The Old Smear Returns: The Establishment’s War on The John Birch Society

When Cal Thomas calls for the Right to “clean house,” he isn’t wielding a broom — he’s brandishing the old cudgel of slander that the Establishment right has swung for 65 years. His target is not racism or antisemitism; his target is fidelity to the Constitution. And that, dear reader, is the true line of demarcation between those who fight for liberty and those who sell it for a seat at the Beltway banquet.

Thomas begins his screed by invoking Ronald Reagan as the emblem of “true conservatism.” Yet Reagan’s debt, deficit, and expansion of federal power contradict the constitutional conservatism championed by Robert Welch and The John Birch Society. The JBS never traded principle for popularity; it opposed socialism whether it came in a red flag or a red tie.

Inversion of Truth

Thomas pretends the Society “infiltrated” the conservative movement in the 1960s — a grotesque inversion of truth. The Society built the grassroots conservative movement. It was Birchers who distributed None Dare Call It Treason, exposed the UN’s subversive ambitions, and stood against the Rockefeller Republican establishment while William F. Buckley, Jr. and his disciples polished their credentials at cocktail parties.

Thomas parrots the well-worn smear that Welch called Eisenhower a “conscious agent of the communist conspiracy.” He neglects the context that Welch, in The Politician, marshaled hundreds of pages of evidence demonstrating Eisenhower’s consistent advancement of collectivist policy — from Yalta to the creation of the UN. Whether Eisenhower was “conscious” or not was, to Welch, secondary; what mattered was that his actions advanced the communist agenda.

Next, Thomas attempts guilt by association — pairing The John Birch Society with the so-called alt-right, a modern Frankenstein’s monster stitched together by the media to scare decent Americans away from questioning globalism. To equate a disciplined, Christian, constitutionalist organization with a fringe group of racialists and atheists is not journalism; it is libel. The JBS has never tolerated racism, antisemitism, or any collectivist ideology — for collectivism in all its forms, racial or economic, is the very evil the JBS was founded to oppose.

Blame-shifting

When Thomas laments that today’s “evangelical wing” of the Republican Party is being corrupted by “the alt-right,” he neglects the obvious truth: It was not the alt-right, but the establishment Right, that gave America abortion, deficit spending, endless wars, and federal tyranny. The so-called respectable conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and National Review have done more to conserve socialism than to stop it.

Thomas quotes the Book of Proverbs to warn against hate, yet he ignores Christ’s warning about hypocrisy. For what could be more hateful than smearing patriots who have labored for more than six decades to expose the very subversion now engulfing our republic? The JBS called out communist infiltration in government, education, and the media long before Cal Thomas drew a paycheck from it.

Let us be plain: The Society stands not for race, but for rights; not for hate, but for truth; not for empire, but for liberty under law. It has been vindicated time and again — on the dangers of globalism, the UN’s war on sovereignty, the Federal Reserve’s debt enslavement, and the totalitarian drift of both political parties.

If Cal Thomas wishes to “clean house,” he should begin by sweeping out the cowardice of those who confuse popularity with virtue. The real dirt in the conservative house is not The John Birch Society — it is the mold of moral compromise, the dust of historical amnesia, and the cobwebs of cowardly respectability.

The John Birch Society does not need Cal Thomas’s permission to belong to the conservative movement. We are the remnant that preserved its soul when men like him traded it for applause.

Like Clockwork

Every few years, as predictably as clockwork, a nervous columnist or foundation apparatchik dusts off the old script and declares that The John Birch Society must be expelled from “respectable conservatism.” The names change, but the motive never does: fear.

Cal Thomas’s latest article, “Time for the Right to Clean House,” is simply the newest echo of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s 1960s purge — a ritual excommunication designed not to protect conservatism but to neuter it. Buckley’s National Review, financed by Establishment donors, performed the political equivalent of a lobotomy: cutting the brains and backbone out of the conservative movement so it could be safely invited to Georgetown dinners.

Why this enduring hatred for the Society? Because the JBS saw through the masquerade. It named names, exposed networks, and followed the money. It revealed that socialism was not a spontaneous disease, but a coordinated plan — carried out through international institutions, secret councils, and the manipulation of both major political parties. The Society’s crime was telling the truth too early.

Proven Right

When Robert Welch warned that the UN was a Trojan horse for global government, the media laughed. Today, the UN openly publishes Agenda 2030, a blueprint for global control of energy, education, and agriculture. When Welch warned of communist infiltration in Washington, the media sneered. Then came the Venona papers, confirming his charges. When he warned that both parties were moving America toward collectivism, the establishment branded him an extremist. Look around you now — trillion-dollar deficits, executive decrees, endless war, and a surveillance state. Who, then, was the extremist?

The smear of “far-right” has always been a linguistic weapon — a way to place constitutionalists outside the bounds of polite discussion. It is the modern form of heresy-hunting: Label the dissenter, shun him, and hope no one listens. But the truth has a stubborn way of surviving.

The John Birch Society was right on the dangers of internationalism, right on the Federal Reserve, right on education’s descent into propaganda, right on the erosion of sovereignty, and right on the bipartisan betrayal of the Constitution. The Establishment Right, on the other hand, was wrong — and worse, complicit.

Cal Thomas speaks of the “alt-right” as if the term has any definable meaning beyond the fever dreams of journalists. Yet, by invoking it, he performs precisely the trick his masters demand: to conflate love of country with hate, to equate patriotism with prejudice, and to make constitutional fidelity appear dangerous. The object is not to combat extremism — it is to exterminate independence.

Standing for the Truth

For more than six decades, The John Birch Society has stood unbending: no violence, no racism, no compromise. It teaches truth through education, not intimidation. It fights tyranny with knowledge, not mobs. The irony is delicious: Those who call us “extremists” are the very ones normalizing government extremism on a global scale.

Every prophet of liberty has faced this same fate. Thomas Paine was denounced as a radical. Patrick Henry was mocked as hysterical. Samuel Adams was branded a fanatic. Robert Welch stands in their company.

If the conservative movement wishes to survive, it must stop apologizing to its enemies and start listening to its prophets. Conservatism without courage is camouflage; it conceals surrender beneath the language of respectability.

Cal Thomas and his ilk want a conservatism that wins applause. The John Birch Society wants a conservatism that wins freedom. The first perishes with the next news cycle. The second endures with eternity.

So let the smear machine run its tired gears once more. We will not bend, we will not bow, and we will not retreat. For the truth — the whole truth, the unvarnished and unapologetic truth — is still the only power that can set men free.