John Birch Society - How are we different?
by Arthur R. Thompson, JBS CEO
July 2010
Our members are often asked how we are different from other organizations when they are trying to recruit new members into our educational army.
It is the differences that set us apart from the rest of the field of constitutional and morally-centered organizations. These differences are what have invited Insider attacks on The John Birch Society, and the more subtle, constant propaganda attack on us within the conservative movement injected by agents of the Insiders.
Our Society cannot be successful without members; it is that simple. So the attacks leveled at us must discourage membership by any means possible if the Insiders are to succeed. One of the most successful lies injected into the conservative movement has been that people will be more effective without Society membership.
Since it is organization that will win out in the long run, the exact opposite of the above is true.
Some good people feel that they can be more effective by staying out of The John Birch Society in the face of controversy. They have fallen for the oldest trick of the Insiders. There is no comfort zone for true opposition to the collectivist onslaught.
Let us enumerate the basic differences that set us apart.
Leadership
We provide more services and programs than other organizations simply because we are an umbrella organization. We were not formed to be a single-issue organization. We were formed to give the entire movement leadership and direction which it did not have prior to Robert Welch.
When Robert Welch formed The John Birch Society there were approximately 4,000 so-called conservative organizations, each doing its own thing, rarely uniting in a common cause and when they did it was without real organization with active local units working with a central plan and leadership. It remains the same today.
Individualists remain individualists while collectivists organize.
In fact, the history of fighting evil and collectivism over the centuries by the lovers of liberty has been a record of disorganization on the part of patriots. Good and individualism triumphed usually due to evil and collectivism’s mistakes, infighting, and the exhaustion of the particular civilization and collectivism’s subsequent collapse due to the inevitable results of such a system.
Since we were founded by Robert Welch to give leadership and direction to the entire movement, we have to look at everything. This does not mean we get involved in everything. We have to take a look at what is the most important and dwell on those things as activities. Likewise, we look at the weaknesses in the programs and organization of those who wish to drive a dagger through the Constitution and focus our efforts there.
In this manner, we can concentrate our small forces at a point of the other side’s weakness which will give us a better chance for ultimately routing them with an important defeat in their agenda.
We also need to focus on the long term rather than the short term. In other words, we need to work on things that will have a decisive effect down the road, and will be a major roadblock to the Insider agenda. Just as the Insiders plan out years in advance, we need to do likewise.
While it is true that we have and will continue to address a wide multitude of current issues and news in our media outlets, it will be for informational purposes and temporary activity, such as constituent pressure on a particular issue. Organizational and action programs will be something else and will be handled in the manner outlined above.
No other organization on our side is really what one could call an organization in the fullest sense. We mean no criticism of others; we simply are trying to point out weaknesses that have caused the movement to be less effective and why the Society had to be formed in the first place to fill a vacuum that existed — and still would without our existence.
The Americanist movement has never really studied the conspiratorial organizations of the one-world socialists and why they are successful. Everyone assumes that they are successful simply due to their secrecy and the deliberate dumbing down of the people. While these things benefit them, they are not the reason for their success. Their success comes about primarily because they are organized right down to the neighborhood level and are monolithic in their leadership.
They have a central command, if you will. They all work on the same thing at the same time. In this manner they are concentrating their efforts all across the broad landscape of the country, indeed the world, on the same thing at the same time. This creates a synergy and seeming widespread agreement in their program even though it emanates from a very small group of people, albeit a more and more influential group, since they have created a myriad of front groups.
The Society does likewise, except for the secrecy aspect and the fact that we stand for the Constitution and the liberal arts underpinning of that document which we refer to as Americanism: the American system of liberty.
Organization
The John Birch Society is organized with members who engage in group activity through a network of chapters.
Members, working in unison with a national program and leadership, create a dynamic synergy in local communities through concerted action as they work both as individuals and together on our programs.
To be able to build this style of organization, finance it, and run it, entails a great deal of effort and not a little frustration when having to deal with individualists who all know the best ways in which to attack the enemy, educate the people, formulate the websites, what colors to use in the magazine, and a multitude of other differences.
Most other leaders do not want this level of labor, stress, financial, and personal burden.
Social networking and with it a proliferation of new services online providing instant communications among huge numbers of people is an astonishing development in our lifetime. The upside is the ability to disseminate information outside of the insider-controlled media to millions; also, to coordinate any number of people into some form of action. The downside is that the Internet could be used in a vacuum, in exclusion of the boots on the ground that are a prerequisite for saving our freedom. Yet, the Internet, properly used as a communications and organizational tool, can facilitate and orchestrate far more boots-on-the-ground activity than otherwise would be possible.
The Internet can give the semblance of organization, but while it is no substitute for personal interaction, it may be used to set the stage for personal interaction. Recent studies of the desires of people who are online indicate that they wish to deal with people in a personal manner rather than online.
We must utilize the web but build personal relationships in our local areas at the same time. The reasons are:
1. Trust. Only through trust can we rely on our neighbors and they in us. In a system of freedom, this is absolutely necessary.
2. Reliance. This is built on trust. In times of crisis, you will rely on those you know, have worked with, and have depended on.
3. Respect. You respect those with whom you have a personal relationship. During times of crisis, people will look to those they know and respect for leadership and advice, and work with them.
4. Local governance. Local government requires the idea of neighborhoods rather than a nebulous community. Local control and rights will deteriorate the more people in their local community are strangers who do not work together to maintain local control and rights.
2. Reliance. This is built on trust. In times of crisis, you will rely on those you know, have worked with, and have depended on.
3. Respect. You respect those with whom you have a personal relationship. During times of crisis, people will look to those they know and respect for leadership and advice, and work with them.
4. Local governance. Local government requires the idea of neighborhoods rather than a nebulous community. Local control and rights will deteriorate the more people in their local community are strangers who do not work together to maintain local control and rights.
Paul Revere would be a failure in today’s fractured society. He built up trust by working with people in the outlying communities of Boston so that on the night of his famous ride, the people didn’t say it’s some nut yelling something about the British, and then roll over and go back to sleep. They said, “Oh, it’s Paul, we have to muster” — because they knew and trusted him.
The same applies to the dissemination of information, particularly in a situation where the information is conflicting. Who do you listen to and take advice from, a stranger or someone you know and trust?
Why do we need social networking online? Except in rural America, we live in a socially fractured society. We need networking to make social connections within a fractured society. We can either allow the social online community to further fracture our local communities, or we can use it as a tool to make the necessary contacts to rebuild relationships. It is not an “either-or” world.
So while we will be using the Internet, we must at the same time promote as much as possible the interaction of people in their neighborhoods and cities, particularly through our chapters.
Our members are asked to plan local outreach programs to family, peers, and opinion molders. Too often, we see other organizations hold events but not spend the time, energy, and money in building a broad base of understanding through a true outreach program. We mean no disrespect in our remarks, it is usually due to the fact that they have never studied what it takes to really achieve victory through the use of organization and what outreach really means.
It is difficult to build understanding in a community unless you have local units of organization.
Morally Based
To preserve our heritage means engaging in moral responsibility and this is not well understood in today’s society.
Our motto, “Less Government, More Responsibility, and —with God’s Help — a Better World,” embodies what we stand for. The responsibility aspect means responsibility across a broad spectrum, not just individual responsibility. More often than not, individual responsibility is carried out through group action: your family, church, business, civic club, social clubs, local government, etc.
Now to state that we are morally based as a reason that we stand apart can sometimes raise eyebrows since there are many morally based organizations in existence. But the vast majority of them are tax-deductible entities which cannot engage in action. They can educate, but cannot participate or they will lose their tax deductible status.
This is why Robert Welch founded The John Birch Society as a not-for-profit, but not tax-deductible, corporation. In this manner we can engage in action and as a private corporation, keep our membership and donors confidential.
Some groups are quite large when judged by the membership and supporters. This makes them look more successful than they really are. While these organizations stand for much of what we stand for, the difference is that large groups can readily grow when their membership is asked to do very little in the way of outreach. It is again, that comfort zone. Our whole process is based on outreach, constantly building the base of understanding.
Moral responsibility includes taking responsibility to pass on our heritage to our children, to get involved, as well as preserving a moral community.
Robert Welch often quoted James Anthony Froude, who said, “Morality, when vigorously alive, sees farther than intellect, and provides unconsciously for intellectual difficulties.” Robert Welch often pointed out that the decline in morality was the worst danger that we face as a nation.
We see a dangerous development within some of the younger organizations that seem to eschew the notion of a moral basis for our battle. Another is that too many while professing a love of the Constitution are embracing New Age ideas that will ultimately call into question the very foundations of the Constitution.
We could win the fight to get rid of the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and myriad economically based problems and in the end still lose if we did not
address moral issues at the same time. For John Adams said it well when he stated, “The Constitution is for a moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
We must have people who understand that our rights come from God and that it is the primary purpose of our government to protect those rights. And, quite simply, if there is a God, and we firmly affirm that there is, then God must have his standards. This is where everyone gets into trouble, for no two men fully agree what they are anymore than spouses always agree.
We, in The John Birch Society, have drawn a circle of faith to protect these God-given rights, wide enough for almost all of us to step inside — encompassing the Ten Commandments — and work together. For if we do not work together, we surely will hang together.
As a result of this faith, we steadfastly oppose abortion, and many other moral problems that, in the long run, destroy civilization.
And there can be no doubt that the deterioration of our civilization would be much slower than it has been if it was not being pushed in that direction by a Master Conspiracy.
Exposing Conspiracy
When it comes to conspiracy, the Insiders have done a fair job of trying to get people to do one of two things: pooh-pooh any thought of conspiracy, or to think that everything is a conspiracy. The latter helps feed the outlook of the former by the outrageous ideas of some conspiracy-exposing groups. We will not go into what I am addressing here other than to say that when it is obvious to all but a handful that some conspiracies simply do not exist, the promotion of such ideas hurts the exposure of the real conspiracy.
Likewise, the communist infiltration into conservative circles to promote unproven conspiracies is damaging the whole idea of exposing the real conspiracy.
The exposure of the Master Conspiracy in a responsible manner is very important to the future understanding of our citizens. What we see happening is not as the result of ignorance or mistakes on the part of our politicians, academics, generals, and others. It is the result of a secret organization that has created a systematic web of groups and parties to bring about a power structure that they believe they will rule.
People have been fooled into thinking that the march toward socialism is for the benefit of the people. Surely, one would think that the examples of socialism under Hitler and Stalin would suffice to show this error.
The problem is that on the way toward total power, some of the people benefit by programs designed to accumulate that power, such as the welfare, government retirement, and healthcare programs. They do not understand that once total power is in place, all will be forced to work for the state or die, either through mass starvation or by shorter means. People cannot believe that those coming into power are as cruel as they are — until it is too late.
Even if they do not intend to become cruel, the cardinal rule is that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Hitler and Stalin were always shown to be men of the people, posing with little children bearing flowers, even while they were actually recluses and standoffish from the common man. Their image was projected through propaganda machines which we call, in our case, the establishment media. Once total power was established, the velvet gloves came off.
Hitler and Stalin were only singular men. How did they come to power? By organizing, and hiding their evil purpose. Even when they wrote books and published exactly what they were going to do, it was done in language designed to hide the horror of their intentions.
People want to believe the best of their leaders. We have to educate them into believing more in the Constitution and how Jefferson explained, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Experience
And this is where experience pays off. We know the players. We know their strategy. We know the wiles of seemingly good solutions that lead either to dead ends or the destruction of the Constitution. We have dealt with
these things for over 50 years.
There is plenty of “experience” available if one thinks only in terms of the issues. Down through the ages, great men have left us a vast legacy of common sense and sound philosophy in books, in addition to Scripture. It should be obvious that the promotion of unsound policies and programs that lead ultimately to totalitarianism are wrong. Why then are these unsound policies promoted if the reason is for the good of the people?
It cannot be that it is due to the lack of education on the part of those promoting such policies. It cannot be that the wisdom of the ages has not been provided to them, either through their education or on the part of people who do understand and have sent these works to them to educate them away from their “mistakes.” Power-hungry men have decided the course they will take.
We are not dealing with issues, what we are dealing with are people. Evil people conspire together to organize themselves into positions of power. It has always been so. Over the centuries, just as good people have written down sound philosophy, the evil of the world have written how to accumulate power and sell it as something good to an unsuspecting populace.
Human nature does not change, but each new generation believes itself to be different, that they will not repeat the “mistakes” of the past. People have a hard time believing that their generation can produce the evil they only see in the history books and not before their very eyes.
In addition, much has been written over time on how to infiltrate whatever group, government, or publication that may stand in the way of the accumulation of power and misdirect them, subtly or overtly. This too, requires organization.
To recognize these problems and to deal with them takes a particular mindset and years of accumulated experience to recognize the players, especially those who ingratiate themselves into conservative groups, then take them off target. In the last two years, we have seen three notable instances of people professing conservative values but having a history of leftist involvement trying to move into positions of influence within constitutionalist groups. In only one of these cases was the attempt completely thwarted — an attempt to infiltrate The John Birch Society.
Experience counts
And so does the manner in which we are organized. For we also have another very important reason that we keep our chapters small. The reason is if something does get by us and we are infiltrated, the only damage they can do is minimal based in the size of the unit they are able to influence.
Experience will continue to count more and more now that a close confidant of Obama in the administration, Cass Sunstein, head of an Orwellian sounding agency, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has written a paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — and others — which advocate that we are victims of a conspiracy within the government.
It will take all the differences we see between ourselves and other groups to enable us to provide leadership and direction to the entire movement. Not only as to the problems we face, but more importantly, their solutions.
This is why Robert Welch formed us as a very different style of organization. One that can get the job done, provided we mean business every step of the way.
SOURCE:
John Birch Society
http://www.jbs.org/
We need to make it as small as possible. 
