There has always been something about the John Birch Society that seemed a bit wacko to me - the idea of “Help, the paranoids are after me.”
Having said that, I find that among conservatives in general and fair contingent here at FR, there’ a much greater emphasis on what is wrong than on pushing for a positive agenda to make things right. Like an old bad habit of cursing the darkness instead of lighting a light or getting on board with those that do.
I have to admit to having spent YEARS on countless bulletin boards and chat forums doing nothing more than sitting at the keyboard identifying, defining and re-defining the world's problems... and bitching about them, of course.
It wasn't until the COS movement caught my attention that I realized, as you have, that my time can be much better spent actively pursuing a positive agenda, actually doing something about the problems instead of all that negative navel-gazing.
This year, the primary activity of many A5 activists has been public education... getting the word out... or in the case of the JBS, debunking decades of their disinformation and RE-educating the public.