The Tea Party Is The New Birch Society

By on November 18, 2010 in News 34

Before the Tea Party there was the John Birch Society, which decried “big government” as part of a communist plot to enslave America. These so-called “loonies in the basement” were kept in check for many years by the likes of William F. Buckley, who represented the more moderate, intellectually-grounded strain of the conservative movement. This clip John Birch speaking in 1958 is being circulated by the Birchers themselves to draw attention to the similarities:

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  • Anonymous

    Spooky. It’s like the Oshkosh, WI area is the center of evil in American politics, yesterday and today.

    1. The Birchers are HQ’d in nearby Grand Chute . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_society

    2. Ron Johnson, the dimwitted senator elect from Oshkosh invited the author of “The Bell Curve” to speak at one of his functions. http://millermps.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/racist-charles-murray-brought-to-speak-in-oshkosh-by-senate-candidate-ron-johnson/

    What evil hath my poor beleaguered state proffered onto the Lord that we should deserve to suffer so?

    Still, let’s look on the bright side: It’s a kind of poetic satisfaction to say that they’re from the “Grand Chute”.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Spooky. It’s like the Oshkosh, WI area is the center of evil in American politics, yesterday and today.

    1. The Birchers are HQ’d in nearby Grand Chute . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_society

    2. Ron Johnson, the dimwitted senator elect from Oshkosh invited the author of “The Bell Curve” to speak at one of his functions. http://millermps.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/racist-charles-murray-brought-to-speak-in-oshkosh-by-senate-candidate-ron-johnson/

    What evil hath my poor beleaguered state proffered onto the Lord that we should deserve to suffer so?

    Still, let’s look on the bright side: It’s a kind of poetic satisfaction to say that they’re from the “Grand Chute”.

    • Hadrian999

      well, at least you still have good cheese

      • Liam_McGonagle

        I think you’ve hit upon another insight there: All the intestinal binding that cheese lays on them probably goes a good way to explain why they have “Grand Chutes”. . . . well, I’m sure there’s other reasons, too . . .

  • Andrew

    Fred G. Koch, the father of the Koch brothers who finance the Tea Party, was a founding member of the John Birch Society.

    Perhaps their conspiratorial worldview is a psychological projection?

  • Andrew

    Fred G. Koch, the father of the Koch brothers who finance the Tea Party, was a founding member of the John Birch Society.

    Perhaps their conspiratorial worldview is a psychological projection?

    • myth_slayer

      Exactly, Mr. Andrew, exactly.

      Koch and Peter G. Peterson generate what passes for the majority of “news” in Amerika today, sad to say.

      And the Koch boys are just keeping true to daddy. It is sooo obvious to any breathing human that the Teabooger Party and Birchers be one and the same.

      And it’s no coincidence that Dicky Cheney’s godson, DG Gribbin IV, was the national field director of the Christian Coalition back in the ’90s, before George Weasel Bush was handed that 2000 election.

  • Hadrian999

    well, at least you still have good cheese

  • Anonymous

    I think you’ve hit upon another insight there: All the intestinal binding that cheese lays on them probably goes a good way to explain why they have “Grand Chutes”. . . . well, I’m sure there’s other reasons, too . . .

  • Cerebralcaustic

    >These so-called “loonies in the basement” were kept in check for many years by the likes of William F. Buckley, who represented the more moderate, intellectually-grounded strain of the conservative movement.

    While Wm. Buckley was none too fond of the John Burch Society, it’s also important to recall Buckley’s opinion of intellectuals:
    *”The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than ‘newness’) and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity). “Our Mission Statement” in National Review (19 November 1955)
    *”I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” statement in 1963, as quoted in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 82

    Additionally re: the Tea Party movement, P.J. O’Rourke’s new book (“Don’t Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards”) notes that the Tea Party is the first populist movement since the 1790s Whiskey Rebellion that does not demand more “positive rights” from the government. The near-universal disdain of those on the left to the Tea Party is quite telling: the left frequently proclaims themselves concerned about the middle class and the workers, but when a middle-class movement appears in the form of the Tea Party, the left, as a general rule, responds not with sympathy and sincere interest, but with dismissal and mockery…

  • Hadrian999

    the teaparty weather intentionally or not represents sepuku of the working class,
    less government sounds great on the surface but when you look at what working class life was like before all that evil regulation it’s not something any sane worker would want to return to.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Yeah, you watch this clip of Ron Johnson and you tell me how ‘interesting’ his ideas are . . .

    http://blog.markcz.com/obama-keynesian-video/

    I don’t need to read some book to get experience of these Tea Bag types, they’re in my freakin’ back yard, and they make me want to puke

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Amen!

  • Anonymous

    Exactly, Mr. Andrew, exactly.

    Koch and Peter G. Peterson generate what passes for the majority of “news” in Amerika today, sad to say.

    And the Koch boys are just keeping true to daddy. It is sooo obvious to any breathing human that the Teabooger Party and Birchers be one and the same.

    And it’s no coincidence that Dicky Cheney’s godson, DG Gribbin IV, was the national field director of the Christian Coalition back in the ’90s, before George Weasel Bush was handed that 2000 election.

  • Dan Mac

    Wow! I would have thought him a paranoid crackpot—but it turns out he was a prophet! Only, though he correctly perceived the surface of the subversive elements–as it turned out it was never communism that was the real threat. Communism was just a tool of the real conspirators. They used National Socialism in Germany just as well. Tyranny comes in many names. The subversive powers are neither liberal nor conservative–though they use the left and right, back and forth, ever to leverage their control.

  • Dan Mac

    Wow! I would have thought him a paranoid crackpot—but it turns out he was a prophet! Only, though he correctly perceived the surface of the subversive elements–as it turned out it was never communism that was the real threat. Communism was just a tool of the real conspirators. They used National Socialism in Germany just as well. Tyranny comes in many names. The subversive powers are neither liberal nor conservative–though they use the left and right, back and forth, ever to leverage their control.

  • Dan Mac

    Wow! I would have thought him a paranoid crackpot—but it turns out he was a prophet! Only, though he correctly perceived the surface of the subversive elements–as it turned out it was never communism that was the real threat. Communism was just a tool of the real conspirators. They used National Socialism in Germany just as well. Tyranny comes in many names. The subversive powers are neither liberal nor conservative–though they use the left and right, back and forth, ever to leverage their control.

  • Dan Mac

    well said and true.

  • Dan Mac

    I share that puking sentiment–about a lot of them. But remember, they are a huge, diverse bunch of individuals–and every individual is multi-faceted. I’ve met many that are very caring, thoughtful, and sophisticated as well. Don’t be so quick with the gag reflex. Possibly, you’re conditioned to respond to associations you make inside yourself–like like a person who once was poisoned by bad tunafish and now thinks all tuna are bad.

  • Haystack

    Buckley was an intellectual. He was famous for his huge vocabulary. If he had opinions about political bias in education or the arts, that doesn’t mean that he thought the government should be run by anti-intellectual yokels.

    As a member of the working class, I’m skeptical of any movement which pretends to be standing up for my interests by protesting health care reform and calling for deficit spending to fund tax breaks for the rich.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Tell you what, both of my parents are Tea Baggers. I’m #6 of 6 kids still living, and only two of us escaped drinking the kool aid. All of this on top of the real-time Ron Johnson experience in Wisconsin.

    So, no, this isn’t some type of make-believe sterile lab environment. I know for a damn fact how crazy these people are, so you forget any sales pitches. Heard it all before and not wasting any more time on it. Full stop.

  • Gregory

    What’s fascinating is that the Tea Party folks today don’t see the xenophobia and paranoia exhibited by the Birch Society…and of course the overt racism of the JBS. It’s a good-old boy’s point of view. A reaction to a changing world, by telling the rest of the world to go to hell…when international trade and relations in that changing world is absolutely necessary and returning to the isolationist ideas we had prior to WWI show just how out of touch the JGS and their ilk were and still are.

    Minding our own business for these folks you’ll notice doesn’t apply to our vast military empire that drains our tax dollars more than anything else. The wealthy want their money and don’t want it to go to anyone but themselves, but that can’t actually occur in a functioning democracy, capitalistic state. The excesses of business as shown in the past two decades shows that the federal bureaucracy is not only good, it is also necessary. It is not because of the bureaucracy that we have these problems but as the GOP had control of that system, it failed to regulate and govern because they were in bed, literally in the case of oil manufacturing, with those companies they were supposed to be monitoring.

    Jefferson said it best, the government’s purpose is for the benefit of the people and the JBS and Tea Party and others who want to rake in their money and keep their control over minorities do not understand that. We are the government and it is our responsibility as Americans and as human beings to take care of each other, not maintain a state of war and unrest because that’s good business for the military industrial complex and law enforcement as the “Wars” on Terror and Drugs has shown.

    These people in America who don’t know the slightest thing about it and willingly work against this country
    ‘s interests are traitors and seditionists and need to be the first ones up against the wall once we progressives put down our double-lattes and grow a pair. By all means, let them all move to Texas and let them secede from the Union and replace all their textbooks with the King James Version, they are a boil on Uhmurkah’s buttocks.

    fiat lux

    • Dan Mac

      Perfect example of dis-information and its power. All my life, I had only heard a few things–all extremely negative–about the Birchers. I never thought they were one bit interesting, so I didn’t bother looking into them–just took what I heard from family and friends (that they are extreme conservative bigot bastards) and left it at that.

      As for “overt racism,” that is dead opposite of the truth. Here is what they say: http://www.jbs.org/press-room/6189-racist-letters-sent-to-okc-media

      I don’t know much about this group, but am now finding them more interesting as I realize there has been so much false information publicized.

      I’m finding these days that certain types of “Conservatives,” like Ron Paul, are actually much more in alignment with Classical Liberalism than the false big government neo-liberals who promote debt, war, and big corporate government partnership, i.e. Military/Medical Industrial Complex.

      I realize now that I have unknowingly promoted disinformation most of my life. We need to check our facts and stop relying on this false left/right paradigm to form our opinions for us. We need to stop generalizing and associating things we really don’t know about.

      I was astounded to learn in recent years that the Bush/Cheney type neo-conservatives and their abhorrent lust for gigantic military spending and expansionism is most strongly opposed by true conservatives–like many who have been in the John Birch Society. Meanwhile, the false liberal Obama types continue the Bush promoted military policies of with equal fervor.

      We all know things aren’t what they seem on the surface. We need to open our minds and look a little deeper. For we are all being deceived.

      The excesses of business in the past two decades sure hasn’t been my business (self-employed carpenter, no employees). Let’s not generalize “business.” I think what you are referring to are the giant corporations who, yes, are more like vampire/leeches than good service providers. Those are the very corporations that have been in bed with government bureaucracy for decades–whether our congress appears dominated by dems or rebubs.

      I think we all know less than we think we know. And whether we know it or not–the wealth produced by much of our own labor is not only benefiting the mega-wealthy–it is used to confuse and weaken us.

  • Gregory

    What’s fascinating is that the Tea Party folks today don’t see the xenophobia and paranoia exhibited by the Birch Society…and of course the overt racism of the JBS. It’s a good-old boy’s point of view. A reaction to a changing world, by telling the rest of the world to go to hell…when international trade and relations in that changing world is absolutely necessary and returning to the isolationist ideas we had prior to WWI show just how out of touch the JGS and their ilk were and still are.

    Minding our own business for these folks you’ll notice doesn’t apply to our vast military empire that drains our tax dollars more than anything else. The wealthy want their money and don’t want it to go to anyone but themselves, but that can’t actually occur in a functioning democracy, capitalistic state. The excesses of business as shown in the past two decades shows that the federal bureaucracy is not only good, it is also necessary. It is not because of the bureaucracy that we have these problems but as the GOP had control of that system, it failed to regulate and govern because they were in bed, literally in the case of oil manufacturing, with those companies they were supposed to be monitoring.

    Jefferson said it best, the government’s purpose is for the benefit of the people and the JBS and Tea Party and others who want to rake in their money and keep their control over minorities do not understand that. We are the government and it is our responsibility as Americans and as human beings to take care of each other, not maintain a state of war and unrest because that’s good business for the military industrial complex and law enforcement as the “Wars” on Terror and Drugs has shown.

    These people in America who don’t know the slightest thing about it and willingly work against this country
    ‘s interests are traitors and seditionists and need to be the first ones up against the wall once we progressives put down our double-lattes and grow a pair. By all means, let them all move to Texas and let them secede from the Union and replace all their textbooks with the King James Version, they are a boil on Uhmurkah’s buttocks.

    fiat lux

  • Dan Mac

    Perfect example of dis-information and its power. All my life, I had only heard a few things–all extremely negative–about the Birchers. I never thought they were one bit interesting, so I didn’t bother looking into them–just took what I heard from family and friends (that they are extreme conservative bigot bastards) and left it at that.

    As for “overt racism,” that is dead opposite of the truth. Here is what they say: http://www.jbs.org/press-room/6189-racist-letters-sent-to-okc-media

    I don’t know much about this group, but am now finding them more interesting as I realize there has been so much false information publicized.

    I’m finding these days that certain types of “Conservatives,” like Ron Paul, are actually much more in alignment with Classical Liberalism than the false big government neo-liberals who promote debt, war, and big corporate government partnership, i.e. Military/Medical Industrial Complex.

    I realize now that I have unknowingly promoted disinformation most of my life. We need to check our facts and stop relying on this false left/right paradigm to form our opinions for us. We need to stop generalizing and associating things we really don’t know about.

    I was astounded to learn in recent years that the Bush/Cheney type neo-conservatives and their abhorrent lust for gigantic military spending and expansionism is most strongly opposed by true conservatives–like many who have been in the John Birch Society. Meanwhile, the false liberal Obama types continue the Bush promoted military policies of with equal fervor.

    We all know things aren’t what they seem on the surface. We need to open our minds and look a little deeper. For we are all being deceived.

    The excesses of business in the past two decades sure hasn’t been my business (self-employed carpenter, no employees). Let’s not generalize “business.” I think what you are referring to are the giant corporations who, yes, are more like vampire/leeches than good service providers. Those are the very corporations that have been in bed with government bureaucracy for decades–whether our congress appears dominated by dems or rebubs.

    I think we all know less than we think we know. And whether we know it or not–the wealth produced by much of our own labor is not only benefiting the mega-wealthy–it is used to confuse and weaken us.

  • Mr Twilight

    Welch thought Eisenhower was a commie.

    Face it. What these guys want when it comes right down to it is to deregulate everything.
    At the end of the day deregulation is their purpose.

  • Mr Twilight

    Welch thought Eisenhower was a commie.

    Face it. What these guys want when it comes right down to it is to deregulate everything.
    At the end of the day deregulation is their purpose.

  • Hadrian999

    the teaparty weather intentionally or not represents sepuku of the working class,
    less government sounds great on the surface but when you look at what working class life was like before all that evil regulation it’s not something any sane worker would want to return to.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Yeah, you watch this clip of Ron Johnson and you tell me how ‘interesting’ his ideas are . . .

    http://blog.markcz.com/obama-keynesian-video/

    I don’t need to read some book to get experience of these Tea Bag types, they’re in my freakin’ back yard, and they make me want to puke

  • Dan Mac

    well said and true.

  • Haystack

    Buckley was an intellectual. He was famous for his huge vocabulary. If he had opinions about political bias in education or the arts, that doesn’t mean that he thought the government should be run by anti-intellectual yokels.

    As a member of the working class, I’m skeptical of any movement which pretends to be standing up for my interests by protesting health care reform and calling for deficit spending to fund tax breaks for the rich.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Amen!

  • Dan Mac

    I share that puking sentiment–about a lot of them. But remember, they are a huge, diverse bunch of individuals–and every individual is multi-faceted. I’ve met many that are very caring, thoughtful, and sophisticated as well. Don’t be so quick with the gag reflex. Possibly, you’re conditioned to respond to associations you make inside yourself–like like a person who once was poisoned by bad tunafish and now thinks all tuna are bad.

  • Liam_McGonagle

    Tell you what, both of my parents are Tea Baggers. I’m #6 of 6 kids still living, and only two of us escaped drinking the kool aid. All of this on top of the real-time Ron Johnson experience in Wisconsin.

    So, no, this isn’t some type of make-believe sterile lab environment. I know for a damn fact how crazy these people are, so you forget any sales pitches. Heard it all before and not wasting any more time on it. Full stop.