0:15

Bushkin. I

0:20

want to read to you from a very important

0:23

historical document, the April

0:25

nineteen sixty two edition of

0:28

the wellby Way Elementary School Parent

0:30

Teacher Association newsletter, the

0:33

well Be Buzzings, written

0:35

of course, by the PTA of the

0:37

elementary school in the West Hills area

0:40

of Los Angeles. First

0:43

item, President's message.

0:45

I would like to say thank you to the ladies that work

0:47

so hard on the and this is all in caps

0:50

double parking safety campaign. Second

0:53

item sing along with progress PTA

0:56

meeting for April. Our hostesses will

0:58

be the sixth grade motters. Third

1:00

item a meeting on safety in fire prevention.

1:03

Fourth item an interesting

1:05

and informative trip to the fire station. Fifth

1:08

item the local count council meeting. Key

1:10

detail. It's going to be a luncheon. Are

1:15

you still there? Still awake? Four

1:18

announcements on school safety, a

1:20

fifth on participatory democracy.

1:23

A luncheon. I'm guessing you're poored

1:25

to tears. It's all so

1:27

very PTA. The only things missing

1:30

are the potluck supper, the newspaper

1:32

drive, the book fair. But

1:36

that's where you're wrong. This

1:39

newsletter is, in fact the skeleton key to

1:41

understanding our political moment right

1:44

now, Like this exact moment. If

1:46

you're listening to this episode soon after

1:49

its release, there are two things going

1:51

on in your world, the US presidential

1:53

election between Donald Trump and Kamala

1:55

Harris, and more Halloween

1:57

candy than you know what to do with. Well

2:00

in this episode a story

2:03

that manages to bring both

2:06

together. It all really begins

2:08

with the well Way PTA newsletter from

2:10

April nineteen sixty two, and

2:13

specifically with the sixth

2:15

and final item, the editor's

2:18

message, which begins the

2:21

power to seek the truth is within

2:23

all of us. But there are some who abuse

2:25

this freedom and cloud the answers

2:27

and the issues, so that seeking

2:30

the truth and knowing it is the truth

2:32

becomes a harder task than it was

2:34

ever meant to be. You're

2:38

listening to Revisionist History, my podcast

2:40

about things overlooked and misunderstood.

2:42

I'm Malcolm Goldwell. Here's

2:44

our question, why, in this

2:46

otherwise very dull PTA newsletter

2:49

does the mother who wrote it feel the need

2:51

to write an urgent defense of

2:53

democracy. She doesn't say,

2:57

but as my colleague Bendadaff

2:59

Hafrey discovered, it has to do with a man

3:01

who, perhaps more than almost anyone

3:04

else, is responsible for creating

3:06

the modern style of far right conspiratorial

3:09

thinking running rampant

3:11

today. A man who write,

3:13

at the time that Editor's Note

3:16

was published, held in his hands

3:18

the fate of the PTA

3:20

and American public life. Here's

3:30

Ben.

3:32

The video is grainy, but you can make

3:34

out an older man, late sixties,

3:37

standing in a suit and tie against

3:39

a black backdrop, clasping his

3:41

hands on a lecturn.

3:43

Faithful citizens, wherever you may

3:46

be.

3:47

He's got big ears, a big nose,

3:49

and a high forehead well suited

3:51

to an indignant raising of the eyebrows.

3:54

The media coverage of him lately had given

3:56

him many opportunities to do this. As

3:59

he speaks, the camera pushes in. It's

4:01

a recruitment video.

4:03

It is our deliberate and careful purpose

4:06

to pull together into one group, a

4:09

body of morally good and truly

4:11

responsible citizens who are proud

4:13

of each other and of the society

4:16

to which they belong.

4:18

He then proceeds to reassure his viewers that

4:20

the identities of people in this group are

4:22

never shared with anyone, not least of

4:24

all because their enemies abound.

4:27

The carefully coordinated attacks

4:29

against us from all points of the ideological

4:32

compass have reached a crescendo

4:34

stage since the rest of this year, with

4:37

the surprising but visible result of

4:40

solidifying the dedication

4:42

of our members still further, and

4:45

of stimulating their recruiting efforts.

4:49

This is Robert Welch Junior.

4:52

Consider the facts. He speaks a little

4:54

like a dictator. He seems to run

4:56

some sort of secret society, and consider

4:59

himself public enemy number one. Who

5:02

is this titan? Well,

5:04

naturally he's a candy tycoon.

5:09

Robert Welch Junior was born on

5:11

a former plantation in North Carolina

5:13

just before the turn of the twentieth century.

5:16

As a kid, he was precocious and a

5:18

daydreamer. Wanted to be a writer an

5:21

intellectual, but he felt

5:23

that before he could do so, he had

5:25

to get rich. So one night,

5:27

as a young man, he had a brainstorm.

5:29

According to Edward H. Miller, who wrote a biography

5:32

of Welsh called A Conspiratorial Life,

5:35

Welch stayed up late into the evening, writing

5:37

and writing to answer a single question,

5:40

what specific goods in demand would

5:42

be best for me to start manufacturing without

5:45

either capital or experience. This

5:48

is a quote Miller found from an associate of Welch's

5:50

recalling this legendary moment quote.

5:54

As the sky began to show the first streaks

5:56

of dawn, Robert stared at the

5:58

notes in front of him. One

6:00

word remained amid the maze

6:02

of dark lines scratched across the pages.

6:06

That word was candy.

6:10

We've arrived at the Halloween portion of

6:12

our programming. So if in your

6:15

baskets this year you find the following candies

6:17

Sugar Daddy, Sugar Baby, or the

6:19

Junior Mint, you're encountering a piece

6:22

of the Welsh legacy, and actually

6:24

the legacy of his brother too, who naturally

6:26

also worked in the candy business. The

6:29

Welsh nuclear family of Hit Candies,

6:31

the patriarch of which the Sugar Daddy, I

6:33

have to say I find totally inedible, has

6:36

been a mainstay forever. Children

6:38

of the nineteen eighties may remember the

6:40

jingle for

6:43

Sugar Babby for.

6:47

Sugar Derby.

6:51

Welsh was part of what I've come to think of as

6:53

the American sweets aristocracy.

6:56

I'm talking about a special class of confectioners

6:58

and bakers who turned out to have a surprising

7:01

number of ideas about how society ought to be

7:03

run. In the Pantheon, we

7:05

have Milton Snavely Hershey, whose

7:07

chocolates were so delectable he was able

7:09

to put his social ideas to the test, building

7:12

utopian town called Hershey, Pennsylvania.

7:15

Then there's Sylvester Graham, the clergyman

7:17

who invented the Graham Cracker to combat youth

7:19

masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg,

7:22

the Seventh day Adventist, who invented cornflakes

7:24

to do the same. The candy

7:26

makers, in particular tended to be extremely

7:29

paranoid because there was actually quite

7:31

a bit of spying in their industry. They

7:33

had to guard their secrets, their recipes,

7:36

their fortunes. Some would even

7:38

blindfold the people who repaired their machines.

7:41

But I digress. After

7:44

establishing himself in the candy business and

7:46

drinking deeply at the trough of its paranoia,

7:49

Welch set out to elbow his way into

7:51

the intellectual class, specifically

7:54

the anti communist class. Over

7:57

the years, he wrote a number of articles

7:59

in books about the rise of communism, including,

8:02

per his biographer, a novel about

8:04

inant society oppressed by a monolithic

8:06

state, which somehow went unpublished. But

8:09

it was in nineteen fifty four that

8:11

one of his ideas finally broke

8:13

through.

8:14

He was very secretive about these because

8:16

Welch was always worried

8:20

about the Communists

8:22

as he saw getting a hold of what

8:24

he was saying.

8:26

Historian Matthew Dallak, author

8:28

of the book Birchers, talking about

8:30

Welch's penchant for sending secret

8:32

letters.

8:34

Because they exposed him

8:36

and they damaged you know, the true

8:39

this patriotic movement to destroy

8:41

communism. It

8:44

would be it would basically be like

8:46

killing his movement.

8:48

In the crypt. Now, the

8:50

letter he sent in nineteen fifty four,

8:52

in particular, merited sensitivity.

8:55

It was a roughly nine thousand

8:57

word attempt to explain why

8:59

he disliked Dwight Eisenhower so much,

9:02

the first Republican president in multiple

9:05

decades. The letter built

9:07

to the irrefutable conclusion that Dwight

9:09

Eisenhower was not really a Republican.

9:12

He was quote a dedicated,

9:15

conscious agent of the Communist

9:17

conspiracy, operating under

9:19

the direction of his brother, the affable

9:22

Milton.

9:23

They're really divorced from

9:26

any semblance of the truth. The

9:28

other thing, though, is that the

9:31

argument against Eisenhower I think fits

9:34

into the Joe

9:36

McCarthy argument

9:39

that clearly the setbacks

9:42

in the world for the United States in

9:44

the fight against communism is

9:46

a result of communists in

9:49

the government, including Eisenhower,

9:52

allowing the communists to win.

9:54

Where the ant book had failed, the letter succeeded

9:57

wildly. It ballooned into a

9:59

book that is over four hundred pages

10:01

long, complete with an extremely tedious

10:04

footnote section explaining the sourcing

10:06

for his atlandish claims. As

10:08

Wels once wrote, explanations

10:10

are like government. Nobody loves them,

10:13

but a minimum amount of both is a necessary

10:15

evil. But anyway, Welch

10:18

was not content to mail secret letters the rest

10:20

of his life. He wanted to build

10:22

a movement. So

10:25

four years after that letter, in October

10:28

nineteen fifty eight, Welch brought

10:30

together eleven of his most powerful

10:33

friends to a secret meeting in

10:35

Indianapolis. He didn't say

10:37

what for, but he did tell

10:39

them each to book their own hotel rooms so

10:41

people wouldn't see them together. Then

10:44

he promised them that there was nothing conspiratorial

10:46

about what they were about to do, which was

10:48

to gather in a secret location for two

10:51

days and conspire.

10:54

My undertaking today is to try to tell

10:56

you all about the background, methods, and purposes

10:58

of the John Birg Society.

11:00

This date is from a recruitment video he

11:02

made later on. We don't have a

11:04

recording of what he said that day in Indianapolis.

11:07

I mean, it was a secret meeting, but

11:09

I think it's safe to assume he was on message.

11:12

Welch was there to start a new anti

11:14

communist organization. After all,

11:17

with the Communists already in control of

11:19

the US presidency, the situation was

11:21

getting a little out of hand.

11:23

As we have said many times before, they

11:26

fundamentally decent American mind

11:28

simply refuses to recognize

11:30

the nature of the cunning beasts

11:32

who constitute our enemies today.

11:35

This is especially true when

11:37

these criminal gangsters assume all

11:40

of the suavity and regalire

11:42

of high office.

11:44

Eleven men walked into that room in Indianapolis,

11:47

and the John Birch Society walked out,

11:50

named by the way for an American missionary

11:52

who'd been killed by Chinese communists

11:55

and then became a kind of patron saint for

11:57

people like Robert Welch Junior. These

12:00

were important men with money and time

12:02

to burn and an acts to grind. They

12:04

had Eisenhower's former IRS Commissioner,

12:07

presidents of major companies, a

12:09

former aid to Douglas MacArthur, and

12:11

Fred Koch, oil man and

12:13

father to the Koch brothers, was there

12:15

too.

12:17

I'll wake my friends and our rise now

12:20

I'll be forever fallen. We

12:22

mean business and we can still win, but

12:24

we are in our race against time, with

12:27

the enemy advancing every day.

12:30

Welch knew what he was doing. He took

12:32

his show on the road, giving versions

12:34

of that speech across the country, and

12:36

a lot of the listeners, bored Americans

12:38

rattled by war and freaked out by integration,

12:41

thought hey, this guy's got a

12:43

point. He started with just his

12:46

friends who thought like he did, then his friend's

12:48

friends, and then his friend's friends friends.

12:50

But Welch's dreams were

12:53

always much grander.

12:56

By any realistic appraisal of

12:58

our size against our need, we

13:00

are still very small, but we

13:02

certainly expect our present growth to continue

13:05

until we have the minion members of

13:08

Fervat take and unassailable

13:10

character, which is our goal.

13:13

Despite Welch's vision for one million

13:15

patriots to join the John Birch Society,

13:18

estimates show that the membership was likely

13:20

at an all time high when it hit thirty

13:22

thousand members in the sixties.

13:25

The mission was not explicitly

13:28

to take over a political Party. It

13:31

was not to even

13:33

take over nessilly American institutions.

13:36

It was to wage a mass education

13:38

campaign to allure

13:41

Americans, to educate them

13:43

about the dire nature of

13:45

the communist conspiracy inside

13:48

the United States.

13:50

And so a small but influential group of

13:52

right wingers became convinced that

13:54

there was a war going on at home.

13:57

A continuous, undeclared war

14:00

in which our enemiests observed no

14:02

rules of international law, of civilization,

14:06

or of human decency.

14:09

Was the front in this war. Exactly two

14:12

years after its founding, the Birch

14:14

Society had part of the answer

14:18

the Parent Teacher Association. Of course,

14:24

we'll be right back. The

14:38

bitter Root Valley lies in the

14:40

southwest of Montana, between the

14:42

Sapphire and bitter Root Mountains. It's

14:45

the place they filmed Yellowstone Today. It's

14:47

gorgeous.

14:49

Okay, so small town.

14:52

Gail Laro Munson was a little girl

14:54

growing up in the valley in the nineteen sixties

14:56

in a town called Darby. Back

14:58

then, its population was three hundred

15:01

and ninety eight.

15:02

Close snit neighbors looked out

15:04

for each other. Kids could be out till

15:06

dark and back

15:09

home they would be safe. If

15:11

you were caught doing something wrong,

15:14

the neighbors would let your parents know and

15:16

they'd be ready when you got home.

15:19

Darby was the kind of place where you knew

15:21

everyone, especially if you were in Gale's

15:23

family. Her dad, or Vill Roe

15:25

was the superintendent of the school district.

15:28

But in the early nineteen sixties, strangers

15:31

began to show up in the valley. Orville

15:34

was busy right around then getting new Bibles

15:36

for a local school. Because theres we're all beaten

15:38

up. He asked a local clergyman

15:41

how to get rid of the old ones in a respectful way,

15:43

and he was told to burn them. So he

15:45

gathered up the bibles and set them on fire,

15:49

and all of a sudden, those strangers

15:51

leapt into action. It turned

15:53

out they were part of a club, the

15:56

John Birch Society.

15:59

Merch members appeared at the regular school

16:01

board meeting with a petition.

16:03

Demanding that Larol not be offered

16:05

a new contract.

16:06

It was all over the local radio.

16:09

Majority of the board rejected that demand.

16:11

This action of the board intensified

16:14

an already steady program of intimidation

16:17

against the Row and his family.

16:19

The Butchers, returning Orville's quiet

16:21

life in Derby with his three kids and his wife

16:24

completely upside down. Here's

16:26

Orville.

16:27

There are individuals, of course, the community

16:29

who will drive

16:32

by and make obscene signs.

16:35

There have been an incidents where

16:38

people have called the house my wife

16:40

had answered and have used obscene language

16:43

on the telephone. Basically, it's

16:46

a joy, simple constant

16:48

harassment.

16:50

An archivist in Montana named Kristen

16:52

Gates wrote an essay about all this. She

16:55

found letters from the principle of the local

16:57

school who said the butchers

16:59

were quote using the local

17:02

PTA as a springboard

17:04

to infiltrate the schools.

17:10

Here I'm telling you about what unfolded

17:12

for the LaRose in a tiny town in Montana.

17:15

But they weren't the only people involved

17:18

in local ptas or schools who became targets.

17:21

This is not the case now, but in the nineteen

17:23

sixties, according to one study, almost

17:26

half of all families in America were represented

17:29

in the PTA fifty percent.

17:31

The PTA became such a well known

17:33

part of public life that it was even

17:35

the subject of a number one song

17:38

in the nineteen sixties, Harper

17:40

Valley PTA, and.

17:42

It was signed by the secretary

17:44

Harper Valetta.

17:51

The PTA played a huge role in modernizing

17:53

American education. Every local

17:56

PTA was part of the National PTA,

17:58

which was run out of Washington, and they

18:00

worked together to petition schools to adapt

18:03

and modernize, like a miniature version

18:05

of the federal government. It was actually originally

18:07

called the Congress of Mother Anyways,

18:10

all this paid dividends. If you've

18:12

drunk fluoridated water, which you have

18:15

gotten vaccinated in schools, gone to

18:17

a public kindergarten, or just been at a

18:19

school that received federal funds, you

18:21

can thank the PTA next

18:24

bakesale, maybe by cookie. As

18:27

a sociologist, Robert Putnam writes,

18:29

the PTA in its day was quote

18:32

one of the most impressive organizational

18:35

success stories in American

18:37

history end quote.

18:42

And who at that exact moment wanted to

18:44

pull off another of the most impressive organizational

18:46

success stories in American history Dark

18:49

Willy Wonka Robert Welch Junior,

18:52

whose recruiting methods were slightly

18:54

more apocalyptic.

18:56

The wise and the brave do not hold back

18:59

until it is too late.

19:01

In its newsletter, the John Birch Society

19:03

told its members to quote join

19:05

your local PTA at the beginning of

19:07

the school year, get your conservative

19:10

friends to do likewise, and go to

19:12

work to take it over. You

19:14

will run into real battles against

19:16

determined leftists who have had everything their

19:18

way. But it is time we went on the

19:20

offensive to make such groups the

19:22

instrument of conservative purpose with

19:25

the same vigor and determination that

19:27

the liberals have used to the opposite

19:29

aims. With

19:32

encouragement from the John Birch Society, extremists

19:35

of all stripes started showing up to local

19:37

ptas across the country trying

19:40

to take them over.

19:41

You know, all kinds of methods were being

19:43

used.

19:44

Sarah Heath, a historian at Indiana

19:47

University Kocomo.

19:48

So the Birch Society might pack cars

19:50

full of people, so if I bring

19:53

thirty people to a local

19:55

meeting of a PTA. But

19:57

basically what they would try to do is if I

19:59

can get thirty people to go to this one local

20:01

meeting, we can try to take over

20:04

the proceedings of that meeting.

20:06

Suddenly, amid the conversations about

20:08

fire safety and participatory democracy,

20:11

parents had to consider things like whether skipping

20:13

the pledge of allegiance at the start of a meeting made

20:16

you a Stalin level communist or

20:18

an Eisenhower level one. Such

20:20

considerations, it turned out demand

20:22

quite a bit of everyone's time.

20:24

Because what they wanted to do was first

20:28

get some people to get so tired that they

20:30

would just say, I've got to go home, right.

20:32

PTA meetings are usually in the early evening,

20:35

so some people would leave. Then they called

20:37

the vote, and then they have a majority.

20:41

The virtuers wanted to use the ptas

20:43

to reach school boards so they could change the textbooks

20:45

and root out all the commedy and sex education stuff.

20:48

But a lot of what they did was actual harassment.

20:52

You know. There are examples of

20:54

people throwing trash on the lawns of

20:56

PTA members, or threatening

20:59

people by the phone, calling them

21:01

at all hours of the night, you know,

21:03

just to keep them awake.

21:05

The PTA fought back in classic PTA

21:07

form, with pamphlet and lists of meeting

21:10

best practices, but this was

21:12

a little like bringing knives to a gunfight.

21:14

At this point, there'd even been a report of

21:16

a bombing at a restaurant where a PTA

21:18

meeting was going to be held. This is what

21:21

happens when you talk about national politics,

21:23

like Robert Welch Junior, like you're in

21:25

a shadowy war.

21:27

A continuous, undeclared war

21:30

in which our enemies observed no

21:32

rules of international law of civilization,

21:35

are of human decency.

21:38

The PTA kept pushing back in their own way

21:40

against the virtures. There's even a quote

21:43

from the PTA president in the congressional record

21:45

saying these extremists are

21:47

not really after the PTA, but

21:50

are attempting to gain control

21:52

of it to get at their real objective,

21:55

the educational system. But

21:58

for Orville Row, the superintendent

22:00

in Darby, Montana, these

22:02

extremists weren't some faraway thing. They

22:05

were at his doorstep.

22:07

And I walked home in the evening. At times

22:09

I've had a car follow me. It was

22:12

ordinarily. They apparently are cowards

22:14

because when I stopped

22:17

and gone over to take their license.

22:19

Them and there was how the

22:22

picture.

22:23

But the aggression wasn't just limited

22:25

to Orville. Orville's

22:28

eldest son was the fifth grader in the local

22:30

school. One day, there was a basketball

22:32

game. He was sitting in the stands watching.

22:34

He was not an unpopular kid, but

22:37

midway through the game, a couple of classmates

22:40

walked up to him. They pulled him out

22:42

of his seat and they began to

22:44

beat him mercilessly. This

22:47

is Gail again, his.

22:48

Sister, And when they were

22:50

beating him up, he was at a basketball

22:52

game in the gym and other

22:55

kids were sturing it.

22:57

All the kids weren't Birchers

23:00

all they knew he was Orville,

23:02

the Bible Burner's son.

23:04

Then he's coming into.

23:05

The house and ask pissed why they

23:07

are calling him

23:09

names. I didn't do anything, and

23:12

of course it's rather had to explain it for youngster.

23:14

In that age.

23:16

He came home bloodied. He

23:18

was We were all confused, why you

23:20

know, what did I do? Why did

23:22

this happen?

23:24

The tipping point came when Orvill le Rowe

23:27

was driving his whole family along one

23:29

of the roads around Derby. Suddenly

23:32

another car appeared and tried

23:34

to run them off the road. They

23:37

all could have died, and that was

23:39

the last straw. After years

23:41

of harassment, he decided

23:44

it was time to leave Darby.

23:47

He sacrificed for

23:49

the family. And I know that was a really

23:51

difficult thing to not stay in fight because

23:54

my dad has so much integrity

23:56

and he's a tough guy,

23:59

and if

24:01

he hadn't had a family, I

24:04

firmly believe my brothers and I believe he would

24:06

have stayed and he would have fought this situation.

24:11

The people of Derby had a picnic for the LaRose

24:13

before they packed up and left. Montana

24:16

had been Orville's home since he was a kid, the

24:19

place he'd loved to fish and hunt, taught

24:21

school, and raised a family. When

24:24

the LaRose left, the school system

24:26

didn't just lose its superintendent, It

24:29

fell apart. There were twenty three

24:31

teachers in the Derby Consolidated School

24:34

that fall, only seven

24:36

went back to work. Things

24:39

were never the same for the Lreaux family either.

24:42

When I called the kids up, none of them really

24:44

wanted to talk about this. Then

24:46

they changed their mind, I think, if

24:48

I had to guess, because they wanted

24:50

to stand up against the people who did

24:52

this to their family, to

24:54

their father and also to

24:57

their mother.

24:57

Dorothy made said

25:00

before this happened, she was

25:03

such a fun person, great sense of

25:05

humor. I'd love to hear

25:07

my dead stories of because

25:09

I didn't, I didn't witness a

25:13

lot of this, and so you

25:15

know, we were all cheated

25:18

out of an amazing

25:20

person. And just

25:25

I just I just can pick to her kind

25:30

of don't don't tell you

25:32

know, the neighbors this, don't

25:34

tell the neighbors that, don't

25:36

tell anybody this, don't tell

25:38

anybody this.

25:41

They moved from one small town to another, but

25:44

Dorothy never could quite trust her neighbors

25:46

again. What

25:49

came of the Birch Society and the PTA

25:52

after the break? A

26:06

little while ago I stopped by a house

26:09

in Los Angeles. It was shaded by a

26:11

sick More tree, and there was a Root sixty six

26:13

sign leaning in the front windowsill, facing

26:15

the quiet street. I was there

26:17

to talk to a woman named Marva Felchlin.

26:21

Marva grew up in California and was a

26:23

student at welby Way Elementary School.

26:25

She was a baby boomer in the classical sense,

26:28

a house in a safe and lovely subdivision,

26:31

a dad in the defense industry, and a

26:33

mom in the PTA that, yes, Bircher's

26:35

had tried to take over. Her

26:37

mom's name was Zelda, and

26:40

she never got over what happened.

26:43

It's a big thing that happened in our lives.

26:46

Why do you think the story had added to your mother so much?

26:52

Because I think you know the

26:55

PTA in her activities in the PTA

26:58

probably represented, as

27:00

with other women in there, a lot of what they

27:02

believed in. And here

27:05

they're being accused of being liars

27:08

and dishonest

27:10

and Unamerican. Those

27:12

of those people were probably children of immigrants.

27:15

I mean, that's a serious accusation

27:17

in those anytime.

27:18

But in those days, Zelda

27:22

had always wanted to be a writer. She once

27:24

submitted a script to the Twilight Zone, but

27:26

the place she really wrote was her Parent

27:28

Teacher Association newsletter. It's

27:31

the one we read from at the beginning of this episode,

27:34

the April nineteen sixty two edition of

27:36

the welby Way Elementary School PTA

27:38

newsletter The Well be Buzzings

27:41

With the curious editor's note, Zelda

27:44

wrote that when Bircher's across

27:46

the country were trying to take down the PTA,

27:49

she took to her newsletter to fight back.

27:53

I don't I'm not surprised that my mother pushed

27:55

back in any way, because that's I

27:57

think she's kind of that kind of personality that

28:00

she didn't stand for a lot of crap.

28:02

You know, Marva

28:04

has held on to the original copy of that newsletter

28:07

for years. I asked sure

28:09

to read me the editor's message.

28:12

Okay, the power to seek the

28:14

truth is within all of us. The

28:16

way in which we seek it is privilege

28:18

and right of all of us. We are

28:21

fortunate enough to live under a system

28:23

of government that secures and protects

28:25

that right. But there are some

28:28

who abuse this freedom and cloud

28:30

the answers and the issues, so

28:32

that seeking the truth and knowing

28:34

it is the truth becomes a harder

28:36

task than it was ever meant to be. I

28:39

say this, Give me the right

28:41

to seek the truth, but justly, and

28:44

rationally and kindly. Give

28:46

me the wisdom to understand and recognize

28:48

the truth simply, without unseen

28:51

or unknown factors behind it.

28:53

Give me the wisdom to use the truth properly,

28:56

openly, knowingly, and in its

28:58

entirety, without bending or

29:00

twisting said truth to fit my own purposes.

29:04

Give me the graciousness to accept the

29:06

truth, although it may disagree

29:08

with or disapprove my own

29:10

personal opinions and beliefs. And

29:13

last, give me the wisdom and

29:15

right to seek the truth in whatever

29:18

manner I so choose, so

29:20

long as I in the manner I have

29:22

chosen, do not belittle or deface the object

29:25

of my search, so long as I

29:27

can honestly say to myself it

29:29

is the truth alone that I am seeking.

29:32

So the last off editor.

29:38

During those same years when Bircher's were

29:40

mobbing PTA meetings, the PTA

29:43

as a national organization began to

29:45

die for good. It just kept losing

29:47

numbers until it became effectively

29:50

a loose group of local organizations. It

29:53

still exists, but you

29:55

wouldn't write a number one song about it anymore.

29:59

I don't think that was all the doing of the Birch Society,

30:01

though it certainly didn't help the

30:04

rise of the Butchers in the fall of the PTA

30:06

were both part of the backlash to Brown

30:08

versus Board of Education, a response

30:11

to integration and civil rights. The

30:13

Birch Society went into decline then too.

30:16

It had become radioactive, mocked to death

30:18

in the press, repudiated by even William

30:21

F. Buckley, turned on by mainstream

30:23

Republicans, torn by its own infighting,

30:26

investigated by the Anti Defamation League

30:28

in the FBI, but

30:30

it never vanished. Robert

30:32

Welch Junior was involved with the Birch Society

30:35

almost until his death in nineteen eighty five.

30:37

Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who,

30:39

true to form Welsh once called

30:42

a communist Blackie. His

30:44

society lives on in diminished form

30:47

these days. They're a lot less notable.

30:50

They're just one in a sea of right wing groups.

30:53

But why did people like Welsh hate the parent

30:55

Teacher Association so much it

30:58

seems to me like the Birch Society

31:00

and the PTA were locked in a kind of death

31:03

match between two visions of American

31:05

civil society. The PTA

31:08

was the vision of the America and Vital Center, progressive,

31:11

orderly, incremental, and evidence

31:13

based. Its model was the US

31:16

federal system, local and national

31:18

working patiently together. But

31:21

the John Birch Society was modeled

31:23

on communist cells, secretive

31:26

with hard caps on membership to keep things

31:28

decentralized rather than

31:30

optimistic. It was paranoid rather

31:32

than incremental. They called for kind of

31:34

revolution. The

31:36

PTA was about trusting your

31:38

neighbors to share your interests too.

31:42

The John Birch Society was about always

31:44

suspecting them of betraying you. I

31:47

don't know if that sounds familiar to you, but

31:50

it shure does to me. Revisionist

32:04

History is produced by me Ben Matt of Haffrey

32:06

and Lucy Sullivan with Nina Bird Lawrence.

32:09

Our editor is Karen Chakerji. Fact

32:12

checking on this episode by Sam Russick.

32:15

Original scoring by Luis Gara, mastering

32:18

by Jake Gorski. Our executive

32:20

producer is Jacob Smith. Special

32:23

thanks to Sarah Nix the State Historical

32:25

Society of North Dakota, the University

32:28

of Montana, and the UCLA Library

32:30

Special Collections. I'm ben

32:32

matafafor