The Rise of the Neo-Birchers

A cancer is eating away at a once Grand Old Party, and if the party doesn't wake up and take precautions, it may wind up only a shadow of its better self -- a hollowed-out refuge for haters and paranoids and the kind of ideological parasites that can reduce a major party to a minor one.

The historian Richard Hofstadter spoke of a "paranoid style in American politics," and noted its "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." He called it "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life," one that it isn't confined to left or right. It's an equal-opportunity form of craziness and, sure enough, it's back. If it ever went away.

Somewhere there must still be a remnant of the John Birch Society buried in the woodwork of American politics and still burrowing away. Such types swarm in the fever swamps of any society's culture, but in hard times, or just uncertain ones, they tend to overflow and threaten the health and stability of even long established and respected institutions, societies and whole civilizations.

Think of Germany in the 1930s and the Nazi sickness, or the conditions that led to the rise of bolshevism in Russia as the West destroyed itself in a first world war that would prove but a harbinger of an even greater and more calamitous second one.

Or take the long view and see what has befallen Islamic civilization since it was once renowned for its arts and sciences, its tolerance and hospitality, its architecture -- and its poetry! The civilization that gave us Ibn Khaldun and Harun al-Rashid now languishes, and in its decline produces al-Qaida types whose idea of progress is death and destruction. Their murderous rhetoric, once lightly dismissed by a West grown fat and careless, proved all too serious.

There's a lesson in all this if we in the West will ever learn it -- and act. Whether it's Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto or today's fatwas coming out of the Arab world, words can lead to acts. Horrible acts. And shouldn't be lightly dismissed.

Consider a couple of recent rhetorical performances here in bucolic Arkansas of all places:

Right in the middle of the citywide shutdown in Boston that followed the bombings at the finish line of its famed Marathon, a state representative and gun enthusiast named Nate Bell twittered a nasty little message about Bostonians "cowering in their homes" without firearms -- just when the rest of America was thinking of their calm courage and vigilance. (Which once again paid off.)

Happily, that state legislator was rewarded by a flood of responses -- not just from Arkansas but many another state -- that let him know just how far over the line he'd wandered. America seems awake to the danger that words as thoughtless as his represent. Even he soon thought better of them -- though he apologized only for their "timing," not their substance. Sad.

About the same time, a Republican couple in the hills of picturesque Benton County up in the Ozarks spewed out the same sort of vitriol -- not in private conversation or emails to their fellow fanatics but in the newsletter of the county's Republican organization. Words like "traitors" and "turncoats" were used to describe their party's state legislators. Or at least those who finally, patiently worked out a compromise on the contentious and convoluted issue of Obamacare and its impact on Medicaid in this state.

At one point the article in the newsletter referred to legislators who don't agree with its views as "bullet backstops." The article asserted that the Second Amendment "means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them...." No reservations or context can justify that kind of trash talk. Which has a way of leading to trashy actions. Or worse.

The head of that country's Republican organization wasted no time demanding these people's resignations from the party's county committee, which may be the best news about this whole mess. Because if Republicans aren't vigilant, loudmouths like these will become the voice of their party -- and decent Americans of all political persuasions will be repelled. Rightly so. And react. Which is what happened to the Birchers in their less than glorious heyday.

Lest we forget, the John Birch Society didn't fade away on its own, any more than malignant cancers clear up on their own. All good men -- and women -- came to the aid of their party and cleaned it out. Thinkers and leaders of courage and conviction, and of unquestionably conservative credentials, rose up to expose and oppose the danger the John Birch Society represented. Thinkers and leaders like the late great William F. Buckley Jr., who would not be silent in the face of what he recognized as a fatal threat to his party and its principles -- and to the conscience of conservatives regardless of party.

For what is conservatism except an attachment to the tried and true, to the wisdom of hard-earned experience over the zealotry of empty theory, to custom and tradition, to the civilities and grace notes of life, to tolerance and manners rather than the crudities of the moment? For conservatism is more a civilized inclination than a point-by-point program to be outlined in some party newsletter or elaborated to death in one of Rand Paul's 12-hour filibusters. It is a belief in the kind of positive change that, because it is based on the past, will endure in the future.

These neo-Birchers aren't conservatives. They're the opposite: radicals who believe they've got the true faith and all the rest of us are infidels.

Unless the Republican Party’s leaders -- and its grass roots, too -- get a grip on this slithering danger and proceed to rise up and root it out, someday Americans may wonder what ever happened to the party of Lincoln, who spoke of charity for all and malice toward none. That forgotten party will have gone like the Whigs, torn apart.

At that point, Republicans will have become like the old man in a dark shop that Whittaker Chambers warned his party about as the original Birchers proliferated. The old man in his dark shop wasn't really interested in selling anything, just sitting there and stroking his merchandise.

Both the Birchers and now these neo-Birchers represent the greatest obstacle to a Republican comeback in American politics, which is Republicans themselves. Or at least the kind who fall for this load of ideology, or who think they can safely ignore these fanatics out to hijack their party. Remember: Silence gives consent.

November 20, 2010
Birchers. Again.
By J.R. Dunn
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/birchers_again.html

In the comments to my piece on Beck v. Soros, there were a number of postings suggesting that the John Birch Society had it right and that we may as well pick up where they left off.

This may sound harmless to many AT readers, particularly the younger ones, to whom John Birch is scarcely even a name. But it’s not. What it is is a provocation designed to associate AT, its readers, and, not the least (well, maybe the least), me with one of the most lurid nut cults ever to appear on the extreme right-wing fringe.

Because that’s what the Birchers were — a cult. A hermetic, isolated group who believed they had secret knowledge denied everybody else in the U.S. of A. And what was this knowledge? Bircher beliefs can be summed up quite simply:
A) That everything that occurs in public life, without exception, is caused by the communists.
B) That everybody who is not a Bircher is a communist.
Moving on, here are some choice elements of Bircher thought: That Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent, that the civil rights movement was a communist plot, that the Vietnam War was a communist plot (I know, I know — I don’t get it either). That the Christian ecumenical movement was a communist plot, that the mental health establishment was run by communists. That free trade was a communist plot. (I’d like to hear somebody try to square that circle.) That the collapse of the Soviet empire was bogus, a ruse designed to make us let down our guard. Birchers were also opposed to every war the U.S. was involved in since the organization’s founding in 1958, on the grounds that they were fought on behalf of guess who? (All they need is a few posters saying “God hates fags” and they’d be all set.)

While some of the organization’s stances were acceptable, including opposition to big government and the U.N., it was all couched in that same monotonous “the postman is a communist” drone. Anyone who wants to get a flavor of the organization’s rhetoric will find it in Stanley Kubrick’s classic satire Dr. Strangelove — a large portion of mad general Jack D. Ripper’s rants are derived directly from Bircher material. (Let me add here that John Birch, a U.S. Army intelligence officer killed by Maoist troops at the close of WWII, had nothing to do with the organization. Birchers considered him a martyr, the “first casualty of WWIII”.)

The Birchers were repudiated by the American center-right soon after they appeared — most famously by William F. Buckley, who read them out of the movement with comments about their “paranoid and idiotic” behavior.

Even Ayn Rand, no friend of Buckley or other conservative leaders, was dismissive of the Birchers: “I consider the Birch Society futile, because they are not for Capitalism but merely against Communism.”

But repudiation didn’t work. Throughout the ‘60s, American liberals succeeded in connecting Birchers with the center-right, convincing the public at large that everybody from Buckley on down was a nascent Jack Ripper, crazy as a rat in a can, and ready to go off at a touch. Their crowning victory was the trashing of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. After the organization endorsed Goldwater, the media ran with it, depicting the senator as a demented extremist even though he was not a Birch Society member, had no contact with them, and disagreed with them in detail. The “Bircher” accusation went on to serve the left well for nearly twenty years.

I confess I can’t make much sense of the comments concerning the Birchers. I can’t see the connection to Soros, who, after all, is no communist, but instead a weird amalgam of European anti-Americanism and various social democratic and soft left ideas, never-neverland notions such as world government mingled with sandal-wearer fixations including euthanasia, legalization of pot, and legalization of prostitution. (I cannot repeat often enough that none of this has anything to do with Karl Popper, a champion of individual liberty and a political philosopher of the highest repute.)

The comments also imply that conservatism is “coming around” to Bircher ideas. This is nonsense. Millennial conservatism is a sophisticated political and intellectual construct, as far beyond the simpleminded compulsions of the Birchers as it is the theology of the Aztecs. Contemporary conservatism is the result of forty years of study, debate, and contemplation of the problems confronting our Republic. A cursory glance at the comments posted to this site reveals a depth and perceptiveness unknown to any paranoid fringe sect. I, for one, like it that way.

So where is this stuff coming from? I see two possibilities: that the remnants of the organization (they’re still around — but so are the Wobblies) are making crude attempts at recruitment in an effort to break in on the current conservative revival, or alternatively that some lefties are attempting to paint AT, its writers, and its readers with the Bircher label in hopes of reliving their 1960s glory days. It really doesn’t matter which. Such cute little schemes fail the moment they’re exposed. That moment has arrived, and we can consider the matter closed.

We have no need of such extremist primitivism.We get intelligent, nuanced analysis of our challenges and problems every day from figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Levin. Laura Ingraham...the list, as we all know, is endless. Our current organizations — the Tea Parties above all — are vastly superior to any past groups on the right, from their decentralized structure to their modulated and restrained attitude toward doctrine to their decisive ability to put ideas into action. To adapt outmoded and paranoid concepts out of the 1950s would be an exercise in pure futility, as well as being more than a little crazy.

We’ve got better things to do. So grab that ammo belt, Mandrake — the Redcoats are comin’.

J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker and will edit the forthcoming Military Thinker.

Power Line
Return of the John Birch Society?
February 20, 2010 Posted by Scott at 7:16 AM
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025642.php

In his history of National Review, former NR senior editor Jeffrey Hart notes one consequence of the 1964 election at the magazine. “The odor of the John Birch Society had been so strong and so intolerable, and so damaging to Goldwater,” Hart recalls, “that National Review decided that for the future of American conservatism, decisive distance had to be laid down irrevocably between the magazine and the society.”
http://www.amazon.com/Making-American-Conservative-Mind-National/dp/193385913X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266674119&sr=1-2

That distance had originally been marked off in a 1962 editorial, “but that had not been enough. The distinction would now have to be made, once and for all, between a viable conservatism and the fantastic theories that energized the leadership of the JBS.” Among the JBS’s “fantastic theories” was the proposition that Dwight Eisenhower had been a Communist agent.

NR sought to separate the JBS from the conservative movement with a “root-and-branch attack” in October 1965. That month NR published a special section of the magazine denouncing the JBS in contributions by Buckley as well as NR senior editors James Burnham and Frank Meyer, along with endorsement letters by leading conservative figures including Goldwater himself. Hart describes the opening of the special section (”The Background”) as “an act of war” that “takes no prisoners.”

Bill Buckley provided his own account of related events in Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, http://www.amazon.com/Flying-High-Remembering-Barry-Goldwater/dp/046501805X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

excerpted here http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewpdf.cfm?article_id=11248 by Commentary. The JBS responded in its inimitable style here. http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/457-william-f-buckley-jr-the-establishments-house-conservative

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is a great event attended by just about everybody who is anybody in the conservative movement. It also attracts a lot of college students who aspire to make a contribution to the movement.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl reports that this year’s CPAC event was co-sponsored, unbelievably to me, by the John Birch Society. Karl quotes some of Buckley’s characteristically vibrant denunciations of the JBS. “Two years after Buckley’s death,” Karl observes, “the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC.”

Karl reasonably asks: “Why is the Birch Society a co-sponsor?”

“They’re a conservative organization,” according to Lisa Depasquale, the CPAC Director for the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. “Beyond that,” she told Karl, “I have no comment.”

Additional comment is required, and if Depasquale will not provide it, I will. This is a disgrace.

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