# Ask the former John Bircher... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 31, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676 "2005-01-31T22:21:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/21 "2005-02-01T13:38:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I repeat: **What the fuck is wrong with that?!** Well, if you think that the death penalty is good and high taxes are bad, then there’s something wrong with it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/22 "2005-02-01T14:31:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And Europe is a lot better off now that they’ve embraced internationalism as a working basis of governance. To be precise, they’ve embraced European internationalism. They’re not completely rolling over themselves to embrace Turkey’s entrance into the EU, and they sure as heck aren’t racing to bring in Northern Africa either. Ethnically & culturally, Israel would be a natural candidate for EU membership- I’d love to see the poo hit the fan when that application would be made. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/23 "2005-02-01T15:16:15Z")
> [@Lochdale](#): > > The EU model hasn’t exactly been a success insofar as the EU is not a United States as we would use that term in this country. No . . . it’s something more than an alliance but less than a state. All the member states have kept their own cultural identities, including their political cultures. But within those limits it **has** been successful. Practically all of Europe-west-of-Russia is now a single customs union and free trade zone, where people can cross borders freely without passports, and vote for a representative parliament to set Union policy. (That’s the most important difference between the EU and NAFTA – there is no NAFTA Parliament, and policy is set by national politicians, bureaucrats and businesscritters.) Even more importantly, Europe has reached a point where it might never again know war between European states. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/24 "2005-02-01T15:18:31Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > [http://www.jbs.org/visitor/about/jbs\_resolutions.htm](http://www.jbs.org/visitor/about/jbs_resolutions.htm) > > Resolution 8 is Welch’s acknowledgement of possible acceptable world gov’t… > > \*8. I shall be a good patriot of my country. > > Due to the increasing speed and reach of both transportation and communication, our world does grow smaller. And our broadening outlook into space does tend to make the total population of this earth seem more like one group of fellow toilers thrown together on a tiny island. So we should realize that eventually, perhaps in a hundred years or perhaps in several thousand years, there will come about some real federation of all nations, or what Tennyson called a “parliament of man.” But for this to be anything but the framework of a cruel tyranny, it will have to be arrived at by the peaceful and willing consent of the various peoples and their governments, much as our federal nation was formed by independent states and their people at the end of our colonial period. The EU satisfies those criteria perfectly. Would Welch object to the U.S. joining it? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/25 "2005-02-01T15:41:09Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > RE the Right’s infiltration into all levels of society, the same can be said of the Left. No it can’t, **Ted.** The present right-wing hegemony is **coordinated** – we might even call it the result of a “conspiracy,” to use JBS terminology, except that the process has not been secret enough to warrant the name. Not quite. (But there has been a fair amount of skullduggery and Trojan-horsing in it.) The left’s cultural pervasiveness is a relic of the Johnson years, when everybody who was anybody was a liberal on what seemed to be common-sense grounds, and somebody like Goldwater would get laughed off the stage. A core of conservative zealots started laying the groundwork then for a gradual takeover. With the support of some important millionaires, and by organizing a mass base of conervative and, not to put too fine a point on it, racist white Southerners (Nixon’s "Southern strategy), and putting together an unlikely alliance between them, the religious zealots, the big-business interests, and foreign-policy neocons – that movement succeeded. The left today has nothing to compare with the right-wing network of lavishly funded foundations, think-tanks, PACs, lobbies and media outlets. (And no, CNN is **not** liberal; how that canard got started beggars the imagination.) Read Micklethwait and Wooldridge’s book, it tells the whole story (and it’s a good read, too). Also, _The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy,_ by David Brock (Crown 2004). If Welch had lived to see it, I don’t think he would have been pleased. Based on your descriptions of him in this thread, he more likely would have supported the dissident paleoconservative nativist-isolationist and economic-populist faction embodied by Pat Buchanan’s America First Party and _The American Conservative_ magazine. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/26 "2005-02-01T15:53:06Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > To be precise, they’ve embraced European internationalism. They’re not completely rolling over themselves to embrace Turkey’s entrance into the EU, and they sure as heck aren’t racing to bring in Northern Africa either. That will come in time. They just have to get used to the idea of being a not-entirely-Christian union. But once Turkey is a member, that will open up a lot of doors. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/27 "2005-02-01T16:29:57Z")
> [@Lochdale](#): > > The EU model hasn’t exactly been a success insofar as the EU is not a United States as we would use that term in this country. Moreover, there have been significant growing pains for the EU and it has taken several hundred years and many, many wars just to get them this far. Let’s take a step back on the wolrd government for the moment as it isn’t happening anytime soon (at least not the type of system you are dreaming about). The EU started about 50 years ago (I think it was a treaty concerning iron + coal). You could argue that e.g. Napoleon tried to unite Europe, but it would have been conquest, not union. Surely the US has taken several hundred years (and had a civil war) to get to its present position. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/28 "2005-02-01T17:46:54Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The EU satisfies those criteria perfectly. Would Welch object to the U.S. joining it? 🙂 In Birchite thought, as it presently stands, US entrance into the EU would just put us under one more layer of semi-socialist statist bureaucracy which we have enough of in the US. Also, Europe is saddled with the paradox of having state-subsidization & protectionism of established churches while being thoroughly secularized in culture & morality, both things being totally anathema to Welch. Btw, while I haven’t seen an actual policy statement, I would think JBS would oppose federal aid to faith-based social services on the grounds that such services are not the Federal gov’t’s responsibility, it compromises the faith-based group by making it vulnerable to gov’t regulation, and that such services are best done in the private realm & PERHAPS on local gov’t levels. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2005, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/29 "2005-02-01T18:46:48Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > Also, Europe is saddled with the paradox of having state-subsidization & protectionism of established churches while being thoroughly secularized in culture & morality, both things being totally anathema to Welch. But those are characteristics of some of the member states, not the Union as such. The Union subsidizes no churches, and the peoples of member states can be as religious or as secular as they like. If Turkey becomes a member, it will still be left to make its own decisions on the status of Islam in society and in the state. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2005, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/30 "2005-02-02T01:38:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You may have been right. What actually happened was, in the '40s and early '50s, many CPUSA members, acting on orders from Stalin, pursued a “Trojan horse” strategy of hiding their Communist identity while working their way into prominent positions in government and the labor unions. In the event, it worked too well – the infiltrators went so far underground that most of them eventually lost interest in being Communists and focused on their new careers. McCarthy and HUAC really needn’t have bothered. You can read the story in _It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States,_ by Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks (W.W. Norton, 2001). “McCarthy and HUAC really needn’t have bothered.” True…if they were _really_ looking for Communists. But they weren’t. The truth, which couldn’t have been said out loud at the time, was that they were looking to outflank, discredit, and neutralize New Deal liberals. In order to keep the broader public from catching on, Tilgunner Joe et al. had to hide behind “Communism” as a blanket threat. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/31 "2008-09-25T18:24:51Z")
Thanks for starting the thread, **Friar Ted**. I’m more curious about what it’s like to be a member of the JBS. What were the meetings like? Did they open with a prayer and the Pledge, or some type of (for lack of a better term) ritual, or nothing at all? Did meeting have an agenda, or were they just kind of a get-together? How is leadership selected? Any common threads among rank and file members? As in, tend to be blue collar, or college educated, younger, older, or what? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/32 "2008-09-25T18:26:28Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Thanks for starting the thread, **Friar Ted**. > > I’m more curious about what it’s like to be a member of the JBS. What were the meetings like? Did they open with a prayer and the Pledge, or some type of (for lack of a better term) ritual, or nothing at all? Did meeting have an agenda, or were they just kind of a get-together? > > How is leadership selected? > > Any common threads among rank and file members? As in, tend to be blue collar, or college educated, younger, older, or what? Like some other members of the JBS, this thread is undead. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/33 "2008-09-25T18:55:17Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Like some other members of the JBS, this thread is undead. Aaaaaah! Zombie John Birchers are attacking! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/34 "2008-09-25T18:59:43Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Aaaaaah! Zombie John Birchers are attacking! :eek: Dammit! We all went “LA-LA-LA” at the time . . . but I just **knew** that someday, somehow, we would regret putting fluoride in the water! :mad: ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2008, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676/35 "2008-09-25T21:33:50Z")
**Moderator’s Note:** I think **FriarTed** had mentioned elsewhere about maybe starting a sequel to this; if so, he can just link to this one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-former-john-bircher/287676.md?page=1)