Get US Out!

A friend of mine, a while ago, asked me whether I had seen the stickers being displayed by “the teach-in crowd.” She went on to report the slogan as “Get US Out!” So I explained that those stickers, far from being the product of teachin ers, were a John Birch Society operation, and had been introduced as part of a long-time Birch campaign to get the U.S. (and “us,” making the pun) out of the United Nations. She was not impressed with my explanation. “What those stickers mean now to everybody who sees them is, ‘Get the U.S. out of Vietnam!’—and that’s the pacifist-Commie line.”

My friend was not alone in her puzzlement. In the August issue of the JBS Bulletin, Robert Welch acknowledges that “a few of our members have become disturbed because our slogan with regard to the United Nations, Get US Out!, is being taken by some people to mean ‘Get US Out of Vietnam!’ ” Mr. Welch then transcribes one of his suspended hypotheticals: “And if it becomes desirable to avoid that confusion, we can change the usual form of the message to: ‘Get US out of the UN!’ ” But it quickly emerges that the hypothetical can be forgotten, that the change is neither necessary nor desirable. “It may soon become clear”—Welch for “Here is the advance word that each of you can catch up with at your own mental pace”—“that there is little [translate “no”] difference in the effective meaning of either version.” Then, a few sentences later, the summation: “So we say Get US Out!, and add no ifs or buts.”

JB

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James Burnham

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A friend of mine, a while ago, asked me whether I had seen the stickers being displayed by “the teach-in crowd.” She went on to report the slogan as “Get US Out!” So I explained that those stickers, far from being the product of teachin ers, were a John Birch Society operation, and had been introduced as part of a long-time Birch campaign to get the U.S. (and “us,” making the pun) out of the United Nations. She was not impressed with my explanation. “What those stickers mean now to everybody who sees them is, ‘Get the U.S. out of Vietnam!’—and that’s the pacifist-Commie line.”

My friend was not alone in her puzzlement. In the August issue of the JBS Bulletin, Robert Welch acknowledges that “a few of our members have become disturbed because our slogan with regard to the United Nations, Get US Out!, is being taken by some people to mean ‘Get US Out of Vietnam!’ ” Mr. Welch then transcribes one of his suspended hypotheticals: “And if it becomes desirable to avoid that confusion, we can change the usual form of the message to: ‘Get US out of the UN!’ ” But it quickly emerges that the hypothetical can be forgotten, that the change is neither necessary nor desirable. “It may soon become clear”—Welch for “Here is the advance word that each of you can catch up with at your own mental pace”—“that there is little [translate “no”] difference in the effective meaning of either version.” Then, a few sentences later, the summation: “So we say Get US Out!, and add no ifs or buts.”