My monthly column for my hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
Back in 2009, a
friend saw a tea party rally on Fox News and asked me, “Where did these
crazy people come from, the John Birch Society?” She was joking, but
like all the best jokes, this one was grounded in reality.
Wrapped in the Flag, a
new book by Claire Conner, chronicles her life as the daughter of
parents who were immersed in extreme right-wing politics as founding
members of the John Birch Society in the 1950s to the present.
Conner combines her
insider perspective and detailed research to illuminate the “Birchers,”
as they were known. The organization was founded in 1958, when Conner
was a teenager, and grew directly from Joe McCarthy’s paranoid
accusations that Communists were infiltrating the United States
government. Birchers focused not on the reality of Communism in the
world, but on fabricating Communism where it didn’t exist. Most famously
(and most ridiculously), they accused moderate Republican President
Dwight Eisenhower of being a Communist sympathizer.
In addition to seeing
Communists lurking in every shadow, Birchers were virulently opposed to
immigration, homosexuality, civil rights, Social Security, public
education and pretty much any government action to help American
citizens. They espoused devout Christianity and adherence to the
Constitution (or their own twisted versions of Christianity and the
Constitution).
They revered big
business and the wealthy while dismissing unemployed and poor people as
victims of their own laziness. And they believed that the constitutional
concept of “we the people” applied primarily to white male property
owners.
When Conner saw the tea
party reaction to the election of President Obama, she recognized the
same forces that propelled the John Birch Society and their related
right-wing compatriots. History repeats itself — a cliché to be sure,
but an accurate one. Unfortunately, in American politics, people have
trouble remembering the last administration, let alone events five
decades ago, so Conner’s book is particularly welcome.
As a memoir, Wrapped in
the Flag combines coming-of-age and dysfunctional-family motifs.
Conner traces her own life from childhood to maturity as she reacts to
what can only be described as her parents’ political insanity. These
parents make her both a pariah in school and a frustrated adult who
tries her best to care for them as they age, despite their continuing
tone-deaf attempts to convert her to their extremist views as they
accuse her of being a brainless liberal.
Conner also presents
her own political journey from dipping a toe into supporting right-wing
candidates to anti-abortion activism and anti-gay leanings to a
left-of-center moderate whose views ultimately grow from her experiences
as a parent herself.
As a work of political
history, Wrapped in the Flag is at its best. She takes us on a
true-life expedition into the fever swamp world of wingnuttery. Extreme
views seem to go hand-in-hand with extreme personalities, and her
parents definitely are extreme personalities — as are the many other
Bircher family friends whom Conner writes about, including such infamous
figures as Birch founder Robert Welch, white supremacist Revilo Oliver,
anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly and failed presidential candidate John
Schmitz. She’s even privy to some certified gun nuts and stunning
“family values” sex scandals, showing how little the world of right-wing
politics has changed in 50 years.
Most important, Conner
does her readers the essential service of showing the connections
between the John Birch Society and today’s equally extreme
right-wingers, many of whom have wiggled their way into the mainstream
of American politics far more than their Bircher antecedents.
People like Glenn Beck,
Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ron and Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz,
most of the tea party, and just about everyone on Fox News would be
right at home attending one of the Conner family’s living room Birch
meetings to wail about the impending destruction of America at the hands
of those filthy liberals.
Ultimately, American commonsense prevailed
over the Birchers and other extremists of that era. Wrapped in the
Flag is a cautionary tale that warns us to follow suit and reject those
who would lead our nation on a disastrous rightward lurch.
###
America has learned too little from history. It is not coincidental that there was a comparable proportion of Americans, who feared Commies in the State Department, as now assail the President of the United States as an anti-Christian foreigner. Claire Conner recognizes the relationship of the two demographics.
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