The John Birch Society is back in a big way thanks to Glenn Beck, Fox News and the Tea Party.

Confounding Fathers - The Tea Party’s Cold War roots.

The popularity of Beck’s broadcasts, which now reach two million viewers each day, has brought neo-Birchite ideas to an audience beyond any that Welch or Skousen might have dreamed of. Several times a week, Beck informs his audience that socialists (whom he also sometimes calls Fascists or Communists) led by Obama have seized power, and that patriotic Americans must take their country back. His TV show for some time featured “Comrade Updates,” in which Beck described perfidy while the Soviet anthem played in the background. He attacks all the familiar bogeymen: the Federal Reserve System (which he asserts is a private conglomerate, unaccountable to the public); the Council on Foreign Relations (born of a “progressive idea” to manipulate the media in order to “let the masses know what should be done”); and a historical procession of evildoers, including Skousen’s old target Colonel House and Welch’s old target Woodrow Wilson.

It’s a lengthy read but worth the effort. Especially the second half of the article which discusses how the Republicans recovered from the last infestation of these nutty extremists.

Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it.