I have a coworker who is always on about how Teapartiers are just the “new JBS” who are “a bunch of nuts”. I have always heard the John Birch Society was an extremist group but I have been looking at www.jbs.org lately and I don’t see what all the fuss is about. They have several basic principles:
- property rights
- anti-communism
- Christian values
- growth is good
There is nothing I could find on their web site that had militia-like stuff on it or any promotion of violence except as a nation in defense of itself. The one thing I saw some red staters (possibly myself included but as I have written before I am in favor of nukes, nukes, and more nukes and fewer conventional forces) would object to is they want less military spending. So I ask you fellow red staters, where did this organization get such a bad name? Are they just getting a smear like the Teapartiers because that is easier than addressing the issues they raise?
Isn't the John Birch Society an extremist organization?
penguin2 Saturday, November 14th at 10:19AM EST (link)I don’t believe we support extremists organizations here, left or right.
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Benjamin Franklin
What is extremist about them?
samdallas Saturday, November 14th at 10:25AM EST (link)Note until this week I have never looked into them, but I just don’t see what is extremist on their web site. Can you elaborate penguin? If the KKK put up a scrubbed web site maybe they could fool me too but I know enough of their history not to fall for that.
I think they are viewed as extremist because the leftist media...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 10:33AM EST (link)has portrayed them that way penguin….I think if you thought about they consider us to be extremist as well! I have not heard nor read much about their extremism so much as they are to the RIGHT of most RINO’s..heh!
Even better p here is how Wiki sees them
hmmm
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
I've understood them to be a right sided organization.
penguin2 Saturday, November 14th at 10:49AM EST (link)Just did not know if they are perceived in the same way as the KKK.
Of course, Tea Party activists are being perceived as extremists too, so maybe not much difference. I just wondered why the diarist brought them up….
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Benjamin Franklin
They were slammed as a Racist society
Richard Mullins Saturday, November 14th at 11:01AM EST (link)but it always seems to be quite the opposite. It’s no doubt that Wiki would want to slam it.
For more on my views, go my wordpress site:
http://rpmullins.wordpress.com
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http://thesquash.wordpress.com
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I don't think they were any more racist than the society they existed in
leftylurker Saturday, November 14th at 11:10AM EST (link)Which was pretty racist though…I mean, they did organize against the civil rights movement and integration.
They organized against the civil rights movement...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 11:19AM EST (link)because it is NOT Constitutional and the reality is since that passed that blacks have become dependent on the plantation more then they were prior!
I would LOVE for people to see how DC and Harlem were prior to the the 1960’s where blacks OWNED the banks and OWNED the stores and OWNED the homes they lived in and how in the blink of an eye ALL of that was GONE! It was replaced with CRIME, DRUGS, GOVT DEPENDENCY for what? a vote for the D’s? was it worth it? I don’t think so and I don’t think that hiding Indians on reservations with over 50% unemployment and alcoholism RAMPANT benefited them either!
Whenever the government intervenes on behalf of ANY group they KILL the very SPIRIT of those “victim” groups!
I hardly think fighting the Civil Rights Act just as fighting Roe v Wade on Constitutional grounds makes ANYONE racist!
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
Yeah, being against something make them racist
Richard Mullins Saturday, November 14th at 11:29AM EST (link)Ok but then again if your not for it, you’re racist. BTW, is very much a leftist website and so doing and skew things leftward.
For more on my views, go my wordpress site:
http://rpmullins.wordpress.com
For more on Happy jet airlines, go here:
http://happyjetairlines.wordpress.com
For a good dose of satire go here:
http://thesquash.wordpress.com
For more of I like to do a lot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42008626@N03
Exactly penquin WE in the TEA Party movement...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 11:29AM EST (link)are now NUTS and RACISTS as well! any group to the RIGHT of leftists/progressives/liberals are nuts and racists. I don’t listen to the leftist media anymore describe any group and I will just decide for myself. I don’t belong to the group and I am not on their email list nor do I particularly care to be but I am certainly NOT going to dismiss them or any group because the leftist media is telling me about them. I don’t play PC’ism and nor will I EVER!
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
Right, I realize we have to separate the Leftist propaganda....
penguin2 Saturday, November 14th at 11:42AM EST (link)about our side from the truth. For so long they have been able to control the message, lying all the way. Strange to think people like us are being portrayed in the same way. Strange, but not surprising.
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Benjamin Franklin
Strange and very enlightening isn't it?...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 11:54AM EST (link)when you who has gotten up everyday and worked and raised a family and voted and paid your bills to suddenly become a CRAZY, RACIST group. It awakens one to the LIES that have been perpetrated in the name of liberalism.
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
The Birchers were nuts, that's the difference
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:17AM EST (link)The Birchers went off on wild goose chases, such as the idea that the Eisenhower Administration was working for the Communist side of the war.
Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
And get this
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:18AM EST (link)The JBS now has no position on whether Ike himself was a Communist.
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Well that does sound nuts.
samdallas Saturday, November 14th at 11:21AM EST (link)Ike was the last president that agreed with me on nukes. Where did you find that Neil? It will give me ammo with my coworker.
Their comms director said it in a comment on RedState
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:40AM EST (link)In a reply to one of my posts in fact.
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So your point being that during the 50's when...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 11:27AM EST (link)EVERYONE was suspect (and in the 40 years hence most have been proven right) that they believed Eisenhower to be a Communist makes them NUTS today? I believe that in the last 40 years of America WE have found that a lot of people who were once thought to be NUTS for their thinking were proven TRUE ie: the Rosenbergs WERE Communists working to sell our secrets to the Soviets! and on and on.. Is is not that a group cannot then be wrong EVER and tarred with that for the remainder of the groups history?
I like that there is a group out there fighting against a One World Government and every time the UN comes up with a new rule for the world WE in America do step ever closer to giving up our RIGHTS to them. I don’t have time to fight that battle and am grateful someone is.
I think the RNC is nuts with a guys who thinks 90% of the party FEARS him but I am not going to tar them for the rest of their history for that!
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
So taking the "Everyone could be a Commie" defense
Richard Mullins Saturday, November 14th at 11:37AM EST (link)it might make some sense in that time, but it’s nuts now. The being against a One world isn’t all that nuts,it’s just one world governmental style is rampant in the US anyways even if the UN didn’t exist.
For more on my views, go my wordpress site:
http://rpmullins.wordpress.com
For more on Happy jet airlines, go here:
http://happyjetairlines.wordpress.com
For a good dose of satire go here:
http://thesquash.wordpress.com
For more of I like to do a lot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42008626@N03
Jaded...
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:41AM EST (link)TODAY they’re still not sure if Ike was a Communist.
They’re also loaded with Ronulan freaks.
Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
Yep, Ron Paul is nuts
Richard Mullins Saturday, November 14th at 11:47AM EST (link)of I can find an antidote for Ron Paul, I’m going to need to get some sermons from my local Gospel Preacher(If I started talking about him much around here, I’d become a Branded Man[song of the same name by Merle Haggard when he still on the right side of thing of things]).
For more on my views, go my wordpress site:
http://rpmullins.wordpress.com
For more on Happy jet airlines, go here:
http://happyjetairlines.wordpress.com
For a good dose of satire go here:
http://thesquash.wordpress.com
For more of I like to do a lot:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42008626@N03
I know that Neil I am just not going to throw them under...
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 11:52AM EST (link)the bus as out and out racist or haters! I think they have some good ideas and some bad ones just like every other group out there. I don’t find it beneficial to just SHUT UP everyone on the RIGHT that WE don’t agree with 100% of the time. Why I do believe you tell us that about candidates ALL the time
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
There's a difference between a candidate and a private group
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:55AM EST (link)Any Republican candidate that has won a primary has gotten the approval of the mainstream party base.
The JBSers aren’t even entirely Republican.
Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
I know that too they run under the banner of....
JadedByPolitics Saturday, November 14th at 12:00PM EST (link)Constitutionalists or Federalists…..I think a whole heck of a lot of people are becoming that as well. I will say this for the age of Obama there are a MASSIVE number of Americans who suddenly know more about the Constitution then the public school system or colleges have ever taught them! I take that to be a positive.
With regards to private groups I don’t always agree with the Heritage Foundation however I do hear them out when they have something to say. It is all relative in the end because when you listen and take away with at least 1/2 of what any group has to offer you suddenly become more knowledgeable then you were prior to NOT hearing them at all.
AGAIN I am not a Bircher but I am not going to throw them down as irrelevant because that is what the lefties would want me to do.
Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy
And I'm not calling them racist
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 11:56AM EST (link)I’ve seen no evidence of that. Just weirdness.
If they weren’t good enough for Buckley, I’m perfectly willing to keep them out of the movement if they ‘re still clinging to the same divergent views.
Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
Ike
samdallas Saturday, November 14th at 1:15PM EST (link)Neil is it just one of their officers or is official JBS view that Ike may have been red? I am with Jaded on not throwing them under the bus unless they have an official position now that is nuts. That one of their officers holds a position that is nuts would be worrisome, but not fatal IMO.
Read "None Dare Call it Treason" by Stormer
Achance Saturday, November 14th at 1:37PM EST (link)for a pretty good look at the World the way the Birchers of the 50s and 60s saw it. A lot of what the Birchers got crossthreaded with “mainstream” conservatives like Buckley over was their attacks on Eisenhower and, especially, Earl Warren. While there was plenty to attack in an America trying to find its way out of 36 years of leftist Democrat rule, the Birchers’ stridency was thought to do more harm than good, and probably rightly so. And as the Southerners themselves learned the hard way, opposing civil rights for blacks on states’ rights grounds was going nowhere in an America being bombarded with TV pictures of fire hoses, police dogs, and night sticks with a lynching or other murder thrown in for good measure from time to time. Because of this the Birchers generally got lumped in together with the militias like the Patriots in Action and Minutemen and, unfortunately, with the KKK.
And I’ll give you a hint, you won’t find much to disagree with in “None Dare Call it Treason.”
In Vino Veritas
Thanks I will look that up
samdallas Saturday, November 14th at 2:46PM EST (link)Never heard of the book. Sounds provocative– usually means it will at leat be entertaining.
Buying it might still get you on some list.
Achance Saturday, November 14th at 2:55PM EST (link)It really was controversial in its day, published in ‘64. The Left, both Republican and Democrat left, just HATED it.
In Vino Veritas
It was the organization's spokesman speaking for the national group (nt)
Neil Stevens Saturday, November 14th at 7:17PM EST (link)Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
Here's a link to W F Buckley on the John Birch Society
Achance Saturday, November 14th at 3:25PM EST (link)and Barry Goldwater’s relations with it. Generally, Buckley thinks, as do I, that the found, Welch, was a nut, but like McCarthy, that doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/goldwater–the-john-birch-society–and-me-11248
In Vino Veritas
the reason they are out there
Ender Saturday, November 14th at 3:26PM EST (link)I speak from experience because about 12 years ago, when I was in college, I actually went to some of their meetings, as a young conservative christian.
Basically they strongly believe in the conspiracy theories such as World Domination by the New World Order where CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), counting several US Presidents as members, and the Trilateral Commission are the chief conspirators.
They used to be anti-semitic and mainly anti-communist but have since moved on to the organizations above as the main culprits behind the evil World Wide Conspiracy.
Their core principles are good and conservative but overall they are way out there on the fringe.
“To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it.” AR