Low Comedy

Powerline expresses concern over what it calls the "return" of the John Birch Society. I don't think the Birchers ever went away, but they've certainly been in abeyance for, oh, about 30 years. Still, they were out there with a card table at C-PAC this year, something Powerline does not like at all: The Return of the John Birch Society

National Review sought to separate the JBS from the conservative movement with a "root-and-branch attack" in October 1965. That month NR published a special section of the magazine denouncing the JBS in contributions by Buckley as well as NR senior editors James Burnham and Frank Meyer, along with endorsement letters by leading conservative figures including Goldwater himself. Hart describes the opening of the special section ("The Background") as "an act of war" that "takes no prisoners."

Bill Buckley provided his own account of related events in Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, excerpted here by Commentary. The JBS responded in its inimitable style here.

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference is a great event attended by just about everybody who is anybody in the conservative movement. It also attracts a lot of college students who aspire to make a contribution to the movement.

ABC's Jonathan Karl reports that this year's CPAC event was co-sponsored, unbelievably to me, by the John Birch Society. Karl quotes some of Buckley's characteristically vibrant denunciations of the JBS. "Two years after Buckley's death," Karl observes, "the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC."

Karl reasonably asks: "Why is the Birch Society a co-sponsor?"

"They're a conservative organization," according to Lisa Depasquale, the CPAC Director for the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. "Beyond that," she told Karl, "I have no comment."

Additional comment is required, and if Depasquale will not provide it, I will. This is a disgrace.

A disgrace? Nah. I would call this an embarrassment, not a disgrace. Birchers are not obviously deranged. As you can see, their website looks good and mostly references their anti-communist, anti-statist agenda. I couldn't find any references to Birther (Birther not Bircher) theories, which is a much more immediate threat to the intellectual reputation of conservatives.

Still, Birchers are always one conversation from veering into the tall weeds. I happened upon an MSNBC report - sorry, I was looking for curling updates - and caught a Rachel Maddow "interview" with Bircher John McManus, who was representing JBS at C-PAC. The interview (which is on the JBS website) was typical of the genre. It took Maddow about 5 seconds to get around to asking about fluoridation of the water supply*, at which point McManus perked up. You see, (snicker, snicker) the Birchers think that fluoridation of the water supply (chortle, chortle) is a big commie big plot (haw!), and they've got all sorts of pamphlets and videos on the subject. Pretty stupid, right? (Big laffs!). So, yeah, Birchers are an easy way for progressives in the media to make conservatives in general look like idiots. Then again, lefty jokes about "our precious bodily fluids" are getting pretty long in the tooth. You have to wonder if anyone even understood what Maddow was getting at.

Look, JBS has everything you need to be a non-profit advocacy group in the 21st century: a website, a cute logo, an on-line bookstore, a bunch of pamphlets, a media saavy spokeman (McManus gave every indication of pulling Maddow's leg), and some $$. And they were a "co-sponsor" of C-PAC. Big deal. So were 100 other groups. I would guess you become a sponsor by filling out a form and paying a few thousand dollars. That will get you a table in the exhibit hall and your name in the program. It will not buy you influence, and (most important) it will not get you invited to speak at any of the events. JBS can pass out their pamphlets and sell their videos, but their ability to actually influence conservatives is pretty limited inasmuch as their cause (anti-communism) is no longer as salient as it once was.

At their height in the early Sixties, the Birchers had enough presence and influence to apparently embarrass Goldwater and draw the ire of Bill Buckley.** But, like the Klan and the American Communist Party, the Birchers' influence is not what it once was, even if they have never quite gone away. At this point, the worst thing you could do is pay attention to them and "read them out" of the conservative movement again. Guys like this thrive on their infamy, as much as anything else. They are insignificant, and best dealt with by treating them as such.

*For you youngsters out there, JBS was notorious for objecting to fluoridation of the water supply on the ground that it was a commie plot. Indeed, this is probably what JBS is most known for. Still, whether because of JBS or something else, a lot of people were suspicious of fluoridation. When I moved to the US in the Seventies, the gov't was still running PSA's about this.

**Around the same time, National Review also "read" Ayn Rand out of the conservative movement. Like JBS, she has also experienced a revival in the last couple years. Hmmmm.