This is a three-part series on The John Birch Society and the impact that it has played and will play in the future.

Part 1.

The John Birch Society was born in adversity. Founder Robert Welch knew that we had an uphill battle to save personal liberty, national independence, and the U.S. Constitution. He also knew that when the enemies of freedom noticed our results, we would be in for a hard time. Accordingly, he had to organize the Society not only to work to preserve America, but to withstand the subsequent onslaught.

Even though Mr. Welch knew that the positive task of working to promote freedom and preserve our American system had to supply our main motivation, it was not enough. We would also have to embark on the negative campaign of destroying the evil forces who are seeking to end American liberty and to substitute their rule.

Convincing good people of the need for the former would be relatively easy; convincing them of the latter would be the difficult aspect of our program. Further, imbuing them with the willingness to do what is right, simply because it is right, would be another hurdle.

For our thousands of new members, I am delighted to share this perspective with you. It is also a pleasure to provide a refresher for our veteran members whom I happily salute.

On July 11, 1961, the U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary published The New Drive Against The Anti-Communist Program. It mentions The John Birch Society 14 times.

This report documented the fact that the destruction of the rising anti-communist movement in the United States had become of paramount importance to the world communist organization run through Moscow.

The John Birch Society was less than two years old when the Soviet leaders and their Insider bosses recognized the danger to their very existence from our Society.

Let me quote two short paragraphs from the last page of the report:

Never since the virulent days of Goebbel’s "hate" propaganda, has anything appeared in the United States comparable to a … booklet…put out by the Communist Party of the United States in connection with its drive to smoother the expanding anti-Communist movement in this country.

The…booklet is entitled "The Fascist Revival," and purports to tell "the inside story of the John Birch Society." The author is Mike Newberry, another Worker specialist in unbridled smear.

The Worker was, at the time, the official organ of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA.)

The communists held a Congress of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in late 1960. There, the then current dictator of the USSR, Khrushchev, said that the only thing standing in their way to victory was the rising tide of organized anti-communism in the USA.

What had already taken place was that the JBS had enlisted a broad base of opinion molders to stop the trip of President Dwight Eisenhower to Russia. It was to have been a reciprocal visit following Khrushchev's visit to the USA.

It was part of a plan to open up Russia to the West just as Nixon was to open up China by his trip there a little over a decade later.

The action of the JBS threw a monkey wrench into a grandiose plan that the Insiders had spent a great deal of time and effort putting together - ruined by this little group called The John Birch Society.

W. Cleon Skousen, a former assistant to the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stated that a former member of the National Committee of CPUSA told him: "The Communist leaders look upon the stamping out of The John Birch Society as a matter of life and death for the Party."

The non-violent tool that has always been used down through the ages by totalitarians to destroy their opposition has been the use of smear. This has usually worked well since most of their opposition has been individuals or small groups who lacked the capability to withstand the onslaught of invective. Sometimes these smears were so broad in scope that they became fact in the minds of the people and history in the school books.

The deep study of American history is very different from what you will find in the schools and universities. Vital information has been left out of "history," and one needs literally to read hundreds of books to glean just a glimpse of how the American people have been manipulated in the past as an indication of what we need to know for the present and future.

The smear against our Society was launched in February 1961 in the West Coast communist newspaper, People's World. This was followed in short order by a smear in Time magazine, which was then and now edited by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) members. From there, it was rapidly picked up by the rest of the CFR-influenced media.

The smear was so widespread that it was not unusual to have 700 or more attacks on the Society per day for months at a time. Most were done in ignorance, just placing articles off the newswires into magazines and newspapers — newswires controlled by CFR members.

News sources in our country at that time were controlled by only five or six major sources. Today the Internet and additional sources make total control difficult.

Our organization was just barely two years old when the smear was launched and was even younger when the decision was made to destroy us. What caused the communists and CFR-types to notice our efforts and thus fear us?

Incredibly, a small cadre of Birchers was scaring a vast army that had killed tens of millions and were yet to kill more millions! On the surface, it made no sense until you realized that for the first time in history, the forces of freedom had become organized in the real sense of the term: down to the neighborhood level, on a volunteer basis, on a national scale, monolithic, with a singular focus, and with staff assistance at the local level.

You might ask the question: if the forces of freedom were never organized, than how did our Forefathers succeed in our War for Independence? The American colonists had Committees of Correspondence, which were a loose-knit number of individuals more than an organization. In addition, almost all of their effort was carried out by local and colonial members of government. Indeed, the legislatures and assemblies declared independence and fought the War under the Continental Congress. In other words, it was not a volunteer grassroots effort in the modern sense. Even the militias were recognized community organizations as part of local government. Much of the success then stemmed from it being a military conflict, not the kind we have today.

One of the serious problems during the war was the arguing about this and that to the point where the effort almost fell apart before the colonies came together as a single country.

Our Society, on the other hand, is organized so that we concentrate on the problems and solutions rather than holding conventions.

Once you recognize the synergy of such an organization and have been involved in it, you can then see the results from the action of organized people when so many others cannot figure out what is going on. People who cannot see the work of the invisible communist organization also fail to see the contravening good work of The John Birch Society.

Whenever you see change, you should understand that someone or some group is behind it. Change does not happen by accident.

And in 1960 the communists and Insiders above them could see the potential results of our Society’s work, and that is why they knew right away that they had opposition of a kind they had never experienced before.

The only other attempt to produce this kind of force was led by Alexander Hamilton. At the time of his duel with illuminist Aaron Burr, he was formulating plans for a Christian Constitution Party which would have been primarily educational rather than strictly a political party.

Hamilton was not a perfect man, who is? But much of what people think of him today results from the conspiratorial smear against him. The argument can be made that a national bank that he favored was necessary due to the condition of our country at the time and the need to establish a federal government. Certainly, the bank continued long after its initial need was met and should have been dissolved long before it was ended. But do not think for an instant that the money power was dissolved; it simply went to Andrew Jackson’s friends and has remained among their sucessors ever since.

In any case, Hamilton wanted to start the Christian Constitution Party primarily as an education-driven entity to counter the French Illuminist revolutionary organization, the Jacobins, that had captured much of the imagination of early Americans. As these like-minded dupes fell under the sway of the Francophile propaganda and smear, they worked against George Washington, John Adams, and their administrations.

It was this sinister French Illuminist influence that started the factions which led to the political party system that Washington distrusted.

The way history and some libertarians treat Hamilton today would make him out to have been a minion of the very conspiracy we fight today. That, or the idea that he desired to replace one totalitarian regime for another. Without a broad understanding of the problems of establishing an entirely new government, and to do so while others have been organized to bring our fledgling country into the Illuminist orbit, you cannot understand the actions of many men during the period.

Imagine, if you will, a substantial crowd in Philadelphia looking for Washington and Adams to hang them. This crowd had been organized and whipped up by the Jacobin Clubs. Adams barricaded his home and armed his servants, afraid for his life. You have probably never read about this in your history books.

While all of us could disagree with some of Hamilton’s aims and personal life, plus the fact that he overreacted to the Jacobin threat in some ways, he nonetheless appears to be the only historic figure who was going to try and form a permanent volunteer organization to oppose conspiratorial forces in America.

Until Robert Welch, the Founder of The John Birch Society came along.

The genius of Robert Welch was not just that he could speak several languages, recite a poem he had read once 50 years before, that he was a brilliant mathematician, that he possessed a library containing tens of thousands of books, or that he could play chess with the best of them. It was also that he understood the only way to defeat the conspirators was by out-organizing and exposing them.

His plan was simple: first put feet under superior arguments in book, film, and newsprint ― in other words, educate people, particularly opinion molders. Then at the same time offer and implement solutions through a grass-roots organization from coast to coast – and as we grow and start to have a large effect on the American scene and even spread out overseas with the message of what we call "Americanism." For if we did not take the fight overseas, these sanctuaries would prove to be havens for the conspiracy from which its members would try to continue to subvert our independence and freedom as they had attempted to do in the first place.

Mr. Welch understood that the revolutionary Jacobins continued their work through the centuries — evolving into an American branch of the Carbonari called Young America (a vibrant socialist movement in the 1830s); then the communist movement in the 1850s; then the Brotherhood and all the fronts it produced. All the modern problems and organizations we experience today sprang from this Jacobin wellhead ― including Islamic terrorism.

And, all of this faced practically no countering volunteer opposition of any significance.

What small non-government opposition that appeared was a false opposition rather like a hand of the same body. Conspirators infiltrated and assumed leadership roles in any opposition that might rear its head, getting the right hand to fight the left hand, thereby neutralizing real opposition before it even got started. The classic American example would be the Anti-Masonic Party formed to fight a perceived Masonic threat, real or unreal. In this case, conspirators formed the Party to fight what they claimed was a conspiracy!

The men who started the Anti-Masonic Party went on to run the U.S. governemnt some years later. One of these men was Thaddeus Stevens, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and an arch American Insider.

In spite of all that occurred at a time when there was no real organized opposition to subversion, there were a number of factors that saved our liberty. The overriding one was the educational base of the average American. Ultimately, this layer of strength was eroded by the organized dumbing down of American education based on the Illuminist Pestalozzi and his American disciples.

Many believe the deterioration of American education started under John Dewey, others look deeper and believe it started with Horace Mann. In reality, it started with George Bancroft, a disciple of Pestalozzi, and the cadre he had around him. Bancroft has been called the father of American history. The Round Hill preparatory school he established to educate the sons of the New England elite is an interesting study in itself, particularly the influential positions later held by some of its graduates.

Even so, after decades of corrupted education, the average American has a much better understanding of liberty and the philosophy undergirding it than do citizens of other countries. And, this layer of strength is being rebuilt today due to the early efforts of The John Birch Society that laid the foundation for sound education in the private and home-schooling sectors.

But to the point, no one figured out that 1) free men were dealing with secret organizations to bring about a consolidation of power into the hands of the conspirators, or 2) they needed to counter the problem with a permanent volunteer organization, at least from the time of Rome to modern America.

The bottom line is that once our Society started to engage the enemies of freedom, we had small but noticeable successes, noticeable especially to the people we battle who best understand organization and its effects. And they started to fight back.

Never forget that we battle people, not ideas. People think up ideas, drive ideas, finance ideas, and organize ideas. Ideas do not grow on trees or waft in on the breezes.

Recognition of this fact has always separated us from other groups that will never name names.

But the real difference that caused the conspiracy to launch its attack on us was how we were ― and are ― organized. The enemy recognized our Society’s potential, and they still fear it as they fear little else.

As an example of the value of organization, while we will use more and more of the modern technology at our disposal such as the Internet, we will prevail in the long run because, even if the Internet is no longer open for use by the forces of freedom, our organization will continue to do what we found successful before the Internet was even thought of, due primarily to our excellent structure of organizing grassroots efforts.

In China, the use of the Internet is forbidden to freedom lovers. Google, a corporate member of the CFR, seems quite happy with the arrangement they have with the communist Chinese government. And, we have seen cyber attacks on Internet systems by the Russians on Baltic states as well as Georgia to help defeat their enemies.

There may come a time when they will launch a cyber attack on effective opposition in these United States.

We, the JBS, have already experienced problems with website hackers on more than one occasion and we will likely experience them again. But those who launch cyber attacks against us are unaware of our real strength. Our website is what people see, but the effectiveness of our chapters are not so readily apparent.

Our local Chapters are designed to be a force that can operate independently if need be. The structure of Coordinators and volunteer leaders can spread the word, so to speak, outside the normal means of communication, just as we have always done.

Even if the headquarters of The John Birch Society should no longer be functioning, the chapter structure could still carry on due to our members’ knowledge and understanding.

Our Society is not based on personality, or on grants from some foundation, political party, or special interest. It is based on an altruistic desire to pass on our heritage of liberty to our children. As a result, our members will never quit; they will find a way to continue on.

This is what makes it so important that we establish personal relationships with opinion molders, so that in the time of crises, we can maintain our influence where it counts.

And this is only the beginning of why we are feared by the enemies of freedom.