Influence of the John Birch Society on the Republican Party

In an interesting Oct. 2020 article by The Progressive Investor (TPI), THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY IS NOW THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, some history of the fascism and radicalism of John Birch Society (JBS)[1] influence on the GOP is discussed. TPI writes:

When Trump held the Republican Party Convention in August 2020, the media and political pundits said the convention did not produce a party platform. They were wrong.

The convention had an old, dusted off the political platform. It was the one the Republicans resurrected from the John Birch Society, the ultra-right-wing group that has morphed itself into the far-right Libertarian and Tea Parties. It is a transformation that never made it into the mainstream media.

This right-wing coup was accomplished over decades by significant donations from right-wing think tanks and wealthy white men who worked to [displace] old democratic beliefs.

Then, they replaced them with subverted philosophies that vilified bi-partisan political co-operation and even patriotism and exchanged those beliefs for blatant, cold corporatism and selling the government to the highest bidder.

Even worse, this was all done in the open and was spelled out by a chief coup leader, David Koch, who ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980.

Here are just a few excerpts of the Libertarian Party platform that David Koch ran on in 1980:

• “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws, and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.”
• “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”
• “We oppose any compulsory insurance or tax-supported plan to provide health services, including those which finance abortion services.”
• “We also favor the deregulation of the medical insurance industry.”
• “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system. Pending that repeal, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary.”
• “We propose the abolition of the governmental Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages governmental surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.”
• “We oppose all personal and corporate income taxation, including capital gains taxes.

The extremism of the JBS alarmed the old GOP, and under Ronald Reagan, the JBS was purged from the party. The Washington Post discussed this bit of history in a Jan. 2021 article: 

In 1962, some of America’s most influential conservatives met to talk about a growing threat: the rise of paranoid conspiracy theories on the right.

In a hotel suite in Palm Beach, Fla., Buckley and Kirk found themselves giving Goldwater advice about how to respond to the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society’s surge in popularity. The society, founded in 1958, was fiercely anti-communist — and fond of crackpot theories. Its founder, candy manufacturer Robert Welch, had accused most of the U.S. government — including former Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower — of being under secret communist control.

Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley’s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch’s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement’s credibility and its future.

“Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn,” John B. Judis wrote in his 1988 biography, “William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.” Buckley told Goldwater, according to Judis, that the John Birch Society was a “menace” to the conservative movement.  

Within weeks, Buckley wrote a 5,000-word National Review editorial criticizing Welch. “How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are … so far removed from common sense?” Buckley asked. “The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false.”

Questions: Is it reasonably accurate to significantly or mostly equate the modern mainstream Republican Party mindset and political agenda with that of the old John Birch Society? 

Footnote: 

1. In 2013, the SPLC touched on the racial bias of the JBS:

Charges of racism and anti-Semitism have dogged the John Birch Society since its earliest days. It opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s, saying the African-American freedom movement was being manipulated from Moscow with the goal of creating a “Soviet Negro Republic” in the Southern United States. The society was a close ally of Alabama’s segregationist governer George Wallace and reportedly had 100 chapters in and around Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, as well as chapters across the rest of the state. Thompson, the group’s CEO, said the society has never been either racist or anti-Semitic, going so far as to add that once a member is discovered to harbor such views he or she is immediately “booted out.’’

The modern JBS denies that it harbors any racial or religious animus 

Elizabeth Warren chats with big bank CEOs

The federal reserve provided overdraft protection to banks as part of the pandemic response. The banks refused to extend that protection to consumers, earning them an additional ~$4 billion in 2020. The 10-minute video of Warren's chat lays the situation out nicely. 

This is just a quick reminder that in capitalism, profit is the one and only moral value of concern. Everything else, including charity, public relations propaganda and anything else, is just the cost of maximizing profit.

Fascist Republican Party power advances

Fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy; a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

A Washington Post editorial lays out the argument I have been making for a while now that the Republican Party has become fascist. Paul Waldman writes:

On the surface, the GOP is a party in disarray. Party leaders in Congress struggle to deal with elected nutballs such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Far-right extremists try to take over state parties. A member of the House leadership is ousted for refusing to pander to the lie that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.

But underneath, there is a striking — and frightening — degree of unity. For all the disagreement about the 2020 election, Republicans are in lockstep on the question of power — namely, that by rights it belongs exclusively to Republicans and steps must be taken to ensure that Democrats not be allowed to wield it, no matter what the voters might want.

Let me direct your attention to Arizona — but not to the bonkers “audit” of 2020 ballots the state Senate there has ordered.

Instead, let’s focus on a new effort by Arizona Republicans to strip the Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, of her authority to defend against lawsuits regarding elections.

Using [their] control, Republicans have put their effort to roll back Hobbs’s authority into budget bills now moving toward approval. They are trying to transfer all authority to defend the state against election lawsuits to the state attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican.

Why? Because the Democrat might take the “wrong” position, say by fighting against a future effort to reverse a Democratic win.

But what if in the next election, a Democrat becomes attorney general and a Republican becomes secretary of state? Not a problem: The provision taking power away from Hobbs sunsets after the 2022 election. If Republicans still control the legislature, at that point they can revisit the question and just put power in the hands of whichever office is held by one of their own.

No national-level Republican I know of has condemned either the power-grabbing or the voter suppression laws. Even Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), fresh from her defenestration, defends the Republican voter suppression campaign.

Even Republicans who would like to be rid of Trump and want to stop arguing about the past election are on board with the party’s turn away from democracy itself.

Arguments about 2020 are for the rubes, a way to keep their deluded base angry and energized. Mainstream Republicans will encourage them and support them with the assertion that people have “doubts” and “concerns” that can be addressed only by feeding the conspiracy theories, but the real action is on what’s being put in place for future elections.

That’s why when we look at the GOP voter suppression campaign, we have to distinguish between voting restrictions focused on voters themselves and those focused on power — who has it and how it can be wielded.

But putting up hurdles in front of Democratic voters is very different from the second category of changes to election law, which is about putting the power over elections firmly in Republican hands.

As a recent report from a nonpartisan group put it, state legislatures across the country “are moving to muscle their way into election administration, as they attempt to dislodge or unsettle the executive branch and/or local election officials who, traditionally, have run our voting systems.”

In some cases, they’ve moved to strip power from individual officials such as Hobbs or Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In other cases, they’ve imposed restrictions on the ability of local officials to make their own decisions about how to conduct elections, and have even tried to intimidate them by creating criminal penalties for those officials who run afoul of the GOP-controlled legislature.

Republicans have also introduced bills in more than two dozen states that directly attack the independence of the courts. In many cases, they specifically seek to limit the ability of courts to rule on election cases.

Where are the Republicans who object to this wide-ranging assault on democracy? There aren’t any.

The stage is being set for future elections to be stolen — not by a whiny president who tries to reverse an election he lost, but by systems put in place well before ballots are cast to make sure that the rules are crafted to Republicans’ benefit and Republicans will be in charge of resolving any disputes. And on that, there is no dissent within their party.

Republicans clearly have figured out that to win elections, they now have to cheat. Demographics are against them. They are moving red states into coerced singly party rule. 

Questions: Is the Republican threat real and urgent, or as most Republicans and conservatives see it, merely defending democracy by insuring election integrity? Has the Republican Party leadership, including Liz Cheney, become fascist?

Afghanistan update: Surrendering without a fight accelerates

“The Taliban come here at night and shoot at us,” said Najibullah, a policeman at the outpost in Mehtarlam. “I can’t shoot back. My rifle magazine only has a few bullets. I brought a slingshot and a rock just in case. One of my friends got hit when a mortar landed where we sleep. His blood is still on the wall.”

The New York Times writes:

A Wave of Afghan Surrenders to the Taliban Picks Up Speed

Dozens of besieged outposts or bases, and four district centers, have given up to the insurgents this month, in an accelerating rural collapse as American troops leave.

MEHTARLAM, Afghanistan — Ammunition was depleted inside the bedraggled outposts in Laghman Province. Food was scarce. Some police officers hadn’t been paid in five months.

Then, just as American troops began leaving the country in early May, Taliban fighters besieged seven rural Afghan military outposts across the wheat fields and onion patches of the province, in eastern Afghanistan.

The insurgents enlisted village elders to visit the outposts bearing a message: Surrender or die.

By mid-month, security forces had surrendered all seven outposts after extended negotiations, according to village elders. At least 120 soldiers and police were given safe passage to the government-held provincial center in return for handing over weapons and equipment.

“We told them, ‘Look, your situation is bad — reinforcements aren’t coming,’” said Nabi Sarwar Khadim, 53, one of several elders who negotiated the surrenders.

Since May 1, at least 26 outposts and bases in just four provinces — Laghman, Baghlan, Wardak and Ghazni — have surrendered after such negotiations, according to village elders and government officials. With morale diving as American troops leave, and the Taliban seizing on each surrender as a propaganda victory, each collapse feeds the next in the Afghan countryside.  

Among the negotiated surrenders were four district centers, which house local governors, police and intelligence chiefs — effectively handing the government facilities to Taliban control and scattering the officials there, at least temporarily.  

The Taliban have negotiated Afghan troop surrenders in the past, but never at the scale and pace of the base collapses this month in the four provinces extending east, north and west of Kabul. The tactic has removed hundreds of government forces from the battlefield, secured strategic territory and reaped weapons, ammunition and vehicles for the Taliban — often without firing a shot. 

In several cases, the committees have given surrendering troops money — typically around $130 — and civilian clothes and sent them home unharmed. But first they videotape the men as they promise not to rejoin the security forces. They log their phone numbers and the names of family members — and vow to kill the men if they rejoin the military. 

“The Taliban commander and the Invitation and Guidance Committee called me more than 10 times and asked me to surrender,” said Maj. Imam Shah Zafari, 34, a district police chief in Wardak Province who surrendered his command center and weapons on May 11 after negotiations mediated by local elders.

After the Taliban provided a car ride home to Kabul, he said, a committee member phoned to assure him that the government would not imprison him for surrendering. “He said, ‘We have so much power in the government and we can release you,’” Major Zafari said.  

“We have been sold out — we make calls for reinforcements, but officials don’t help,” the recorded voice said. “The Taliban sent us tribal elders who said, ‘Surrender, you are sold out, no one will help you.’”

That speaks for itself. Open questions include how widespread this will be and if it is widespread, how soon the Taliban will take control of the entire country and government. The Afghan government the US installed and supports is so deeply corrupt, callous and incompetent that its front line defenders do not even have bullets or are being paid. US officials continue to assert that Afghan government forces will be able to repel the Taliban. Maybe they have no choice but to say the unbelievable things they continue to say. Other reports indicate that the US withdrawal will be complete by the middle of July, about 7 weeks before Biden's announced Sept. 11 final withdrawal date.

Question: What basis is there for belief that the Taliban will not take control of Afghanistan within about 6 months (or less) after the US withdrawal?[1]

Footnote: 

1. "The Air Force Magazine wrote in 2000: After 21 years of struggle against the Communist forces, the South Vietnamese army collapsed in just weeks into a disorganized mass, unable to slow, much less halt, forces from the North. In nearly 30 years of war, Hanoi had defeated France and South Vietnam on the battlefield and the US at the negotiating table."

Climate change update: Something important may be happening with Wall Street

Humans put about 12 gigatons more carbon into the environment

than it can naturally recycle each year

How can we get that 12 gigatons under control?

The New York Times reports on what might be the beginning of a major shift in mindset and corporate power regarding climate change. So far, huge corporations in the energy and chemical sectors have opposed laws to combat climate change. For decades, their campaign contributions and smooth, quiet lobbyists have successfully blocked as much regulation and legislation as they could. In view of their vast power and wealth, they blocked a hell of a lot of regulation and legislation. They also deployed decades of sophisticated propaganda and successfully deceived and polarized a significant minority of the American people about the reality and urgency of anthropogenic climate change. 

For wealthy people and corporate climate change opponents, it was just capitalist business as usual. Money talks and everything else, including the environment, climate and inconvenient truth, walks.

But maybe those days are staring to wind down. Maybe. The NYT writes:

Climate Activists Defeat Exxon in Push for Clean Energy

Shareholders elected at least two of the four directors nominated by a coalition of investors that said the oil giant was not investing enough in cleaner energy.

HOUSTON — Big Oil was dealt a stunning defeat on Wednesday when shareholders of Exxon Mobil elected at least two board candidates nominated by activist investors who pledged to steer the company toward cleaner energy and away from oil and gas.

The success of the campaign, led by a tiny hedge fund against the nation’s largest oil company, could force the energy industry to confront climate change and embolden Wall Street investment firms that are prioritizing the issue. Analysts could not recall another time that Exxon management had lost a vote against company-picked directors.

“This is a landmark moment for Exxon and for the industry,” said Andrew Logan, a senior director at Ceres, a nonprofit investor network that pushes corporations to take climate change seriously. “How the industry chooses to respond to this clear signal will determine which companies thrive through the coming transition and which wither.”  

In another sign of change, shareholders of Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, on Wednesday voted for a proposal to reduce emissions from the use of the fuel the company makes and sells to drivers and other customers. And in the Netherlands, a court required Royal Dutch Shell to reduce its emissions of planet-warming gases by 45 percent by the end of 2030 compared with 2019; the ruling applies only in Shell’s home country.

Exxon and other major American oil companies have strongly resisted taking the same approach as European oil companies, viewing renewable energy as a money loser that they have little expertise in. Exxon has invested heavily in recent years in deep water exploration off the coast of Guyana and in shale drilling in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico.  

“This moment is not just about Exxon Mobil,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “It is about major asset managers and other influential investors stepping up, making their voices heard and walking the walk, connecting the dots between their climate rhetoric and their actions.”

And, the bad news: What we really need ☹️

Although it is encouraging that significant external pressure is starting to come to bear on major polluters, the conversation always goes to wind and solar as replacements for carbon energy. Wind and solar alone are not enough. The only viable low-pollution alternative to carbon we have is nuclear power. But it is rarely mentioned. 

There are new nuclear power designs that are far safer than the current generation of plants that are aging out of service. But no one is championing nuclear power. That is a catastrophic mistake.

By now it is clear that rich countries don't want to suffer significant lifestyle changes that depend on a lot of power. Poor countries don't want to forego development and the power they need to do that. The only feasible option we have is nuclear power. If we build enough nuclear power capacity, we can continue to drive gas hogs like Hummers and F150s. Americans can live their high energy demand lifestyles with no adverse impact on climate, if and only if there is enough power available to offset our carbon emissions.

Two controlling facts are at play here. One is that nuclear power is the only technical option for sufficient power that is available right now. The other is that too many of the American people will not accept or tolerate significant impositions on their high energy lifestyles. Given those two facts, nuclear power is the only possible alternative we have now and for the foreseeable future. The longer we pretend otherwise, the worse and less amenable to fixes our situation becomes.[1]

Questions: Can we rely on the private sector to move into an environmentally protective mindset in the short run, or will it continue to resist environmental protections as long as it can in the belief that protecting the environment decreases profits? Are Americans too wedded to the convenience of single use plastics, e.g., plastic water bottles, plastic food packaging, etc., to be willing to go back to less convenient recyclable or biodegradable metal, glass and paper packaging? Is nuclear power really safe enough for widespread use, or is it just too dangerous and/or scary?

Footnote: 

1. Nuclear power might be able to significantly solve more problems that are apparent on first glance. For example, we have polluted the oceans with hundreds of millions of tons of non-biodegradable plastic. The reason America and now most other nations transitioned from recyclable containers and packages, mainly metal (aluminum, tin, etc.), glass and paper was cost and efficacy. Plastic was cheaper and often better. Plastic was falsely sold to the public as recyclable than thus environmentally benign. That was a lie right from the get go. Only about 9% of single use plastics are recycled. The other 91% winds up in the oceans, on the land and in our bodies as particles of various sizes.*** If there is a lot of nuclear power available, the cost of displacing some or most single-use plastic containers would make biodegradables and recyclables economically competitive. That ought to significantly decrease the vast amounts of plastics that are used once and then tossed away into the environment.

Another use for cheap nuclear power would be to make fuels such as hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) from water. It takes a lot of energy to split water (H2O) into H2 and O2 gasses. Burning H2 with O2 in hydrogen fuel cells recreates the water the two gasses came from. Nuclear power could also be used to make methane from electricity. Methane or natural gas (CH4) can be made from carbon dioxide (CO2) and H2. The methane can be distributed cost-effectively in the current natural gas network. Or, it can be stored. All of that is mostly carbon neutral. 

The profit problem, again: For course, the phrase cheap nuclear power raises the question of how that can be possible. Companies charge as much as they can to make as much profit as they can as fast as they can. That tells me that nuclear power will never live up to its environment protective potential if it is left to the private sector. The government must build and operate nuclear power plants for the public good, not for corporate profit. Given our situation, it is fair to believe that when it comes to providing clean power the private sector has failed to serve the public interest. It is time for the government to take over the job of providing energy to protect the environment and the public interest.

*** We are just beginning to do research on the biological effects of plastic particles that humans ingest or breath in from air. A 2020 research paper comments: 

Plastic macroparticles, microparticles, and nanoparticles have the potential to affect marine ecosystems and human health. It is generally accepted that microplastic particles are not harmful or at best minimal to human health. However direct contact with microplastic particles may have possible adverse effect in cellular level. Primary polystyrene (PS) particles were the focus of this study, and we investigated the potential impacts of these microplastics on human health at the cellular level. We determined that PS particles were potential immune stimulants that induced cytokine and chemokine production in a size-dependent and concentration-dependent manner.

Comparing Radical Christians to Radical Muslims

 Came across an interesting meme, but is the meme too simplistic, or are the comparisons apt?

You decide: