1. The abolition of the graduated income tax.As Tristero over at Hullabaloo points out, these were key goals of the Bircher's, and again are key goals of the current Bush Republicans.
2. The repeal of social security legislation.
3. The impeachment of various high government officials,
4..The end to busing for the purpose of school integration.
5. The end to U.S. membership in the United Nations.
As you can see, these goals, which were, 40 years ago, the platform of an extremist group on the fringes of American politics, are the all but spoken platform of the Bush administration and the modern Republican party. We have seen numerous attempts to eliminate the income tax; Bush has proposed changes to Social Security that will send it down the road to extinction; Bill Clinton was impeached and Governor Gray Davis of California removed from office; the busing issue has morphed into an intense focus of the easier-to-frame affirmative action; and the Bush administration, on the issue of Iraq and in many other ways, great and small, has worked assiduously to bypass the United Nations and make the actions of the UN worthless (see this notorious article by Perle for a neo-Bircher perspective.)
The Bircher's were conspiracy-driven crackpots who, when elected to office, performed as poorly as the current Republicans do. Nelson Bunker Hunt was a well-known Texas Bircher, and a close friend of George H. W. Bush. Hunt was a model for the right-wing extremist multimillionaires who have financed so mush of the modern Republican Party.
One of those right-wing extremist multimillionaires in Texas has been Bob Perry, famous as the founder and funder of the Swift Boat organization that savaged John Kerry in 2004. I don't find that he was a Bircher, but he is quite as extremist at they are and knows a lot of them. His organization is Council for National Policy, a group of wealthy ultra-conservatives and Texas Theocrats Nelson Bunker Hunt is an ex-President of the CNP.
CNP was founded in 1981 by by Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind series of books. Other member of the CNP have been Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, Robert Grant, Howard Phillips, a former Republican affiliated with the Constitution Party, Richard Viguerie, the direct-mail specialist. CNP is a major force in the Dominionist Movement and many of the members are known Christian Reconstructionists. Other ex-Presidents of the CNP have been Amway co-founder Richard DeVos of Michigan, Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, Paul Pressler of Houston, and former Reagan Cabinet secretaries Ed Meese and Donald Hodel, as well as current president Kenneth Cribb.
One more interesting connection: Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, USA is another of the ultra right-wing millionaires and whose sister, Betsy DeVos is married to Dick DeVos of the Amway fortune.
The John Birch Society represents even today the extremist right-wing fringe in America. The Council for National Policy carries forward the goals and methods of the Birchers, and is a nexus between the older Birchers and the ultra-right-wing Social Conservatives.
Oh, and Ron Paul knows a lot of John Birchers and considers them well-educated and good people.
For further ideological connections among the descendants of the John Birch Society, see:
- CNN’s Beck thinks John Birch Society is making ‘more and more sense’ from the Carpetbagger Report,
- Thank God for the death of the UN
by Richard Perle, and (connected through the CNP) - Rapture Ready
by Rick Perlstein.
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