These United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States....
-- Declaration of Independence, 1776

[There is a plan] to induce the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, piece by piece and step by step, to various international organizations -- of which the United Nations is the outstanding but far from the only example....
-- Robert Welch, Founding Meeting of the John Birch Society, Indianapolis, December 8-9, 1958

After his warning in 1958 regarding a plan to surrender American sovereignty to the United Nations, Robert Welch launched the Society's first campaign to expose the UN's sovereignty-destroying potential in April 1959. In February 1962 the Society began selling envelope stickers with the slogan, "Get US out!" This slogan was intended to be understood as "Get US out of the United Nations!" During his years of leadership of the JBS (1958-1983) Robert Welch continued to emphasize the importance of getting the U.S. out of the UN. Many times during the 1970s, Mr. Welch would end the monthly Bulletin to the members with "P.S. Get US out!" The subsequent leaders of the Society have continued to emphasize this issue of getting out of the UN right up to the present day.

Also in February 1962 the JBS began selling the 24-page booklet, "Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament." This booklet was first published by the State Department as a followup to President Kennedy's announcement of our nation's disarmament plan in a speech at the United Nations on September 25, 1961. When the U.S. government let the booklet go out of print in early 1962, the JBS began printing and selling an exact copy of the original. "Freedom From War" is still a stock item in the Society's online bookstore today.

The reason "Freedom From War" has been provided by the JBS for so many years is that it exposes our government's explicit plan already in 1961 to make the U.S. militarily subservient to a UN Peace Force eventually. Here's the key quote:

By the time Stage II has been completed, the confidence produced through a verified disarmament program, the acceptance of rules of peaceful international behavior, and the development of strengthened international peace-keeping processes within the framework of the U.N. should have reached a point where the states [nations] of the world can move forward to Stage III. In Stage III progressive controlled disarmament and continuously developing principles and procedures of international law would proceed to a point where no state [no nation] would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force and all international disputes would be settled according to the agreed principles of international conduct. -- "Freedom From War," 1961

This confirmation in an official 1961 government document of Robert Welch's 1958 warning about a plan to surrender U.S. sovereignty to the UN served to give Mr. Welch extraordinary credibility among the members of the JBS. This extraordinary credibility persists to this day.

Ever since the announcement of our nation's disarmament plan in 1961, the U.S. has followed an implicit policy of subservience to the UN on military matters. For example, even though there was a lot of noisy controversy between the U.S. and other members of the UN over the best policy toward Iraq, when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, our government took great pains to document how it was acting to enforce UN resolutions. The congressional rubber-stamp of President Bush's commencement of war with Iraq also explicitly pointed to the enforcement of UN resolutions as a major justification for the U.S. military attack on Iraq.

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