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The Metaphysics of the John Birch SocietyAuthor(s): Paul FriedmanSource: The North American Review, Vol. 253, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 33-35Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25116727 .

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The

iWetap?jpo?cs?

of the

John Birch Society

by Paul Friedman

Concern is frequently expressed about the growth in membership and power of the John Birch Society; yet there is another side to that coin and one that is not often looked at. Certainly the John Birch Society is actively involved in recruiting. Whatever its present

membership may be, it could be larger. Why isn't it? To the extent that its growth is held back, what is

holding it? Increased membership for an organization is a means,

not an end; the more members an organization has, the more power that organization wields; the more power an organization wields, the greater the possibility that the organization will be able to achieve its goals. Ac

cepting that, an inviolable rule that emerges for an or

ganization concerned with recruiting is : While it is im

portant to make the organization seem as attractive and

appealing as possible, to as many people as possible, do not in the process compromise away the organiza tion's ideals and goals.

Though often run down there, the American public feels safest in the middle of the road; that is a reality of American political life, and a corresponding reality is: Avoid the label radical, it is damaging. The word

radical, in a political context, however, carries two dis

tinctly different meanings, and this needs examination.

Many organizations?I am thinking of the New Left in particular, the old and new New Left?are radical in nature and members of these organizations state that

they are engaging in radical politics. The word radical, as used in this sense, defines: An organization engaged in radical politics is?by definition?attempting to

bring about certain fundamental changes in the nature

of society. Radical means that much. And no more.

Any organization sharing that commitment?bringing basic change to society?regardless of its position on

the political spectrum, is radical.

Students for a Democratic Society and the DuBois

Clubs are radical because they are working toward re

placing one economic system with another in America; the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other like minded

pacifists groups are radical because they wish to see

communities of love established in the United States;

Congress Of Racial Equality and Student Non Violent

Coordinating Committee are radical because they are

going to "turn American society upside down and in side out in order to finally make it stand right side up." It is an organization's goals?how those goals stand vis a vis the structure and content of the present es tablishment?that determines whether or not the or

ganization is radical. In one sense of the word. There is the second sense. Radical, in this second

sense, does not define, it describes; it describes nega tively the appearance, tactic, or pronouncements?not

goal?of a person or organization. Radical now be comes synonymous with far out or ridiculous or wild or dangerous or crazy. A case in point: Goldwater

apologists claim that their candidate was defeated be cause Johnson managed to pin the radical label on him: Goldwater shoots from the hip, he'd defoliate the

jungles in Vietnam, etc. Stuck with that label, they say, Goldwater was a certain loser.

Goldwater and Johnson both want to Win the War in Vietnam; both demand that South Vietnam not be

communist; they disagreed?it seemed at one time? about tactic, never goal.

Radical, in this second sense of the word, can be broken down, as I have already suggested, into three

categories: Radical 1) Tactic: Placing bodies in front of a

troop train.

Radical 2) Dress and Appearance: Bearded (The bearded youth placed his body in front of a troop train.)

Radical 3) Pronouncement: Bring The Troops Home Now chant the friends of the bearded youth as he is dragged from the tracks of the oncoming troop train. (If this youth belongs to an organization whose

only goal is peace in Vietnam the organization would not be radical in the first sense of the word. Neverthe

less, the pronouncement Bring The Troops Home Now is radical in the second sense. )

The pronouncements made by these hypothetical protesters not only go unheeded, but, for the most part, unheard. This is so because their tactics and/or ap pearance evoke stock responses from the American

PAUL FRIEDMAN will publish a story in the next New Directions

Annual. Wis work has also appeared in New World Writing and in NAH. He teaches at Wisconsin State at Stevens Point.

January, 1968 33

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public. Tactic: draft card burning, blocking adminis tration buildings, flag burning, going limp. Those peo

ple must be crazy, the public says, look what they are

doing, that kind of behavior is just too far out. (The tactic becomes the message, i.e., the tactic is far out,

radical, therefore what the draft card burner is attempt

ing to say must be far out, radical ? so goes public thinking.

In terms of swaying the public, converting the pub lic, the more extreme a tactic is, the more the tactic

defeats itself. The most powerful example of this

would be the self immolations that took place in the

United States. How many Americans were shocked

into rethinking their positions on the war in Vietnam

because of the self immolations, and how many Ameri cans said, Those people were crazy.) Appearance: A

beard, he's weird. Who listens to what a kook or a

beatnik has to say? (To put this another way: After

hearing what the man has to say, the American pub lic feels: Yes, that fellow is raising some disturbing

questions but luckily he is a kook so I can dismiss what

he said.) The general public was lost to the organizations I

have been alluding to long before the pronouncements were made. And even if the New Left bathed and shav

ed and discovered less controversial tactics, still it

wouldn't be cleansed in the public mind because, fi

nally, essentially, its values are not the values of the

people of the United States.

With the John Birch Society it is quite a different

story. Until they get to category three on the second

level of radical, surprising as this may seem, they are

in a fairly strong position (from the point of view of

recruitment).

The John Birch Society, unlike Students for a Demo

cratic Society, does not perceive itself as radical. The

John Birch Society feels that its values and prejudices (and values lead quite directly to goals) are basically the same values that millions of other Americans sub

scribe to. The Society does not want to make funda

mental changes in American society; rather, it feels, it

wants to get back to the fundamentals: less govern ment, more freedom, fewer taxes, property rights, states rights?the way things were in the good old days.

The Birchers have created an imaginary past, idyllic,

Edenesque, and they worship it: The Good Old Days: G. O. D.

Aware that radical is a costly cross to bear, well

aware that it would profit the Society to rid itself of

this brand, the Society explains: We are on the radi

cal right only because the political center is drawn so

far to the left of the road. That is their pitch and the

public is receptive: it's folksy, simple, reassuring. These are difficult days in the States. While certainly not escaping unscathed from this initial encounter with

the first sense of the word radical, the Society's re

cruiting officer, surveying the lay of the land at this

point, would have no reason to feel pessimistic (as the recruiter for the War Resisters League or the Com

mittee for Non Violent Action would have every reason, as this same point, for pessimism).

How vulnerable is the John Birch Society when it comes to the second sense of the word radical? Is the Birch Society far out or wild tactically, far enough out to frighten people away? Not really. Birchers do not

engage in sitins or march through streets disturbing traffic; rather, they support reading rooms and buy billboard space and write letters and sponsor radio

programs. Radical: Is the Society wild or far out in dress or appearance? They are clean shaven, with

precious few clerical collars in their midst and hardly a mulatta in sight. Is the Society radical in pronounce

ment? Monumentally. This is where they lose the man who seeks the mid

dle of the road. Ike is Red. The American public can not swallow that. And the Society's recruiter can not

get the Society to tone down here. (As the Society did tone down, for instance, when it parted company with

Revilo Oliver, University of Illinois Classics Professor and one of the Society's founding fathers.) Let re cruitment suffer; John Foster Dulles must be called

Red because, to the John Birch Society, that is the name of the game. It is a metaphysical hangup.

The John Birch Society holds unswervingly to cer tain basic beliefs: America is Good, Russia or com

munism is Bad. The concepts embodied in Russia?

any communist state would do?are Absolute Bad; the concepts embodied in America?the concepts they see?are Absolute Good. America becomes the per sonification of Good, or God; Russia the personifica tion of Evil, or the Devil. Monolithic communism,

monster Russia, is: athiest, collectivist; America is:

Christian, capitalist (they prefer free enterprise). In their Eden (America) Adam blossoms forth fully

Americanized: Adam Smith.

Certain things inevitably follow when Russia is un

alterably black and America unalterably white. Just as you can not be almost a virgin, so you can not be the devil incarnate and still have an occasional re

deeming feature, nor can there be internal reform, nor can there be meaningful difference between Stalin and

Yevtushenko; reform can only be faked, schism only a scheme.

The John Birch Society constantly states that all is not well in the United States, i.e., Support Your Local Police. Why should crime in the streets be a major concern in the land of Absolute Good? Fight Fluori dation. They Bus Strangers Into Your Neighborhood School, Fight To Get God Back In. How in (literally)

God's Country was God driven out?

Whatever evil the Society finds in the United States could easily?and logically?be explained by the So

ciety if the Society would see the United States as

something other than the land of Absolute Good. But the Society must cling to that sight for that is their vision: looking backward, looking forward: a pure white America. Gray can not enter the picture, Abso lute can not yield to Relative.

There are two realities the John Birch Society must

34 The North American Review

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explain within this framework, the framework of Ab solutes: 1) The existence of evil in America; 2) The

spread, rather than the collapse, of communism

throughout the world. A smattering of Birch Society pronouncements: Without the active complicity of the powers-that-be

in Washington, communism would long ago have faded from the face of the earth.

Had America not extended recognition to Russia in

1933 Russia would have crumbled. John Birch was murdered in China less than two

weeks after World War 11 ended. The government of the United States withheld details of his death until 1950. This was done because those who killed him, the Red Chinese, did not finally and firmly wrest con

trol of mainland China until 1949 and had the Ameri can people known of the circumstances under which Birch perished they would have risen, outraged, and

smashed the Red Chinese?and China today would be

free.

Reds not only infiltrated, they instigated the civil

rights movement in America. When a liberal looks at the civil rights movement

he sees evil: the evil of second class citizenship, the

evil of segregation, the evil of slavery: American evil.

The Bircher, looking at the movement, also sees evil;

seeing evil is forced to see Red. He can not see Ameri can evil because America is Absolute Good; evil is Red to the Bircher and Red, evil: so just as flouridation

is a communist plot, the civil rights movement is a

communist movement. Martin Luther King, the move

ment's symbol, becomes Martin Lucifer King, com

munist Devil. The Bircher is forced to this conclusion, he has no other choice.

If there is evil in America there must be communists

in America. If the evil is deeply rooted the communists must be highly placed.

Communism, on the international scene, should not

have flourished and spread, it should have withered and died. The only reason it did not was because

Americans aided and abetted this cancerous growth ?and it is only important Americans who have had

the power to do that.

I am suggesting that the John Birch Society, the most powerful radical right wing organization in the United States, makes far out, wild, blatantly ridiculous

pronouncements?Every Tom, Dick and Harry of a recent American president has been Red?because it is an Absolute necessity. The radical pronouncement costs the Society untold members but that is the price the John Birch Society must pay to save what it must save: its Absolute soul.

THE SECOND ANGEL

We could be going home. He sits behind me. The road breaks over the charred crests and I follow. I want to speak. I hear his lips and fingers

meeting in the drained rhythms of prayer, I hear the pages fluttering like the voices of farm wives, like the voices of onions. Is it money? He could buy it all, harvests of dried-out, cured cars, vineyards of ashes.

Along the road the burned gangs of small drawn men

explode into peonies. In the mirror his face grows? ancient and smooth and raised, a face that has never cried, a face of growing stone, a face as cold as newsprint. This angel is my brother. When I turn he sees all my madness, all

my anger. He sees I'm lost forever.

The body is

light as milk, and still I bruise his head against the doorpost, and carry him, calm and pliant, and lay him in the roadside bones and nettles like a doll, his eyes still open, seeing, his wings breathing in and out in the winds of traffic. What can I do but turn away,

my chest and arms smeared with dust and tipped with bloodless feathers.

My brother, the angel, has fallen.

Philip Levine

A new hook of poems hy PHILIP LEVINE, Not This Pig, will he published hy Wesleyan University Press in February. 'His first collection, On the Edge, was published by 7he

Stone Wall Press. Tie lives and teaches in Fresno, California.

January, 1968 35

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