Loyalty Oath

I am listening to American radio (over the web, given that I am in Japan right now) and they are talking about a movie on the loyalty oaths of McCarthyism era of the 1950's. Here are some details on the times from Wikipedia.

Hearing this reminded me of the last Presidential election. I seem to remember hearing that Bush required people who wanted to attend his campaign events to sign a loyalty oath. A quick Google and I found lots of articles on this, such as this Washington Post article.

One of the things I have not liked about the Bush Administration is that people do seem to loosing their rights in the name of protecting us from terrorism. I do hope that the similarities in the loyalty oaths isn't a sign that we are headed more towards McCarthyism...