While deeply committed to an opposition as defining all, anticommunism
was at the same time a great proponent of the idea that boundaries
delineating antagonisms were no longer clearly defined.  This was for
many Americans the scariest aspect of the communist menace (and a
staple of anticommunist prepositions): the threat was no longer
confined to easy betweens; it was said to be among. The much-quoted
Catholic liberal anticommunist John Courtney Murray presented this
idea in one its spookier forms: "There is no war over frontiers [this
during the Korean War, a war, if ever there was one, about advancing
and declining battle lines], nor between peoples, nor between
continents. It is a clash of forces that knows no frontiers for each
seeks a zone of influence that is unlimited."  Though Murray here
means by "each" both the United States and the Soviet Union, no one in
the West reading his statement thought for a moment that the American
force was to be feared because of its powers of permeation.  Indeed,
what was said was that our side stipulated a <i>between</i> and
<i>against</i>, while the other side deceitfully eschewed sides and
was to be found <i>among</i>, <i>in</i>, <i>through</i>, and
<i>around</i>.  American anticommunism was a binarism that though of
itself as behaving complexly while fearing and despising the
opposition hiding its status as such.