A lot of good points, EWB, and I wouldn't say that our positions are irreconcileable. I can remember hearing Julie Schwartz say on at least one panel, though, that the numbers for the first couple of Flash tryouts were inconclusive.

As for Red-baiting, I seem to remember quite a lot of it in the popular media up into the late '50s. "I Led Three Lives", a popular TV show about an FBI double agent infiltrating CPUSA,, springs to mind. The hysteria wasn't at quite such a fever pitch between the demise of McCarthy (who continued to have his defenders--my high school social studies teacher among them) and the rise of the John Birch Society, but it was still there.
Who am us, anyway?
--The Firesign Theater