What’s significant now is that as the fringe blurs with the base, the Birchers are closer to the conservative movement mainstream than they have been in half a century. They were railing against the Federal Reserve long before Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” effort. The neo-isolationist movement has given new encouragement to US out of UN efforts. The 9/11 Truthers parrot longstanding Bircher claims about the sinister New World Order. With the fiscal crisis, more people are willing to listen to tales about colluding bankers trying to undermine capitalism…
The re-emergence of the John Birch Society with a veneer of respectability given to them by co-sponsorship of CPAC is a troubling sign of the times, a decision on par with the National Tea Party Convention giving prime-time speaking slots to Tom Tancredo and WorldNet Daily Editor Joseph Farah. It is an invitation to isolation and ridicule. As a report by the California Attorney General’s office on the John Birch Society in 1961 stated, “In America, preposterousness prevents the acceptance but not the expression of ideas.” The question for those as CPAC: are they tolerating the Birchers? Or accepting them?
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