Posted on 02/28/2008 12:40:20 PM PST by neverdem
In the early months of l962, there was restiveness in certain political quarters of the Right. The concern was primarily the growing strength of the Soviet Union, and the reiteration by its leaders of their designs on the free world. Some of the actors keenly concerned felt that Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was a natural leader in the days ahead.
But it seemed inconceivable that an anti-establishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal—the GOP’s nominating Goldwater for President—was the John Birch Society.
The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
Welch refused to divulge the size of the society’s membership, though he suggested it was as high as 100,000 and could reach a million. His method of organization caused general alarm. The society comprised a series of cells, no more than twenty people per cell. It was said that its members were directed to run in secret for local offices and to harass school boards and librarians on the matter of the Communist nature of the textbooks and other materials they used.
The society became a national cause célèbre—so much so, that a few of those anxious to universalize a draft-Goldwater movement aiming at a nomination for President in 1964 thought it best to do a little conspiratorial organizing of their own against it.
_____________
In January of that year I had a telephone call from William Baroody. It was, he said, a matter of great national importance that I spend Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week with Senator Goldwater in Palm Beach, Florida. I would be one of three—along with Russell Kirk, the philosopher and author of the seminal 1953 text The Conservative Mind, and public-relations man Jay Hall, who had represented General Motors in Washington. I said I could be there up until 5 p.m. on day one and all of day two. I had a speaking date in St. Augustine on the first night. Baroody simply repeated that the meeting was very important.
Baroody was the head of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank founded in 1943. We had met only cursorily, though I knew him to be an influential figure in behind-the-scenes conservative politics. He was invigorated by meetings with small groups, which he much enjoyed dominating. It was clear that he greatly aspired to be important to Goldwater, and perhaps to a Goldwater White House.
_____________
I arrived at breakfast with the other invitees at the imposing Breakers Hotel and ventilated the critical point: were we here assembled to answer Goldwater’s questions, or to proffer advice on the presidential campaign two years ahead? If the latter, this had to mean that Goldwater had resolved to enter the campaign, which would be big news: so far, he had steadfastly declined to take that step.
Baroody, by nature domineering, was emphatic on the subject. Under no circumstances should anything be said touching on a presidential campaign, inasmuch as Goldwater had not himself decided whether to run and did not want to spend time discussing the issue.
Russell Kirk was not prepared simply to leave the matter closed. “What is more important,” he asked Baroody, “than to try to get Goldwater elected President?”
Baroody was obliged to agree that this would be a wonderful national achievement. “But he has said no.”
“They always say no,” I volunteered.
“Bill, he has said no on at least five different occasions. If he thought we were going to spend the day on that subject, he would just walk away.”
Kirk objected. “I’m the least experienced politically of the people in this room. But I’ve seen the polls—we’ve all seen the polls—and Bill has a point: why should we shrink from telling him that’s what he ought to do?”
It required someone of Kirk’s arrant innocence in consorting with brute political forces to make his point so insistently. He let go of it only after Baroody promised that he would seek out, some time later, an opportunity for Russell to argue it personally with Goldwater. “Maybe you can tell him something about William Pitt that will change his mind.”
Kirk smiled. “Very well. So what do you have in mind for us?”
“We’ll have to coast on that.”
_____________
Goldwater was in Palm Beach visiting, incognito, with a sister-in-law who was resident there. He arrived at our hotel suite at about 11:00 in extravagantly informal garb, cowboy hat and dark glasses, a workman’s blue shirt, and denim jeans, together with his beloved Western boots. He did bring along a weather-beaten briefcase, though I never noticed his opening it the whole day.
What followed was an hour of general discussion on the policies of President Kennedy and the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Baroody noted Kennedy’s surprising drop in the polls: 61 percent of the public thought he spent money too freely, a third thought him unduly weak in opposing Soviet challenges in Berlin and elsewhere.
Moving on, Baroody brought up the John Birch Society. It was quickly obvious that this was the subject Goldwater wished counsel on.
Kirk, unimpeded by his little professorial stutter, greeted the subject with fervor. It was his opinion, he said emphatically, that Robert Welch was a man disconnected from reality. How could anyone reason, as Welch had done in The Politician, that President Eisenhower had been a secret agent of the Communists? This mischievous unreality was a great weight on the back of responsible conservative political thinking. The John Birch Society should be renounced by Goldwater and by everyone else—Kirk turned his eyes on me—with any influence on the conservative movement.
But that, Goldwater said, is the problem. Consider this, he exaggerated: “Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society. Russell, I’m not talking about Commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks, I’m talking about the highest cast of men of affairs. Any of you know who Frank Cullen Brophy is?”
I raised my hand. “I spent a lot of time with him. He was going to contribute capital to help found National Review. He didn’t.” Brophy was a prominent Arizona banker.
Goldwater said he knew nothing about that, but added that Brophy certainly was aware of Goldwater’s personal enthusiasm for the magazine and especially for its Washington editor, Brent Bozell. “Why isn’t Brent here?” he turned to Baroody.
“He’s in Spain.”
“Well, our—my—Conscience of a Conservative continues to sell.” Bozell, who was also my brother-in-law, had ghostwritten the book, which had given Goldwater a national profile.
Kirk said he could not imagine Bozell disagreeing on the need to excommunicate the John Birch Society from the conservative movement.
But this brought another groan from Goldwater. “You just can’t do that kind of thing in Arizona. For instance, who on earth can dismiss Frank Brophy from anything?”
_____________
Time was given to the John Birch Society lasting through lunch, and the subject came up again the next morning. We resolved that conservative leaders should do something about the John Birch Society. An allocation of responsibilities crystallized.
Goldwater would seek out an opportunity to dissociate himself from the “findings” of the Society’s leader, without, however, casting any aspersions on the Society itself. I, in National Review and in my other writing, would continue to expose Welch and his thinking to scorn and derision. “You know how to do that,” said Jay Hall.
I volunteered to go further. Unless Welch himself disowned his operative fallacy, National Review would oppose any support for the society.
“How would you define the Birch fallacy?” Jay Hall asked.
“The fallacy,” I said, “is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”
“I like that,” Goldwater said.
What would Russell Kirk do? He was straightforward. “Me? I’ll just say, if anybody gets around to asking me, that the guy is loony and should be put away.”
“Put away in Alaska?” I asked, mock-seriously. The wisecrack traced to Robert Welch’s expressed conviction, a year or so earlier, that the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.
_____________
In the next issue of my magazine, National Review, I published a 5,000-word excoriation of Welch:
How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own.
In response, National Review received the explicit endorsement of Senator Goldwater himself, who wrote a letter we published in the following issue:
I think you have clearly stated the problem which Mr. Welch’s continued leadership of the John Birch Society poses for sincere conservatives. . . . Mr. Welch is only one man, and I do not believe his views, far removed from reality and common sense as they are, represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society. . . . Because of this, I believe the best thing Mr. Welch could do to serve the cause of anti-Communism in the United States would be to resign. . . . We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner.
The wound we Palm Beach plotters delivered to the John Birch Society proved fatal over time. Barry Goldwater did not win the presidency, but he clarified the proper place of anti-Communism on the Right, with bright prospects to follow.
William F. Buckley, Jr. is the founder and former editor-in-chief of National Review. The present essay, in different form, will appear in his new book, Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, forthcoming from Basic Books. Copyright 2008 by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Let us know what you think! Send an email to editor@commentarymagazine.com
© Copyright 2008 Commentary. All rights reserved
Ping for post-work reading. Thanks for the post!
Indeed.
Ping for later
fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.
—
the debate continues to this day.. ;-)
We were discussing this just yesterday.
I had not heard this charge before, but it is similar in reasoning to the charge Joe McCarthy brought against Sec of State Marshall, accusing him of losing China. The book “Blacklisted By History” basically redeems Joe McCarthy, showing that indeed there were Communist agents in power in the State Department from before WW II up through the Korean War. However, Joe was wrong on this point, and I think the John Birchers were wrong on Eisenhower. I think WF Buckley is exactly correct in his reasoning, that they are imputing motivation based upon results.
When I was a little girl living in Phoenix, there was a big billboard on the way into Phoenix which was paid for by the John Birch Society. It very much influenced my little conservative heart. It had a quote from the Declaration of Independence:
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
“and I think the John Birchers were wrong on Eisenhower. I think WF Buckley is exactly correct in his reasoning, that they are imputing motivation based upon results.”
If you are interested to see the JBS arguement, here is a link to the book The Politician. courtesy of the JBS.
BTTT
The John Birch Society is anti-totalitarian, particularly anti-Socialist, anti-Communist, and leans libertarian. It strenuously defends what it sees as the original intention of the U.S. Constitution, rooted in Judeo-Christian principles. It idealizes the Founding Fathers as patriotic anti-Communists. The John Birch Society opposes collectivism, including wealth redistribution, economic interventionism, Socialism, Communism, and Fascism. The John Birch Society believes that cabals and conspiracies throughout the world have significantly shaped history, and it seeks to expose and eliminate their claimed control in government in the modern era.
During the 1960s, The John Birch Society opposed aspects of the Civil Rights Movement because of concerns that the movement had a number of Communists in important positions and because they suspected that it was backed and supported by the American Communist Party. The John Birch Society opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the belief that it was in violation of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped the rights of individual states to make laws regarding Civil Rights.
The John Birch Society is against a unified “one world government”, and has an illegal immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It has opposed the United Nations, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA, and other free-trade agreements with other nations, believing them to be destructive to American principles, the economy, freedom and national sovereignty.
Look at todays world and the JBS doesn’t look all that *kooky*
I do admire Mr Buckley despite their differences.
JBS ping.
Ice Cream, Mandrake? Children’s Ice Cream??
We could use a new Buckley to help expose a lot of the kookier fringe elements and put a line between them and the GOP again today. Sam Antonio of the John Birch society is a good example of someone who really makes me want to puke.
I do recall the John Birch Society was about the only organization calling Castro a Communist before he took power.
“The book “Blacklisted By History” basically redeems Joe McCarthy, showing that indeed there were Communist agents in power in the State Department from before WW II up through the Korean War. However, Joe was wrong on this point, and I think the John Birchers were wrong on Eisenhower. “
Was Joe right or wrong? Also, why did Eisenhower return 2 million devout anti communists Ukrainians, Poles etc back to Stalin knowing they would be killed.
http://www.geocities.com/graymada/AB/opkeel.html
I think this is amazingly dumb and entirely unresponsive. Essentially, his argument is this: We should keep all things that are good. Airplanes are good. We didn't used to have airplanes. Thus, all things we didn't used to have are good. We didn't used to have the CIA. Thus, the CIA is good. We should keep the CIA.
(Note: the guy Buckley was arguing with has several times called for (sponsored bills) the elimination of the Air Force and move the function back under the Army because ‘Air Force’ isn’t found in the Constitution. - I am not kidding.)
The US govt was crawling with commies - FDR recognized Russia thus allowing trade just when it was on the verge of collapse - in fact, they had to rob all the food from Ukraine’s breadbasket so it could raise money.
And FDR’s son Elliot made a fortune in “commissions”.
This is sort of an “ends justify the means” argument, isn’t it?
Although I’m not convinced that the FBI is necessary, I’ll concede that the CIA, in some form, probably should exist. But if the world’s changed since 1789, there’s a mechanism to alter the constitution. If the government doesn’t have to abide by the constitution is forming the CIA or reporting its budget (as required by the constitution), then what’s the point of having the constitution?
By the way, you can go ahead and say Ron Paul. It’s cool.
It was suggested we eliminate the CIA and the proposed reason was that we once got by without it.
Buckley reposnded directly to that logic. That we once got by without it is not a good reason to eliminate it.
It has been right a lot more often than it has been wrong. Our country would be in splendid shape if the State Department got it right even 50% of the time.
The JBS has gotten things right close to 90% of the time. Eisenhower was definitely in the 10%, though.
I always liked Buckley although he was not exactly my brand of conservative. He really was anti-communist tho. He was also right about Eisenhower but when he criticized Welch, he was imo criticizing his betters.
There's one of his more memorable quotes.
Mr. Buckley was an excellent defender of the Second Amendment, probably the single issue that decided my screen name.
Michael Totten, the last link's author, is frequently linked by one of Mr. Buckley's legacies, National Review Online. Adios Mr. Buckley!
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Excellent article and references. Thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the ping/links. Interesting thread.
*ping*
Elliot Roosevelt was apparently a dishonest individual who traded on his father's name and his resemblance to him. I have also read that he entered into sleazy business deals with a Mafia associate. I'm not sure that this reflects on FDR or communist infiltration of the government.
Do you know if anybody has a ping list for this sort of thing?
No, Buckley didn’t.
Here is Paul’s argument:
1. The CIA did not formerly exist.
2. The United States existed before the CIA.
Thus, the existence of the United States is not dependent on the existence of the CIA.
Here’s Buckley’s argument, as I said before:
1. We didn’t used to have airplanes.
2. Airplanes are good.
Thus, all things we didn’t used to have are good.
3. We didn’t used to have the CIA.
4. Because we didn’t used to have the CIA, it is good.
5. We should keep all good things.
Thus, we should keep the CIA.
His argument is ridiculous. Even the other poster basically conceded that it was stupid by saying something like, “well, you had to be there.”
Buckley wasn’t responding to anything. His comment was flippant and dumb.
“I’m not sure that this reflects on FDR or communist infiltration of the government.”
The sale of US military airplanes to Russia that gave Elliot half a million (worth about $100 million today?)
was made possible only after Roosevelt gave recognition to Stalin. This was on the heels of the Duranty Pulitzer which covered up the genocide of 10 million by starvation.
Guess where the food stolen from these mouths in the “Breadbasket of Europe” wound up paying for?
When WFB Jr. calls them "cells" he is attempting to smear the JBS by (falsely) associating its nomenclature with the communist party, which is organized by "cells".
Notice how many times he admitted to secrecy and how they themselves purposely kept to a small group.
(Buckley);"..we Palm Beach plotters.."
And yet, how often do we hear of "conspiracy theorists" in a disparaging way?
Oh how I wish to think, write and speak like that. Fabulous!
Dumb only in that he had to slip to the level of Paul's comment to respond.
The JBS has gotten things right close to 90% of the time.
Yep. And the jury is still out on much of the remainder, imo.
Pity the organization is constantly smeared when it has such a good track record on so much, by those who would ridicule it for relatively little.
But then, ridicule has always been the defense of those who are doing the outrageous or outlandish against those who would call them on it.
Indeed, it does. And I am speechless whenever a FReeper starts making allusions about fluoridation (and vaccination). It's like confronting an Anti-Diluvian beast in the pasture.
Obviously it took more than press clippings to communize Cuba -- it also took the U.S. State Department. When Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith was posted to Havana, he was told outright that (as later recounted before a Senate subcommittee by another ambassador, Robert Hill) he had been "assigned to Cuba to preside over the downfall of Batista. The decision has been made that Batista has to go. You must be very careful."
In charge of the project, as Smith found out, were Roy Rubottom, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, and William Wieland, director of the Office of Caribbean and Mexican Affairs. Both, as it happens, had been in Colombia at the time of the Bogotazo riots and knew about Castro's actions but had not reported about it at that time, nor did they deign to mention that most pertinent matter to Ambassador Smith when he went to Cuba in July 1957. As late as 1961, Wieland and Rubottom were officially peddling the line that Fidel was not a communist, though they knew otherwise, as was later determined in security hearings. Friends of Wieland, for example, testified that he had told them in 1957 and 1958 that he knew that Castro was a communist. There can be no doubt that Rubottom and Wieland were covering for Castro.
Smith, a brave man who risked the wrath of all those pushing the Red line -- in Havana and in Washington -- later recalled in The Fourth Floor:
I now know that those in charge of Cuban affairs in the State Department were advised from many other sources of the Communist infiltration of the 26th of July Movement and the Communist sympathizers who held important positions in the Movement, especially among the troops led by Raul Castro.From the time Castro landed in the Province of Oriente in December 1956, the State Department received reports of probable Communist infiltration and exploitation of the 26th of July Movement. The State Department was aware of Castro's contacts with Communists in Mexico. Certain officials in the State Department were familiar with Castro's part in the bloody Communist-inspired uprising in Bogota, known as the "Bogotazo" of 1948. In addition to my reports and information from many outside sources, the State Department also had reports from its own Bureau of Research and Intelligence.
All of which led Smith to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that the U.S. "Government and the United States press played a major role in bringing Castro to power." The turning point in ousting Batista, and opening the way to Castro, many agree, was the announcement in March 1958 that the U.S. was cutting off arms sales to the Batista government, a move engineered by Wieland and Rubottom, among others. Prior to that, Fidel (who never had more than 3,000 fighters) had not amassed more than 300 men. In cutting off support to Batista, the supposedly pro-Batista Eisenhower Administration signed the death warrant for resistance to communism in Cuba. Castro, in the meantime, was clandestinely supplied with arms from the United States while officials looked the other way.
Former Ambassador William Pawley, the organizer of the Flying Tigers in China, repeatedly tried to warn President Eisenhower as well as Wieland and Rubottom of Fidel's communist allegiance. To no avail. Pawley later wrote: "I believe that the deliberate overthrow of Batista by Wieland and Matthews, assisted by Rubottom, is almost as great a tragedy as the surrendering of China to the Communists by a similar group of Department of State officials fifteen or sixteen years ago and we will not see the end in cost of American lives and American resources for these tragic errors."
The deal was never consummated, so Elliot did not get $500000 from starving Ukrainians as you claim. Here's an article about it.
According to 2 inflation calculators I tried, $500,000 in 1934 is worth about $8 million today. The sounds a little low, although $100 million sounds way too high.
Oh how I wish to think, write and speak like that. Fabulous!
Nonsense, the Romans said it earlier, and better:
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc"
That said, although Buckley's riposte against Paul was witty and effective polemically, it was also fundamentally dishonest.
We didn't just "lose China to the Communists" - the US government, the Eisenhower Administration and its policy arm the State Department repeatedly and consistently made and implemented policy decisions which undermined and sabotaged the Chinese Nationalist forces while aiding Mao's Communists. If you study the history of those decisions and who made them the perfidy of the State Department in their treatment of the Nationalists is both appalling and breathtaking.
No doubt Welch's personal disillusionment and animosity got the better of him in his characterization of Eisenhower - Ike was never a Machiavellian card-carrying commie plotter. What he WAS, however, was a laid-back, hands-off minimalist administrator who preferred to delegate as much as possible to his subordinates. It was a celebrated bit of political Americana lore at the time that Ike preferred and could most often be found on the golf course.
No, Eisenhower was not a communist. He was merely a caretaker war-hero President who let his CFR gurus in his State Department run foreign policy. And, they weren't communists either, strictly speaking. They were, and are, something worse: globalists, and ultimately, totalitarians...
BTTT!
Nice. Thanks nd.
There's a very good reason why. While they may not all be nuts, they do a very good impersonation of someone who is.
“The US govt was crawling with commies”
It still is.
..the deliberate overthrow of Batista by Wieland and Matthews, assisted by Rubottom, is almost as great a tragedy as the surrendering of China to the Communists by a similar group of Department of State officials fifteen or sixteen years ago and we will not see the end in cost of American lives and American resources for these tragic errors."
Thank you, sir, for your post.
bookmark
There's a very good reason why. While they may not all be nuts, they do a very good impersonation of someone who is.
The United States of America was begun out of a conspiracy: the Sons Of Liberty, the Committees of Correspondence, Paul Revere, John Adams, the Founding Fathers, et al. all operated by necessity in secret as conspirators, lest they be hanged.
One man's conspiracy wacko is simply another's dedicated visionary. It all depends upon who ultimately wins, and the history is written by the winners...
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