their government would support a political movement so wholly dependent on people. My understanding is that Communism in theory and Communism in practice are two very different things. If people were never selfish, greedy, or lazy Communism might actually work, but it seems impossible to implement that system without it getting abused in some way. I feel like if I was in Bernstein's place, I would have a very hard time trusting any political movement after experiencing an ordeal like being put on the blacklist and would probably not be as optimistic as he was.

As for the blacklist itself, I can't really see the US government's reasons for targeting writers and artists at all. I understand that the US government feared the spread of Communism and that fear makes people do unreasonable things, but censoring and blacklisting people who hadn't even really infused Communist ideals into their writing doesn't make any sense to me. I suppose they were censoring artists to be preventative, similar to the school board trying to ban the Harry Potter novels in the essay we read. However, preventative measures like that strike me as being extremely weak justifications. Actions like that are probably more likely to weaken the government performing them by showing them to be oppressive than they are likely to dissuade people from believing Communist ideals. I'm shocked that the blacklist happened at all; persecuting people for their political beliefs is one small step away from doing the same over religious or any other personal belief, which goes against everything America is supposed to stand for. Basically, I think the US government was acting vey hypocritically at the time.