The Birch Malady

3 Since the foundation of the John Birch Society, I have watched its development with mixed emotions and growing unease. Mixed emotions —because, on the one hand, many of the concerns about the future of our country which led members into the Society are, by and large, eminently just concerns, which I share; on the other hand, the Society’s guiding analysis of the causes of our unhappy situation has seemed to me a grotesque distortion of reality, which could only misdirect the energies of its members. Growing unease—- because as year followed year the distorted outlook of the Society has more and more prevailed over the original motivations and channeled the high devotion of its members in an increasingly questionable direction. Still, until recently, if the effect of the Society was to drain off in useless actions an enormous amount of potentially conservative energy, most of its activities were harmless, though a few were dangerous and some (on the other hand) were positive in their net effect.

Recently, however, particularly in the period since last year’s election, the practical political positions of the Society have less and less represented the general consensus of the conservative outlook, as they have sometimes done in the past, if in a distorted form, and begun consistently to express the underlying paranoid theories of Robert Welch. The culmination of this process was signalized in the August Bulletin of the Society when the slogan, “Get US Out,” was transformed from an anti- UN slogan to a Get US Out of Vietnam slogan, placing the Birch Society alongside of SNCC, Staughton Lynd, the sit-iners and the draft-card burners, just at the moment when, however hesitantly and confusedly, both the political leadership of the United States and significant sections of the intellectual leadership were showing some signs of moving to counter the Communist danger.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

3 Since the foundation of the John Birch Society, I have watched its development with mixed emotions and growing unease. Mixed emotions —because, on the one hand, many of the concerns about the future of our country which led members into the Society are, by and large, eminently just concerns, which I share; on the other hand, the Society’s guiding analysis of the causes of our unhappy situation has seemed to me a grotesque distortion of reality, which could only misdirect the energies of its members. Growing unease—- because as year followed year the distorted outlook of the Society has more and more prevailed over the original motivations and channeled the high devotion of its members in an increasingly questionable direction. Still, until recently, if the effect of the Society was to drain off in useless actions an enormous amount of potentially conservative energy, most of its activities were harmless, though a few were dangerous and some (on the other hand) were positive in their net effect.

Recently, however, particularly in the period since last year’s election, the practical political positions of the Society have less and less represented the general consensus of the conservative outlook, as they have sometimes done in the past, if in a distorted form, and begun consistently to express the underlying paranoid theories of Robert Welch. The culmination of this process was signalized in the August Bulletin of the Society when the slogan, “Get US Out,” was transformed from an anti- UN slogan to a Get US Out of Vietnam slogan, placing the Birch Society alongside of SNCC, Staughton Lynd, the sit-iners and the draft-card burners, just at the moment when, however hesitantly and confusedly, both the political leadership of the United States and significant sections of the intellectual leadership were showing some signs of moving to counter the Communist danger.