As I noted a few months ago, I've heard for years that The John Birch Society was always historically profiled as some fringe-extremist "radical right-wing group", whereas The Ripon Society was always historically profiled as some odious uber-liberal Rockefeller RINO-type group trying to turn the GOP into Democrats. Strange, I looked up what both groups have been touting lately, and I'm heavily in agreement with BOTH of them on 90% of the issues. Historically, the only major difference I see is the Ripon Society supported desegregation while the John Birch Society opposed it. In that case, I'd side with the Ripon crowd.
Seems the "fringe"ness of both groups is blow way out of proportion. They seem like fairly level headed conservative organizations to me.
William F. Buckley led the charge against the Birchers, supposedly because their founder REALLY hated Ike and Buckley just didn’t like their style.