Posted on 04/11/2004 11:30:11 AM PDT by Ernie.cal
To inflate their credentials as an organization relying upon carefully documented and factual material, the John Birch Society (JBS) often cites as "experts", persons who have had some connection to the FBI --- either as former Special Agents or as Security Informants.
However, the FBI had very negative evaluations about the post-FBI endeavors of former informants or Agents who subsequently attached themselves to the JBS as members, endorsers, speakers, or authors. Examples include: Dan Smoot, W. Cleon Skousen, Julia Brown, David Gumaer, Gerald W. Kirk, Matt Cvetic, and Karl Prussion.
Often these folks were mentally unstable. A person seduced by Communism or extreme anti-Communism may have a pre-disposition to extremist views because of underlying personality problems rather than from any genuine ideological affinity. Consequently, that problem can easily migrate into their anti-Communist "career".
For example:
DAN SMOOT, a former FBI Special Agent, is a unique star in the Birch Society stable of "experts".
However, from the Bureau's perspective, Smoot's post-FBI endeavors wrongly sought to capitalize on his relatively brief FBI career. The Bureau thought Smoot was in the habit of making "unfactual" statements about national and international affairs. According to Bureau memos, shortly before his retirement Smoot was the subject of disciplinary action. One Bureau memo refers to Smoot's "antagonistic attitude and unsavory Bureau record" which made him undesirable for re-instatement.
KARL PRUSSION attempted suicide and claimed he was a target for assassination by Communists. Prussion was terminated as an informant by the FBI because he publicly disclosed his status even though he promised never to do so without prior Bureau approval.
MATT CVETIC was an alcoholic who was dropped by the Bureau for various indiscretions.
DAVID GUMAER became involved with militia-like vigilantes in Arizona as well as illegal arms sales and securities fraud.
JULIA BROWN was divorced 3 times, changed her opinions to conform to Birch dogma so as to derive monetary gain from her Birch-sponsored speaking tours.
The Birch Society routinely inflated the credentials of persons whose views conformed to its own conclusions. JULIA BROWN serves as an interesting case study of a JBS "expert".
The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI's Cleveland Field Office stated in a memo pertaining to Julia's desire to "go public" about her experiences as an FBI informant that:
(a) she was "financially ambitious" (i.e. prospects for speaking tours, articles for a national publication, or book, etc) and
(b) Julia, with only a 10th grade education, was not intelligent enough to write for publication, as she originally proposed.
In her book "I Testify" (which actually was ghost-written by Carleton Young), Julia gives a fictitious account of her marital history as well as false details concerning joining and leaving the Communist Party.
According to Julia, she married her first husband (Edward Harris) while she was a teenager but he died. Her next mention of marriage is many years later to Curlee Brown of Cleveland.
In reality, however, Julia divorced Ed Harris, then married Jack Latimer and divorced him, then married Fred Brice and divorced him the same year she married him, and then married Curlee Brown but considered divorcing him as well.
Julia's opinions about the civil rights movement, and prominent persons and organizations within it, underwent a stunning reversal after she associated herself with the Birch Society as a paid speaker.
When Carleton Young submitted two chapters of "I Testify" to Julia for review, she initally rejected the material. Julia told the Los Angeles FBI field office that Mr. Young was expressing HIS personal political views rather than her views and she described Young as an adherent of the "lunatic right" which she described as the "Birchers".
In her March 1961 Ebony magazine interview, Julia stated that Communists had "little or no influence" within the NAACP and she concluded that:
"I'm 100 percent with the NAACP and I think they are doing a wonderful job and so does the FBI. They are aware that the NAACP is legal and is working in the American way for first class citizenship for all Americans."
However, AFTER associating with the Birch Society, Julia claimed that the NAACP was "badly infiltrated" by Communists and she routinely denounced the NAACP during her JBS-sponsored speeches.
FBI Headquarters received an advance copy of Julia's Ebony interview which it reviewed for errors. In a January 16, 1961 FBI memo, the Bureau stated that Julia should limit her comments to what she personally observed and experienced in Cleveland because "she is not qualified to assert herself as a spokesman for what is happening in the CP across the country."
There is also a major discrepancy between Julia's public accounts in her book and speeches about how she came to join the Communist Party (CP) versus what she told the FBI when she first contacted them in December 1950.
She told the FBI that she joined the CP in December 1947 because she thought the Party was the answer to racial discrimination. However, in subsequent accounts (including her book) she claims that she did not know she was joining the CP. Instead, she thought she was just joining a civil rights group.
Additional information about this topic may be obtained from me at: Ernie1241@aol.com
Since you claim to be interested in facts and and you claim to be rational and objective....consider this tidbit.
The FBI maintained a Security Index (SI). It was a very elaborate mechanism (with subcategories) to keep track of all persons the Bureau considered subversive and worrisome from a security standpoint.
As you might expect, the overwhelming majority of names listed were Communists and it included persons in positions of influence and power who were thought to be likely to assist Communists in a time of national emergency.
The Bureau's file on the SI contains numerous memos to explain to their field offices what criteria should be used to include a name, and, how and when, each office should submit summary memos concerning the status of their SI listings.
According to the Bureau's Security Index, the total number of people working in the Federal Government who were considered either outright Communists OR persons considered to be a security problem in the event of national emergency was as shown below, in the years specified.
This is the first time I have released this data in any forum.
Compare it to the HALLUCINATIONS of the JBS and please comment on it.
1958 (year JBS was founded)...........15 1959..................................19 1960..................................20 1961..................................24 1962..................................23 1963..................................25 1964..................................19 1965..................................28 1966..................................36
Or two.
Answering your queries would require more time than I have available for this forum, but I will tell you what direction I would travel in response.
Firstly, the use of the term 'socialism' to refer only to systems in which the State formally has ownership of productive property is unhistorical - the core of 'socialism' as a historical force is the notion that 'the people' can and should directly pursue the good of society as a whole, rather than have societal goods be furthered by the unintended consequences of self-interested acts.
In this regard, the National Socialism of Germany and various other non-Communist totalitarian projects ought to be warning enough to those of us who live in what is still a liberal(in the old sense) civilization.
It is my contention that every historical instance of socialism is a peculiarly national instance. This should not be surprising, as the idea of 'nation' was created out of the same French/German intellectual goo as socialism. I refer you to the writings of Jacob Talmon for a thorough explication of the development of contemporary totalitarianism from its 19th Century Idealist roots.
Should America descend further along the socialist road, it will be in a peculiarly American way - IMO many patriots miss the boat when they look to condign foreign influences as the worm corrupting the American dream. Lawyers and public-school administrators are a bigger threat to American liberty than are the commissars of ragtag Commie regimes. Not to mention Alphabet agencies.
As to the question as to whether socialism inevitably leads to tyranny, I can only refer to the works of Orwell and Koestler, and counsel patience. Tyranny will come.
As to the current prosperity of several smallish semi-socialist countries, I would only say that they are parasitic off the international capitalist pricing system, and off the capacity of the USA to protect them from enemies.
I repeat that your questions are excellent, and that I only wish I had the time to adequately answer them.
(It is likely that, had Larry McDonald not died on KAL 007, the Birch Society would have gone in another direction, as the Congressman was Welch's heir apparent. Given McDonald's Reconstructionist leanings, the JBS may have shed its implicitly univeralist underpinnings and become a Calvinist version of the Christian Coalition or Moral Majority.)
To understand Robert Welch, we must analyze what he thought and how he derived his underlying principles.
Although Welch referred to himself and the John Birch Society as defenders of Christian-style civilization and he named the organization after an independent Baptist missionary turned intelligence officer (John Birch), Welch himself was a Unitarian, coming to that faith in adulthood after rejecting the Baptist faith of his family and childhood.
Several passages in Welchs writings are revelatory of his worldview.
We have to find something to live for, Gentlemen, that is greater than ourselves, or we surely fall back from the semi-civilized level of existence, which man has laboriously achieved, in to a moral jungle and its inevitably concomitant intellectual darkness . . . Before our very eyes lie all the incentives man needs to set him back on the road of striving towards moral perfection, true intellectual greatness, civilized relationships, and eternal hope for a still better and greater future, which seemed to him to be such natural goals a hundred years ago. Making those incentives understood, and giving contemporary man a renewed faith in himself, in his destiny and in a still greater God than was recognized and worshiped by his ancestors, is a task for myriads of dedicated individuals over generations of time. (The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, 1961, 56-58.)
This statement stands at odds with Scripture and the teachings of historic and orthodox Christianity. One must wonder how the traditionalist Catholics and conservative Protestants who made up the majority of John Birch Society members reconciled their views with those of Welch. Scripture is replete with warnings against faith in ones self or in humanity. It would appear that the impersonal, watchmaker God of Unitarianism is superior to the personal, omnipresent God of Welchs Christian ancestors. Striving toward moral perfection is a desirable goal from a Christian standpoint, but it is one that cannot be accomplished apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Remember the apostle Pauls relating of his previous trusting in the flesh as related in Philippians 3, which, in light of the excellence of his knowledge of Jesus Christ, he later regarded as dung. (Philippians 3:8) It is not our own righteousness, but the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Christ, that is effectual in obtaining personal salvation. Striving toward true intellectual greatness is again desirable, but again Scripture admonishes against metaphysical knowledge not grounded in divine revelation. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and before honor is humility. (Proverbs 15:33) Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8) Welchs views with regard to the perfectibility of man and the tug or upward pull within humanity are far closer to Carl Sagan or Ayn Rand than to Francis Schaefer or C. S. Lewis.
Through many centuries Christianity, despite all of its splits and schisms, supplied the fabric of morality for the whole Western World - through its threats of punishment, promises of rewards, and the humanizing effect of its proffered love by and for a Divine Father. But despite all the billions of words that have been written to the contrary, that fabric is now pierced and torn and weakened beyond dependability. For a vast majority of those who proclaim themselves Christians today, and attend Church Services, do not really and literally believe in either the punishments, the rewards or even in the physical and biological existence of a Divine Father with any interest in their personal lives and actions. The momentum of a former belief, and the customs which grew out of it, still have great value. But the fabric is worn too thin to have its old effectiveness. (The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, 1961,. 52)
According to Welch, the fabric of the Christian faith has worn too thin to be effective and is weakened beyond dependability. From a strictly secular standpoint, his statement that most Christians of the post-World War II era did not believe in the existence of Heaven or Hell, or a personal God, would contradict what we know of Americans beliefs at that time. After over 40 years of liberal, secular humanist dominance of public education and the mass media and more prominent aggressiveness of liberals within the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches since Welch penned these words, there is still widespread belief in the existence of Heaven, Hell, and a personal God. For example, per a 2003 Harris Survey, 90% of all Americans believe in the existence of God, 82% in heaven, and 68% in Hell. A Barna Poll in 2001 shows that 69% of all American adults believe that God is the all-powerful Creator. If there is inadequacy among Christian Americans, it is not a misunderstanding or disbelief in basic doctrine, but a failure to recognize the applicability of doctrine to their personal lives.
Welchs words are also contradictory to the plain teachings of Scripture. To the Christian, the Bible is the Word of God, authoritative in all matters spiritual. John 1 identifies Jesus Christ as the Word. Hence, as II Timothy 3:16 states All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
*Gods Word is incorruptible. Every word of God [is] pure: he [is] a shield unto them that put their trust in him. (Proverbs 30:5)
* Gods Word is ever penetrating of all human barriers. For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
*Gods Word is superior to the traditions of men. Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. (Mark 7:13)
* Gods Word is the manner in which we come to understand the Christian faith. So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
* Those that accept Gods Word are adopted into the family of Christ, i.e., the church. And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it. (Luke 8:21)
Individuals may fail in rightly dividing Scripture and in applying its teachings to their lives. Whether or not Bromley Oxnam, Reinhold Niebuhr, Daniel Berrigan, et. al., were Communists* is not proven. They were, however, doubtlessly theological liberals who denied core Christian doctrines as expressed in the church creeds of the early ecumenical councils. They rejected those core doctrines as clearly as had Robert Welch himself. It is ironic that, respective to theology, Welch was more in line with the very theological liberals and political leftists whom he and his cohorts accused of being Communists than he was with the majority of the rank and file of the John Birch Society.
* I use Communist here in the sense the Birchers did in the 1959-65 period, i.e., not a member of the Communist Party, USA or other Marxist-Leninist groups like, say, the Socialist Workers Party (as might have J. Edgar Hoover or William Buckley) but as a member of a global conspiracy, operating on many fronts yet centrally coordinated, to impose totalitarian socialism on American and the rest of the world.
Given the humanist, rationalist, and determinist (remember the influence of Spengler) strains in Welch's writings like The Blue Book, it seems that a conversion to Catholicism, with its doctrines of original sin, a personal, all powerful, and omniscient God, and free will, would be out of character. However, men's minds can and do change. After twenty plus years of troubles and the rise and decay of his organization, Welch may have become more receptive to the message of traditional Catholicism, especially as he faced his own mortality.
It would be interesting to read McManus's memoirs on the matter, if he ever chooses to write them, or perhaps any correspondence from Robert Welch or his wife discussing conversion to traditional Catholicism.
The numbers cited in Welch's numbers were as of 1961. Did those percentage of Catholics vs. others hold up through the decades? At least two areas of Birch Society strength, Dallas and Salt Lake City, historically have had relatively small populations of white Catholics. Additionally, the theological liberalism promoted by the Second Vatican Council had its effects on the political and social views of Catholics, as evidenced by increasingly Democratic tendencies in the suburban counties surrounding Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore after 1988. Many Northeastern and Great Lakes white Catholics of the G.I Generation, who listened to Charles Coughlin in their youth and admired Joseph McCarthy and Douglas MacArthur as young adults, produced Baby Boomer offspring who idealized Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern as young people and who voted in the Cuomos, the Ted Kennedys, the Kuciniches, the Bidens, and the Liebermans in the 1980s and thereafter.
OTOH, in the 1970s, white evangelical Protestants moved politically to the right, and reentered the arena of politics after a half century of exile after the failure of Prohibition and the humiliation of the Scopes trial. Before 1990, the South produced a substantial minority of white liberal politicians (though some were moderate by national standards): William Fulbright, the Gores, Lawton Chiles, Claude Pepper, Terry Sanford, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ann Richards, Carl Albert, Bill Clinton. Such politicians were far rarer after 1990.
Thus, it would appear likely that the religious composition of the Birchers by, say, 1982, was more heavily weighted toward evangelical Protestants than it would have been in 1961.
If Welch were not lucid in his final weeks, one wonders how valid his conversion to Catholicism would have been. I'm not Catholic, but I would think that informed consent and an acceptance of at least the rudiments of the Catholic faith are necessary on the part of an adult before receiving baptism for that sacrament to be efficacious. Since traditionalist Catholics are separate from the mainstream of their church because of doctrinal issues, one would not think that John McManus would be involved in a bogus "conversion" of a terminally ill man.
The records of Liberty Lobby are presumably now in the hands of the bankruptcy court. Do you know if they are a matter of public record? If they are, they would probably provide some perspective, though likely tainted with sour grapes, of the John Birch Society and its operations.
Rope a dope? Or perhaps, an extreme form of projection - projection as a deception tool.
For example, if I wanted to have the most effective form of stealth, I might actually pretend to be exactly the opposite of who I really am. I might use many "examples" of the beliefs which I purportedly took issue with, precisely as a means of spreading them.
Certainly, I cannot prove this is the case here. But it is a very unusual circumstance, and this user is likely not 100% above board regarding true motivation or goals.
FReegards.
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