Posted on 08/05/2012 7:55:13 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
It is a shame and a scandal that the name George Samuel Schuyler has fallen into obscurity.
Schuyler was as well read as he was prolific an author. A distinguished member of the black cognoscenti who tirelessly argued on behalf of the legal and civil equality of blacks, Schuyler's was among the most influential of black voices during the middle of the last century.
So why is it that, in spite of the prominence that he once enjoyed, Schuyler is no longer mentioned these days?
One obvious reason, of course, is that Schuyler was a conservative. And he was a black conservative.
You see, unlike most of today's conservatives, black or white, Schuyler relished in taking a wrecking ball to just those persons and ideas that our generation has elevated into sacred cows.
For example, while few of our contemporaries who crave the company of "respectable society" would dare to publicly criticize Malcolm X or, more crucially, Martin Luther King, Jr., Schuyler repeatedly took both men to task.
He was particularly unyielding when it came to Malcolm, who he had debated on several occasions.
He confronted Malcolm face to face while the former was alive and "was initially astonished by his wide ignorance." Schuyler explains that when Malcolm "launched into an excoriation of white people in the name of Islam, I called his attention to the fact that the majority of Moslems were whites". Malcolm, he continued, was no better prepared to reply to this revelation than he was Schuyler's assertion that Moslems were more involved in the African slave trade than were Europeans.
Schuyler also informed Malcolm that the Nation of Islam's "anti-white" and "anti-Christian" ideology aside, American blacks are "the healthiest" and "the wealthiest" blacks anywhere in the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
a lot of history, even though I missed the post in the thread which elicited your desire to provide it; so thanks anyway
Birchers were left out in the cold once the "real conservative," Ronald Reagan, came to town. They were (as I was) to some degree suspicious of GHWBush as Reagan's VP pick, but Reagan knew what he needed to win, and effectively co-opted GHWB.
The Birchers weren't "left out in the cold"--they refused to come indoors. For some reason, they had some sort of beef against Reagan. In 1975, a local Birch leader wrote to me saying that my enthusiasm for Reagan was likely due to the left-wing atmosphere at the University of Southern California--which got me wondering what they consume at those Birch chapter meetings besides coffee and cookies. In the primary campaign a few months later, I couldn't get any Birchers to support Reagan. They chose to sit out the primary or vote for one of the also-rans like Walter Hollywood or Hannibal Caesar Burchette III--I'm not making these names up, they were on the GOP ballot in California.
In 1978, the Birchers came out against Proposition 13, tax limitation initiative that virtually all other conservatives enthusiastically supported. They then sat out the `1980 campaign and were never enthusiastic about him during his presidency.
The reason the Birch Society was enamored of Franco, Salazar, Caetano, and Papadopoulos was their association with the World War II era European right. American Opinion would run magazine covers with glowing blurbs about these worthies and how they were working with anti-Communists from "the Arab world"(!!!) to contain Communism. It was no different from the World Anti-Communist League which at one time was infested with neo-Nazis and people who went about measuring skulls (like Roger Pearson). General Singlaub actually withdrew the American chapter from the organization for a while.
These portraits also evinced a sort of European racialism/civilizationism that percolated just beneath the "Americanist" surface of the JBS. And as for the other dictators, while there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they weren't as bad as Communist dictators, the fulsome and unqualified support the Society gave them gave the lie to their love for "small, limited government." Perhaps the most egregious example was Welch's hero Rafael Trujillo, who not only maintained a cult of personality but also (with his family) owned almost everything in the country. Hello? Isn't that called "socialism?" You know, when only the people who run the government own stuff?
I have little patience for the people who scream about "international bankers" or the Rothschilds or even the Rockefellers. These were the villains of the late nineteenth century populist movement--a socialist movement. Isn't there something funny about an "anti-socialist" organization continuing the rogues' gallery of a socialist predecessor? And if you will do a little research on socialist organizations and movements outside the United States, you'll find that their rhetoric sounds very like the JBS: the people must arm themselves and national sovereignty is a mirage behind which the country is actually ruled by foreign bankers. I did you not! Read some of the old Irish socialist material and you'll get this same stuff!
As for the Rothschilds and Schiffs, there is no excuse whatsoever for opposing G-d's Chosen People regardless of what individual Jews, or even great numbers of Jews, have done. Either you believe in the Biblical G-d or you don't. But the Birchers don't believe in the Biblical G-d. They believe in a national American "gxd," just like all "palaeos." At any rate, the anti-Semitism has forever soured me on all conspiracy theories. While it's theoretically possible, I simply don't dwell on it too much for the simple reason that the real "secret ruler of the world" is G-d--and it's not a secret at all!
The JBS' promotion of anti-Semitic writers is unconscionable. Nesta Webster was an open and avowed Fascist and the legal copyright holders of her books were a neo-Nazi racialist outfit called Britons. But to escape this association the Society sold illegal pirate copies instead. Furthermore Prince Michel Sturdza was an abomination. He was a member of perhaps the most anti-Semitic movement in world history, the Romanian Iron Guard, and was an ambassador of Romania when it was a Nazi ally. His books Betrayal by Rulers and The Suicide of Europe were virulently anti-Israel and the JBS had to edit them in order to publish them because the original texts explicitly blamed the Jews for everything. Does this sound like an honorable organization? It was not. It was a sick, evil organization that pulled thousands of good people into the neo-Nazi orbit (some of whom became virulent anti-Semites after exposure to this literature). No honest, honorable organization would behave as the JBS did. And it shared most of its Southern members with the avowedly racialist White Citizens' Councils and also had as members over the years such fanatical anti-Semites as Willis Carto, Revilo P. Oliver, George Dietz, and Ben Klassen, who was so anti-Semitic that he became an atheist and wrote a book attacking the evil Jewish Bible. Why do you suppose this organization promoted anti-Semitic Catholicism and Protestant reconstructionism? Why do you think they furtively peddled The Rapture Cult which said that the Scofield Reference Bible was a plot of "the conspiracy?"
Even the man who got me into the Society, Alan Stang, was a self-hating Jew and anti-Zionist who apostisized to become a Primitive Baptist Preacher and called Abraham Lincoln our "first Communist president" (too bad Lincoln's last name wasn't Papadopoulos!).
I have in my life been burned by my association with two organizations: the John Birch Society and the Catholic Church. I have no use for either one of them.
Finally, what you are missing in your otherwise commendable joviality is that this same Birch Society that was all for winning the war in Vietnam (and later in places like Africa and Central America) was not so eager to help Israel. To this day the JBS, in order to maintain its stubborn anti-Israel philosophy, has flipped its position on war 180 degrees. Back then war was good. Now it's bad because only Jews benefit.
And what in the world have the Rothschilds or Schiffs got to do with hating Israel? Had none of these Birchers ever heard a Fundamentalist sermon in their lives? Even palaeoconservative Rev. Carl McIntire was staunchly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. The JBS certainly has no excuse for its twisting and turning in order to maintain an animus against Israel.
There is only one thing in the world that could possibly redeem the John Birch Society in my eyes, and that is that its Jewish members take it over and make it an explicitly Zionist organization. Short of this it will always smell of the evil in which it was conceived.
No one likes to be hoodwinked.
The Birch Society was very enthusiastic about the socialist government of Nationalist China . . . that's right . . . Chiang Kai-shek was a socialist (as even Robert Welch admitted in Again, May G-d Forgive Us) and to this day the Kuomintang has a Leninist party structure and the government of Taiwan has a land tax that comes from Henry George. As a matter of fact, one of the Three Principals of the People was "the people's livelihood" (ie, socialism). But that didn't keep the Birchers from being big supporters of Chiang. The "Israel was socialist" line simply doesn't hold water. European rightism is considerably more collectivist statist than American conservatism, but that made no difference to them.
Ironically, in the very first American Opinion Scoreboard that estimated Communist influence in every country of the world Israel, though ranking above the United States, ranked under Saudi Arabia. Can you believe that? There was more Communist influence in Saudi Arabia than in Israel according to the AO Scoreboard, but this didn't mean Israel deserved any sympathy. In fact, in the foreword to The Politician Welch said that when Eisenhower was inaugurated Israel was the only country in the Middle East that wasn't anti-Communist! (Granted this was five years previous to the Scoreboard, but still.)
I only had access to Birch publications from 1977 to 1981 though as a "chapter leader" I had a "library" of books available to the (practically non-existent) membership that included many back issues of American Opinion. This is how I know about AO's enthusiasm for Papadopoulos, Franco, and the Portuguese Estado Novo.
I've always wondered why, if "American patriots" were so fond of these foreign systems of government, they didn't call for them in our own country. But they never did. They always brandished the Constitution even as they praised these other men.
At any rate, I will take your word that TROTN expressed relief at the Israeli victory in '67. The point remains that the JBS attitude toward Israel was very unclear for most of its history (there was a brief honeymoon under Begin), whereas its enthusiasm for Franco, Salazar, Trujillo, Somoza, Chiang, Syngman Rhee, Ian Smith, Apartheid South Africa, and Pinochet was very well known. (And again, yes, I agree these men were much much better than any Communist dictator.)
American Opinion actually used to carry ads for South African Krugerrands and medals commemorating the 1973 coup against Allende. Can you imagine them selling Israel Bonds???
That's what I talking about when I wrote: "They became more inwardly focused and they missed the emergence of Reagan. They effectively never saw him coming in 1980 long enough to help him get elected."
I think we're saying the same thing essentially, and I understand your point.
For some reason, they had some sort of beef against Reagan. In 1975, a local Birch leader wrote to me ... a few months later, I couldn't get any Birchers to support Reagan.
Let me guess: Reagan wasn't pure enough? They were recalling his mistaken act of legalizing abortion in California, so they threw everything about him out the window? I must confess, in 1980 my first pick was not Reagan but Phil Crane (R-IL).
And it didn't help when Bush was quoted in 1980 as saying something to the effect that "Everything I am I owe to David Rockefeller." After Carter's TriLatCom appointees' serial fiascos I was suspicious of Reagan's choice of GHWBush - since he was at one time TriLat/CFR himself.
I was listening to the radio the day it became clear that the nomination was Reagan's and Reagan was being pushed by the establishment into considering a co-Presidency of him, Ford, and Bush. Reagan curtly dismssed the idea. The interviewer went on to press him about chosing GHWB for his VP. Reagan said, "Oh well, George Bush is fine, I suppose -- I just don't happen to like the guy!" Recall how GHWB tried to pull the plug on the debate in advance of the NH primary, and Reagan grabbed the mic and snapped "Hey, I paid for that!"
I think Reagan was smart enough to employ "keep your friends close, your enemies closer." That said I was always suspicious about the assassination attempt March 30, 1981, but as years went on I started to look at Bush more as the elevated patrician he saw himself as, not a "conspirator" per se. Though ya know that "Skull 'n' Bones" thing was, well, ya know ...... And Bill Casey was a CFR and Mason, and so was Cap Weinberger, and well, "I smell Bechtel" and ...... well, ya know ......
It got to a point where you had to shed the hair shirt, forget that Nancy Reagan read his horoscope every morning, and with Reagan's Presidency - inspite of his VP pick - realize we were actully winning things for a change!
They chose to sit out the primary or vote for one of the also-rans ...
You must mean like a lot of Virgil Goode and "Paulista" types still do around here at FR in this cycle now that Romney is the presumptive, grossly imperfect RNC nominnee?
In 1978, the Birchers came out against Proposition 13, tax limitation initiative that virtually all other conservatives enthusiastically supported. They then sat out the `1980 campaign and were never enthusiastic about him during his presidency.
I liked to say, looking back in hind-sight, "Birchers weren't happy unless you were as miserable as they were!"
FReegards!
I had the privilege of meeting John Singlaub at the New England Rallies.
I have little patience for the people who scream about "international bankers" or the Rothschilds or even the Rockefellers. These were the villains of the late nineteenth century populist movement--a socialist movement.
What we must guard ourselves from is not falling into the trap of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This was Birchers' compromise with anti-communist dictatorships. As much as we oppose the turn of the 19th century socialists, the international bankers are as evil today as they were back then. The Federal Reserve is an example of insider-banking and market manipulation and corruption as we have ever seen in recent years.
We should call them all out for what they are, and at the same time not surrender power to them by default that they do not have -- unless driven by fear we choose to cede it to them.
As for the Rothschilds and Schiffs, there is no excuse whatsoever for opposing G-d's Chosen People regardless of what individual Jews, or even great numbers of Jews, have done.
Agree completely.
At any rate, the anti-Semitism has forever soured me on all conspiracy theories. While it's theoretically possible, I simply don't dwell on it too much for the simple reason that the real "secret ruler of the world" is G-d--and it's not a secret at all!
One shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater re: "conspiracy" theories. That's going in the complete opposite direction and putting it completely out of your mind is not necessarily wise.
We must remain wise to their machinations, even as we should be of anything inherently Satanic, still recognize that they are there, but not allow ourselves to become overwhelmed by them, because where Eternity is concerned -- they are the ultimate losers -- and even in this life more often than not they become their own worst enemies.
They are not as brilliant as they think they are. Let's refrain from making them more powerful than they actually are.
... the Scofield Reference Bible was a plot of "the conspiracy?"
I never had much use for the Scofield ref Bible not becouse of "conspiracies" but in its commentary's adherence to the Gap Theory -- a presumed time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 into which supposed Darwinistic evolutionary mechanisms were to be shoe-horned.
Even the man who got me into the Society, Alan Stang, ...called Abraham Lincoln our "first Communist president"
Sadly, there's even people on this board that say the same about Lincoln. At least he stood up to the Eurpoean international bankers who were trying to indebt the US to them in the fighting of the Civil War, and Lincoln responded instead with issuing Lincoln Greenbacks to finance the war effort.
I have in my life been burned by my association with two organizations: the John Birch Society and the Catholic Church. I have no use for either one of them.
Perhaps you have read Alex Hyslop's, "The Two Babylons"? If not I think you'd appreciate the historical research on the emergence of the RC Church.
And what in the world have the Rothschilds or Schiffs got to do with hating Israel? Had none of these Birchers ever heard a Fundamentalist sermon in their lives? Even palaeoconservative Rev. Carl McIntire was staunchly pro-Israel and pro-Jewish.
I knew Carl McIntire very well. His school, Shelton College, was situated in a booth adjacent to the Bible Science Association booth at the Rally in 1970. My dad was a faculty member there for a short time. McIntire had his own problems, to be sure:
McIntire's group led three March for Victory in Vietnam rallies in Washington, DC 1970 -71. I participated in each one.
FReegards!
I'm anti-Catholic, but not based on any of Hyslop's "mystery Babylon" nonsense.
I also have no use for the "gap theory," though I realize there are good people who believe it. If they have some sort of esoteric knowledge from Tradition, well and good. If they're just trying to make room for evolution, they've run off the rails.
I doubt you'll want to be my friend after this, but I am a real Republican, not a Dixiecat RINO like so many conservative Southerners. My ancestors fought for the Union during the Civil War and have been voting Republican in every election, not because of FDR or Barry Goldwater. This means that my political heritage runs straight through the Whigs to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, which mean I advocate the Hamiltonian system. This is not the current Federal Reserve, but the original Bank of the United States. Hamilton's (and Washington's) economic policies made America a prosperous, powerful country whereas Jeffersonianism would have made us a third world agrarian maritime backwater (can you believe I actually agree with Pat Buchanan on something?). All the howling about "international bankers" comes from anti-capitalism and class warfare.
There are two Constitutional traditions in America (the Hamiltonian and the Jeffersonian) and two radical traditions (the New England and the Southern or Jacksonian). The New England and Northern radicals were pro-bank but anti-Masonic. The Jacksonian radicals were pro-Masonic but anti-bank. Shoot, Thomas Jefferson, the great sympathizer with the French Revolution, was anti-bank! Doesn't that tell you something? At any rate, I always preferred the Illuminati/secret society side of conspiracy theory rather than the "international banker" part (which is usually just a codeword for Jews). But now I'm even soured on the Illuminati. I've come to believe that the entire "conspiracy theory" the Birch Society peddled was just anti-Semitism with the word "Jews" removed.
Finally, the whole conspiracy theory thing is based on the belief in an evil "gxd of this world" who opposes the Good G-d. That may square with chrstian dogma, but it doesn't square with reality: there is only One G-d, and He is the G-d of this world and every other world. There is no evil counterpart or even rebellious angel (HaSatan is merely another of G-d's angels doing his various assigned tasks). So while there are definitely evil forces on earth, there are no metaphysical evil forces. G-d is absolutely and totally in control of everything, including evil itself.
I appreciate your sharing your memories of the Society. I take it they were more pleasant than mine.
I am well aware of this, having learned it to my astonishment and sorrow during my days in the JBS. Freda Utley, Pat Hurley, and James V. Forrestal were all conservative heroes who opposed Israel. Forrestal was Senator McCarthy's mentor, but it's doubtful that Mac shared the older man's position because it was identical to that of George C. Marshall, whom he ran out of the government (he also invited Abba Eben to his Senate office). In addition to the above, Dr. Alfred Lilienthal made a career out of opposing Israel and later became a sycophant of Arafat's, flattering him to the skies. Regnery published Lilienthal's trash. And as for Human Events, after sending them an angry letter protesting the way they had treated Rabbi Me'ir Kahana' (zt"l; Hy"d) in an article they threatened to sue me (and I didn't even have any money). So I know all about them too.
But why, do you suppose, conservatives were so hostile to Israel? JBS Founder Welch labeled it the only country in the Middle East that wasn't anti-Communist, yet his own "scoreboard" five years later showed Israel as less Communist than Saudi Arabia. So what was the deal? True, the Communist bloc supported Zionism for a brief period (prior to this and after they were solidly opposed to it), but the Soviets also supported Nationalist China at one point.
So just what was the deal? Ben-Gurion was a "socialst" of the same type as the British Labour Party, but he was from the right wing of the party. He refused to allow the Communists (or the Herut) in his coalition. He even offered to send Israeli troops to fight the Communists in Korea but was turned down. So what was the deal?
In 1956 Ben-Gurion joined Britain and France in an attack on Communist dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser after he nationalized the Suez Canal. Wasn't this a good thing? Yet conservative author Harold Lord Varney criticized the British and French for allying with Israel, calling it a nation that "always plays a lone and selfish hand." Just what did that mean?
The Soviets turned against Israel very soon after their brief period of support. And they ordered their underlings in Czechoslovakia to send arms to the Arabs just as they had previously ordered them to arm the Israelis (factoid: when the Israelis began talks with Czechoslovakia for support it was not yet a Communist country). Jews were hounded in Prague; in the USSR you had the "Doctors' Plot." Even fanatical pro-Nazi anti-Semite Francis Parker Yockey switched his allegiance to the Soviet bloc and advised that all other neo-Nazis do likewise. Most Soviet bloc countries severed all ties to Israel in 1967; Cuba maintained them until 1973, but even here, Castro had been hosting Palestinian terrorists as early as 1966. Romania continued to maintain ties with Israel, but that was because Romanian intelligence was put in charge of the PLO by the Russians.
I grew up during the latter part of the Cold War in the Sixties and Seventies. I used to listen to international broadcasts on shortwave and the Communist world was 100% united against Israel and "Zionist imperialism." How was I to know that "good conservatives" supported the Arabs?
So just why did all these "good conservatives" oppose Israel? To ask the question is to answer it. A sovereign Jewish state in the Holy Land with its capital in Jerusalem--even a secular one--meant we were simply getting too close to "Jewish world rule" under the Messiah. And heavens to betsy, we can't have that, can we?
I don't think I even have to tell you what I thought of all the "good conservatives" who I found out opposed Israel (including even my one time hero Jesse Helms--though he had a conversion after his first Senate term).
This whole business of both the Communists and the anti-Communists hating the "Zionists" was just plain nuts!
Furthermore, when I first signed up on Free Republic a little over thirteen years ago it was specifically to combat the anti-Semites who were then (as anyone who remembers those days can tell you) infesting the board. Hence my screen name.
In the interest of fairness, it must be observed that there were a few palaeoconservatives who supported Israel back in those dark days, and they deserve much praise. These included Robert Taft (whom Israel-haters for some reason think claim as their own), Ezra Taft Benson, and Rev. Carl McIntire.
You can't imagine my satisfaction at Regnery now publishing books attacking Saudi Arabia (Kingdom of Hate). The world do move, do it not? However I've never forgiven the "good conservatives" who opposed Israel. There is no good reason to oppose the ingathering of G-d's People to their own Land. Let's just say I have a lot fewer conservative heroes now than I used to.
I used to listen to Carl McIntire's twentieth Century Reformation over KTYM, a small Los Angeles-area station. Indeed, hee was a strong supporter of Israel. He once said of Israel's General Moshe Dayan, who lost an eye fighting the Vichy French in WWII, "I wish we had a one-eyed general."
Although he took no position on political issues, the Rev. Charles E. Fuller of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, a popular religious radio show in the 1940's and 1950's, was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel in its early years. My mother sang in his choir for 15 years.
Take care, both of you.
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