Three Columns

In the ensuing three years, climaxing in the August issue of Mr. Welch’s publication, three things have become clear. The first is that Mr. Welch’s views have not changed, on the contrary they have become (see below) more virulent. The second is that there is no effective movement from within the Society to contain Mr. Welch’s utterances, or to remove him as the Society’s leader. The third is that Mr. Welch succeeds in influencing his membership to believe those surrealisms which he first ventilated in The Politician; and that as the membership comes to believe the Welch analysis, it ceases to be effectively anti-Communist.

The following pages are in five parts. To begin with, we republish three columns by Wm. F. Buckley Jr. which appeared in August, the first of which was prompted by his reading of the Scoreboard issue of American Opinion. They serve the purpose of a) reproducing a few striking passages in American Opinion (indicating the high pitch of frenzy of Mr. Welch’s current analyses) , b) reproducing excerpts from the mail the first column provoked (indicating members’ countenance of the wild opinions published in American Opinion), and finally c), reproducing excerpts from a letter by a member of the National Council of the John Birch Society which indicates the difficulty of rational discussion with someone who has accepted Mr. Welch’s fundamental analysis.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

Featured Tags

Manage following

William F. Buckley Jr.

In the ensuing three years, climaxing in the August issue of Mr. Welch’s publication, three things have become clear. The first is that Mr. Welch’s views have not changed, on the contrary they have become (see below) more virulent. The second is that there is no effective movement from within the Society to contain Mr. Welch’s utterances, or to remove him as the Society’s leader. The third is that Mr. Welch succeeds in influencing his membership to believe those surrealisms which he first ventilated in The Politician; and that as the membership comes to believe the Welch analysis, it ceases to be effectively anti-Communist.

The following pages are in five parts. To begin with, we republish three columns by Wm. F. Buckley Jr. which appeared in August, the first of which was prompted by his reading of the Scoreboard issue of American Opinion. They serve the purpose of a) reproducing a few striking passages in American Opinion (indicating the high pitch of frenzy of Mr. Welch’s current analyses) , b) reproducing excerpts from the mail the first column provoked (indicating members’ countenance of the wild opinions published in American Opinion), and finally c), reproducing excerpts from a letter by a member of the National Council of the John Birch Society which indicates the difficulty of rational discussion with someone who has accepted Mr. Welch’s fundamental analysis.