Correction, Please!
Who’s Besmirching John Birch’s Good Name?
Item: In a hit piece masquerading as a book review, Gabriel Schoenfeld — writing for the Weekly Standard’s March 28 issue — used the occasion of John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz to attack both The John Birch Society and its founder, Robert Welch, as belonging to “the far fringe.”
Schoenfeld claims that “the general public perceived the John Birch Society as crackpot as well as racist and antisemitic.” The only evidence he offers for those audacious claims is The John Birch Society’s “vigorous opposition to the nascent civil rights movement.” He also asserts “that Welch, behind the scenes, was engaged in a full-bore attack on Dwight D. Eisenhower, charging the president with being ‘a dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.’” Perhaps his wildest claim, though, is: “John Birch had his name hijacked and ruined by Robert Welch. Today it evokes images of right-wing kooks huddled in secret meetings worrying feverishly about imagined enemies.”
Correction: It should come as no surprise that a neoconservative would find the principles of Robert Welch and the JBS as belonging to “the far fringe.” The reality, though, is that Welch did not create those principles; he got them from his well-read understanding of history, particularly from the writings of America’s Founding Fathers.
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