Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber (surprised?) defends their perception of some historical events, he just thinks they were good things! At around the same time, Christian conservative Ryan Mauro was upset that the upcoming CPAC will be sponsored by the John Birch Society. As I’ve said before, I’m sympathetic to the JBS and think the political right could have benefited from more of their skepticism of the government. A little (hell, a lot!) of paranoia is a healthy thing. I don’t think the top levels of government were literally communist agents, but as Robert Conquest said in his Third Law, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies”. Most people don’t take Davies or Mauros’ step of explaining why the JBS was bad, it’s assumed to be so and used to tar people by association. We currently see this occurring with the denunciation of “progressives” like Jane Hamsher for concluding that the Tea Partiers are right about the awfulness of the health care bill. Nobody actually defends the bill, they just attack the Tea Partiers and then critics-from-the-left by association. Like the antifederalists, such critics get no respect because Americans love a winner.
On to something completely different: I’ve just started reading Gene Healy’s “The Cult of the Presidency”, and liking it though I’m annoyed by his use of the term “unitary executive” (strictly speaking it says nothing about what actual powers are possessed, just how they are distributed). Healy does cite Cass Sunstein and note that more literal view of the term, but he proceeds to use that phrase as well as “unitarian” anyway. Perhaps “Article II supremacists”, “imperial executive” or “unbounded executive” might be better terms for Yoo and company. Near the end of the first chapter Healy notes that Woodrow Wilson was a fan of Thomas Carlyle and inspired by his view of heroic “great men”. Sheesh, with Wilson, Hugo Chavez & Hitler, Carlyle must be one of the most harmful inspirations of all time!
Entitled to an Opinion 
December 26, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Certainly, when crazed megalomaniacs like Woodrow Wilson, Hugo Chavez, Hitler, and Mencius Moldbug sing your praises, you know you are doing something extremely wrong.
Btw, have you read any Carlyle yet?
December 26, 2009 at 8:43 pm
FBI FILES ON BIRCH SOCIETY:
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com.jbs-1
December 26, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Ooops! Typo; Correct link:
http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/jbs-1
December 26, 2009 at 9:53 pm
TGGP,
My firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive, and so palpable, that it seems to me to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.
Just kidding, thats a quote and I changed is to was. Added some commas too, I’m like that.
It seems pretty far out. But then a quite large fraction of businessmen in Roosie’s time thought he would take the economy more towards something socialist-fascist — literally, a combination of old american traits, and traits “like those of [fascist] Italy”. Not a few said it would simply be rather like Italy, rather than a blend.
Or at least, so they claimed on a survey. Its possible they were exaggerating what they really believed would happen, in order to make a point and weaken their bete noir. Anyway I heard about it on Econtalk. Maybe they were right in a way. I dont know anything about fascist econ except “discipline the economy to the needs of the state”, which I take it means macro-scale interventions but not micromanagement.
December 26, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I think I meant “now few” rather than not a few. It was something like 10-15% I think.
December 26, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Ahem, “NO few”
December 27, 2009 at 10:09 am
As a proud, though not particularly observent Bircher, (it is a religion, these days), I might point out that the JBS’s finest moment was the late Congressman Larry McDonald’s interview with Pat Buchanan, then a Reagan hatchetman and Tom Braden, ex-OSS-CIA amongst other things, whose Cold War meanderings on behalf of U.S. ‘intelligence” were misguided to say the least.
McDonald very coolly handles both of them, in a manner that few conservative public figures are capable of.
Of course, what happened to him is no conspiracy-theory.
Revilo Oliver was largely correct about the JBS, it is, and always will be a largely impotent organization.
The CPAC has always been an impotent organization, so it appears to be a match made in heaven.
Their greatest cultural effect were the novels of JBS members, Taylor Caldwell, (which occupied a place in every small-town mid-western library, until recently), and Alan Stang, who remains largely unknown as a novelist outside the same region.
Considering that Mauro is nutcase who runs worldthreats.com and probably lives in a bunker, one can’t imagine why he would have problems with conspiracy-theoryists.
His real problem with the JBS, assuming he is indeed capable of rational thought, is probably their indifference towards conflict with Iran.
December 27, 2009 at 11:49 am
Pat Buchanan, then a Reagan hatchetman and Tom Braden, ex-OSS-CIA amongst other things, whose Cold War meanderings on behalf of U.S. ‘intelligence” were misguided to say the least.
May I ask why you think the CIA’s “meanderings” were misguided?
Were you rooting for the Soviets to win the Cold War at the time?
December 27, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Yeah, hes the very first commie Bircher, and he suggested at every meeting that the JB Society form a fifth column to help the Soviets annex us. Which was controversial. Try to be more tolerant of his unique but equally valid worldview.
December 27, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I feel like you’re not going all the way don to the bottom level of attainable transparency, and digging at why these various things are salient.
December 27, 2009 at 4:51 pm
don=down
December 27, 2009 at 6:00 pm
JGS, are you seriously under the impression that the CIA had anything to do with winning the Cold War?
December 27, 2009 at 6:19 pm
JGS, are you seriously under the impression that the CIA had anything to do with winning the Cold War?
Well, yes.
Why wouldn’t having spies look for classified information be useful in the Cold War?
December 27, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I have not read any work by Carlyle in entirety, just some excerpts. His writing makes my eyes glaze over.
I believe in FDRs time proponents of the New Deal were openly talking of how great Mussolini’s Italy was. Keynes also noted that his system was fit for a totalitarian country like Germany.
Savrola, can you find a link to that interview? Also, you are correct about the obscurity of Stang. He doesn’t even have a page on Wikipedia!
Jolly Good Show, to quote Bastiat: “When we oppose subsidies, we are charged with opposing the very thing that it was proposed to subsidize and of being the enemies of all kinds of activity, because we want these activities to be voluntary and to seek their proper reward in themselves. Thus, if we ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in religious matters, we are atheists. If we ask that the state not intervene, by taxation, in education, then we hate enlightenment. If we say that the state should not give, by taxation, an artificial value to land or to some branch of industry, then we are the enemies of property and of labor. If we think that the state should not subsidize artists, we are barbarians who judge the arts useless.”
That’s a bit inapt for this context, so I make the point specifically about foreign policy here. Supporting an end does not mean you must support any (purported) means. My own opinion about the Cold War is that the U.S was not under great threat from the Soviets, who had trouble enough keeping things together at home. I don’t think the CIA caused the USSR to collapse, and even the expense of the arms race may not have done it. I think Bruce Bueno de Mesquita gave the best explanation for how it came apart. I also agree with Bryan Caplan that they could have kept trudging along, like North Korea. For a revisionist take on the Cold War that will likely get your blood boiling, check out Jeffrey Rogers Hummel‘s old lectures.
HA, you might try being more specific. I think the JBS was right in the past to be skeptical about Vietnam (which is said to have caused Buckley & Goldwater to kick them off the bus) and in recent years about the Bush admin. I think the netroots progressives and Tea Partiers (as well as moderate technocrats) are right that the health-care bill is an unlovable bowl of turds. I think the anti-Federalists’ predictions were vindicated by history and the revered Federalists were refuted. I am not close to power and lack sympathy for those who are, identifying instead with the carpers on the sidelines. They may not be reasonable enough to make a constructive proof, but criticism requires a lower standard. Is that transparent enough?
December 28, 2009 at 2:55 pm
“HA, you might try being more specific.”
It was a comprehensive criticism.
“Is that transparent enough?”
No, but it’s an improvement.
December 30, 2009 at 3:15 am
TGGP>
The communists did want to expand, and made efforts to do so. And not just in the third world, but they nearly came to power in both Italy and France. If Stalin or Kruschev had ever thought they had the power to take Europe, they would have done so.
You can argue that USG is stupid, or evil, or both, but the Soviets were, unquestionably, more stupid and more evil. The Cold War could have been waged much more intelligently (hindsight is 20/20), but it definitely needed to be waged.
January 2, 2010 at 10:24 am
I never understood why people think Wilkinson is a libertarian. He’s a lefty who figues (probably correctly) that he can use libertarian arguments to advance lefty ends.
January 2, 2010 at 5:18 pm
HA, perfection (like infinite) may never be reached, so I’m glad I at least improved.
cassander, when we stopped “waging a cold war” against China, the results were quite good. I would prefer that the U.S government focus on its own national interests rather than Italy or France. Those two countries were not as hawkish during the Cold War despite their greater vulnerability. I think this is because the U.S had the concern of expanding and preserving its hegemony around the world rather than defense. Today there is no threat that can compare to the power of the USSR, but the “national security conservatives” are just as frantic as ever.
flenser, there are plenty of people on the left I would consider unquestionably libertarian. Left-libertarians like Kevin Carson, Roderick Long, Charles “Radgeek” Johnson, Gary Chartier, Sheldon Richman and so on. Will is not a left-libertarian, he calls himself a “liberaltarian” (a term invented by Brink Lindsay). The difference between the left and liberals with respect to libertarians is discussed here at Distributed Republic, and by Dain at Wilkinson’s. I suppose people call Will a libertarian because he calls himself one and occasionally he acts like one. But its easy to call oneself a libertarian. It’s also funny you mention Will using libertarian means to attain leftist ends: Murray Rothbard once claimed that libertarians were the authentic left and that progressives were muddled centrists who used “conservative” means to attain liberal ends. He wasn’t just making that up, Herbert Croly used the phrase “Hamiltonian means for Jeffersonian ends”.
January 2, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I assume that by “conservative” means, Rothbard meant employing the power of the state. If so it was a rare moment of blindness on his part. Using the power of the state is the end of liberalism, not its means.
January 2, 2010 at 10:04 pm
>”there are plenty of people on the left I would consider unquestionably libertarian”
If by plenty you mean “more than five percent of the left” then I have to disagree.
January 2, 2010 at 10:48 pm
flenser, yes he means employing the power of the state. It’s just silly to say that doing so is the means of liberalism: even modern progressivism doesn’t endorse using the power of the state for reactionary ends (what’s their position on Lawrence v Texas or Roe v Wade?), and the classical liberals that Rothbard is claiming as the original left had liberty as their primary end. It’s also hardly a “rare moment of blindness” on his part, it’s typical of his strategically-motivated framing.
I don’t mean “more than five percent of the left”, I am talking more relative to libertarianism. The left is larger than libertarianism.
January 4, 2010 at 11:46 am
>>”It’s just silly to say that doing so is the means of liberalism: even modern progressivism doesn’t endorse using the power of the state for reactionary ends”
I assume you meant to say “the end of liberalism” rather than “the means of liberalism”.
I think that centralized government power IS a reactionary end. You can invoke all sorts of mumbo-jumbo in support of that end, be it “equality” or “social justice” or whatever. But the thing itself, totalitarian government, is reactionary in the American context. It’s what we had a revoluton to get away from.
>>”and the classical liberals that Rothbard is claiming as the original left had liberty as their primary end.”
Ah, classical liberals. That’s a term people are wont to throw about without really understanding it. The real flesh-and-blood classical liberals sought a certain distinct KIND of liberty, one which is a good deal different from what the modern self-described “classical liberal” has in mind. Your typical classically liberal Englishman of the 18th and 19th century was a conservative in the social sphere and a mercantilist with respect to trade. The same was true for classically liberal Americans of the period.
Liberty comes in many different flavors, not just the one which the modern libertarian movement argues for.
January 6, 2010 at 12:57 am
You are correct, I meant to write “ends”.
The term “reactionary” itself might be regarded as mumbo-jumbo. I don’t think King George qualified as a totalitarian either, though the revolutionaries did focus on complaints of overbearing government.
Murray Rothbard & Thomas Szasz have been called “culturally conservative” at times, but they might also qualify as extreme social liberals. I think you’re wrong about mercantilism, one of the main defining features of classical liberalism was support for removing trade restrictions. Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat, Say, Cobden, Bright, the whole lot of them. Are you thinking of something like the liberty of the ancients vs the moderns? You might also be interested in liberalism’s divide.
January 3, 2010 at 12:06 am
Libertarian seems to me to be a posture position rather than a “true” coherent position like religious conservatism, socialism, or progressivism.
January 3, 2010 at 12:42 am
I always thought because of its simplicity it was more coherent (which is why libertarians more often accuse their opponents of inconsistency). Do you think secular conservatism is also a posture position? Also, could you elaborate on what distinguishes a “true” position from a posture one?
Inspired by a recent diavlog, I think we might analogize big-tent conservatism & liberalism to animism and libertarianism to monotheism. The former come intuitively (some conservatives even explicitly reject attempts to formulate it as an ideology), the latter is cooked up by dissatisfied intellectuals.
January 3, 2010 at 8:38 pm
[…] The John Birch Society Was Right by TGGP […]
January 4, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Thanks for the link to my stinky blog!
February 19, 2021 at 8:18 pm
REPORT ON JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY–Based Upon Data in FBI Files (614 pages):
https://archive.org/details/john-birch-society-report-october-2020-614pp/mode/2up
John Birch Society Attack on Our Civil Rights Movement
https://archive.org/details/john-birch-society-vs-civil-rights-movement-249pp
February 20, 2021 at 12:11 am
I see the most recent post on your blog is from 2011. I like that you’re visiting and commenting on my old blog posts, even if you’re not still blogging yourself.