re: #383 HappyWarrior

The origins of the modern American right really are something to look at.

Here’s a bit from Wikipedia that doesn’t seem dated at all:

A transcript of Welch’s two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new member receiving a copy. According to Welch, “both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country’s sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a ‘one-world socialist government.’” Welch saw collectivism as the main threat to western culture, and American liberals as “secret communist traitors” who provided cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with a one-world socialist government. “There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general,” he wrote, “but Communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction.”