The Rise of the John Birch Left

[Draggingtree]

P J Media: The Rise of the John Birch Left

November 6th, 2014 - 3:23 pm By Ed Driscoll

 

The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by businessman Robert Welch, and named after a Christian missionary shot by Communist forces in China in 1945, whom Welch named as the first casualty of the Cold War. The Birchers’ core principles, that Communism is evil, its expansion needed to be stopped, and that communists had infiltrated American government (see also: Hiss, Alger) were laudable. But the group’s zeal to defend them drove them to paranoid levels, to the point where the Birchers were accusing President Eisenhower of being a crypto-commie, leading to Russell Kirk’s hilarious rejoinder to the Birchers, “Ike’s not a communist, he’s a golfer!”

 

Not to mention all that business about fluoride in the water, which Dr. Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern had loads of fun satirizing in Dr. Strangelove. All of which led William F. Buckley to banish the Birchers from the postwar conservative movement he was building, leaving them a marginalized fringe group. (They’re still around, and still coming up with zany conspiracy theories.)

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

2 points

 

1. As I have said before "There are Rightwing Nutters and Leftwing Nutters....and they are both nuts! No of the differences between The Right & Left is we have a tendency to laugh at our nutters, and take them almost as seriously as a 7 year old talking about quantum physic, The Left sends theirs to Congress, or give them TV networks.

2. Anything by Paul Johnson is well worth the time sent reading it Intellectuals is just wonderful!