Before the Storm (106 page)

110 For the scoreboard issue, see Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
80; TNR, May 28, 1962; and Welch to Regnery, December 20, 1960, HR, Box 78/1.

110 For four goals, see John D. Morris, “Birch Unit Pushes Drive on Warren,” NYT, April, 1961, A1. For meetings disturbed by shouts of “republic!,” see Stanley Mosk and Howard H. Jewel, “The Birch Phenomenon Analyzed,” NYTM, August 20, 1961. For PTA:
The Nation,
March 11, 1961.

110
The daily barrage of reports:
A few articles had appeared in 1960 in the
Chicago Daily News, Racine Journal Times, Amarillo News-Globe
(a positive report), and
San Marino Tribune.
The publisher of the
Santa Barbara News-Press
won a Pulitzer Prize on April 4, 1961, for his coverage in January and February. But the explosion followed the
Time
report. See above, and, for a sample, LAT, March 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 (a front-page editorial), and 18, 1961; SFC, March 9, 19, 21, 23, 28, and 30, 1961; NYT, March 19, 1961;
Boston Globe,
March 30 and 31, 1961;
Des Moines Register,
March 31, 1961; and NYHT, April 1, 1961 (editorial). See also Martin J. Fuerst,
Bibliography on the Origins and History of the John Birch Society,
3rd ed. (Sacramento, Calif.: n.p., 1963).

110 Welch biography:
Who's Who;
author interviews with Scott Stanley, John McManus, and registrars at Naval Academy and University of North Carolina;
Time,
December 8, 1961; and Michael W. Miles,
The Odyssey of the American Right
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 246.

111
The frustrated writer's first book:
Robert H. W. Welch,
The Road to Salesmanship
(New York: Ronald Press Co., 1941); and Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
70. See also Welch to Regnery, March 17, 1953, HR, Box 78/1. For work with OPA, see Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
88. For his postwar investigations and travel: McManus interview; Gerald Schomp,
Birchism Was My Business
(New York: Macmillan, 1970), 54; and Robert Welch,
The Blue Book of the John Birch Society
(Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1997), 131. For lieutenant governor run, see Schomp,
Birchism Was My Business,
34; and Guild to Staley, n.d., HR, Box 78/1.

111
“A great hunk of God in the flesh”:
David Halberstam,
The Fifties
(New York: Fawcett, 1993), 115. For Welch's 1951 travels, see Welch,
May God Forgive Us, A Famous Letter Giving the Historical Background of the Dismissal of General MacArthur
(Chicago: Regnery, 1952), 3-4; and A. E. Staley to various, May 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1.

112 For Welch Mailing Committee: Welch to Regnery, April 9, 1952, and April 29, 1952; and Staley to various, May 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1 (for quote).

112 For Regnery Company history, see Whalen,
Taking Sides,
197; John B. Judis,
William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives
(New York: Touchstone, 1990), 88-89; Henry Regnery,
Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1979); and Scott Stanley interview. For Regnery's pacifism, see A. J. Muste
Folder, HR, Correspondence. For financial troubles, see Judis,
William F. Buckley, Jr.,
89; and HR correspondence with Jay Hall and the Erhart Foundation. Regnery went in the black in 1960, after buying out the holder of the American rights to L. Frank Baum's
Oz
series.
Welch bet Henry Regnery:
Welch to Regnery, July 7, 1952, HR, Box 78/1.

112
At the opening meeting:
Lee Edwards,
Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution
(Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1995), 118. For the argument over
May God Forgive Us
sales figures see Regnery to Milbank, HR, Box 51/10; Welch to Regnery, April 9, 1952, April 29, 1952, and June 14, 1952; and Staley to various, May 1, 1952, all in HR, Box 78/1.
“Highlighted a definite turn back”:
Welch to Regnery, December 1, 1952, HR, Box 78/1. For his allegorical novel, see correspondence with Regnery, HR, Box 78/1 for 1953, passim.

113
Regnery accepted one more book:
Robert Welch,
The Life of John Birch: In the Story of One American Boy, the Ordeal of His Age
(Chicago: Regnery, 1954). For the composition of
The Politician:
Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
77; Robert Alan Goldberg,
Barry Goldwater
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 137; NR, April 22, 1961; and William Rusher,
The Rise of the Right
(New York: Morrow, 1984), 60. For resignations from Manion's BMG committee after receiving
The Politician,
see Thompson to Manion, September 14, 1959, CM, Box 70/1.

113
“We have allowed our detractors”:
Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf,
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 70. For NAM's publicity activities, see Fones-Wolf, 25, 32-57, 259-269.

113 For FEE, see Sara Diamond,
Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States
(New York: Guilford, 1995), 27-28; Milton and Rose Friedman,
Two Lucky People: Memoirs
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 150-52; and “An Accounting of FEE's Activities,” in Milton Friedman Papers, Box 82/FEE, HI, in which the cited pamphlets can also be found. See also Barry Goldwater column, LAT, January 14, 1960, for an example of how FEE spread its message.

114 For
One Man's Opinion,
see Welch to Regnery, November 27, 1957, November 9, 1957, November 21, 1957, May 23, 1957, and June 4, 1957, HR, Box 78/1; for
American Opinion,
see Welch to Regnery, October 31, 1957, November 6, 1957, December 12, 1957, HR, Box 78/1; and McManus interview. For possible Senate run, see Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
79.

114 Founding meetings of the John Birch Society are described in Heinsohn to Montgomery, March 7, 1959, CM, Box 69/4 (for quote); Welch to Manion, July 13, 1959, Box 69/7; Buffett to Manion, August 6, 1959, and Manion to Thompson, September 17, 1959, both in CM, Box 70/1; Welch to Buckley, January 2, 1959, and July 2, 1959, WFBJ, Box 9; NYT, April 1, 1961; Welch,
Blue Book,
xv-xx; Frank E. Holman,
The Life and Career of a Western Lawyer 1886-1961
(n.p., 1963); and Rusher,
The Rise of the Right,
61. Tapes of Welch's presentations filmed in 1959, “An Invitation to Membership” and “Look at the Score,” are available from the John Birch Society, Appleton, Wisconsin.

114
“We are living in America today”:
Welch,
Blue Book,
1. All other quotes from Welch,
Blue Book.

115 For Welch's salesmen, see Schomp,
Birchism Was My Business,
passim; and Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right,
89.
Estimates varied:
20,000 is in “Far Right and Far Left,” NYP, April 2, 1964; 60,000 is in Alan F. Westin, “The John Birch Society: Fundamentalism on the Right,”
Commentary,
August 1961; 100,000 is in Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds,
The Reader's Companion to American History
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 597. Office descriptions in Donald Janson and Bernard Eismann,
The Far Right
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 29; and Welch,
Blue Book,
162.

116 For the paranoia-inducing quality of everyday Cold War rhetoric and the quote from Kennan, see Allan C. Carlson's brilliant article “Foreign Policy and ‘The American Way': The Rise and Fall of the Post-World War II Consensus,”
This World
(Spring/Summer 1983).
“Repeal of industrialism”:
Westin, “John Birch Society.”
“They controlled the trade union movement”
: Freedman,
The Inheritance,
159.
“Communist espionage here”
: attachment from
Congressional Record,
Rusher to White, February 28, 1962, WR, Box 18/“Congressional Contact.”
Army recruits saw films: Red Nightmare,
available from International Historic Films, Chicago, cat. no. 273. For AEC's denials of fallout danger, see Allan M. Winkler,
Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 103. For Angleton, see Thomas Powers, “Spook of Spooks,” NYRB, August 17, 1989.

117
“Less government and more responsibility”
:
An Invitation to Membership
film. Betty Friedan's book, of course, is
The Feminine Mystique
(New York: Dell, 1984 [original edition 1962]).
“I just don't have time”
: Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras: Aims, Affiliations, and Finances of the Radical Right,” special issue,
The Nation,
June 30, 1962; and
Time,
December 8, 1961.
Bulletin
dictates are in Westin, “The John Birch Society.”

118 The beginning of Welch's Impeach Warren campaign is noted in Welch to Regnery, February 22, 1961, HR, Box 78/1.

118 Stephen Young's Senate speech:
Congressional Record,
April 12, 1961, 5268f. For Senator Eastland, see “Eastland Says John Birch Society Patriotic,” SFC, March 19, 1961; and “Birch Society Leader Asks Probe by Eastland's Subcommittee,” SFC, April, 1961. For Cardinal Cushing, see “The John Birch Society: Patriotic or Irresponsible,”
Life,
May 12, 1961. For Hiestand and Rousselot, see “Storm Over Birchers,”
Time,
April 7, 1961. For Ezra Taft Benson, see Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras.” BMG quote is in
Time,
April 7, 1961.

118
“On February 25, 1961”: Bulletin of the John Birch Society,
April 1961.

 

120 The story of Joel Dvorman as a spark for right-wing grassroots organizing in Orange County is told in Lisa McGirr, “Suburban Warriors: Grass-Roots Conservatism in the 1960s” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1995), 82-91.

121 For Schwarz “animal husbandry” quote, see “Will You Be Free to Celebrate
Christmas in the Future,” poster of Schwarz congressional testimony, May 29, 1957, JCJ.

121 Everyday right-wing neighborhood culture is described in McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 86-101, 114-19. For
Communism on the Map,
see Fred J. Cook, “The Ultras, Aims, Affiliations, and Finances of the Radical Right,” special issue,
The Nation,
June 30, 1962; and Edward Cain,
They'd Rather Be Right: Youth and the Conservative Movement
(New York: Macmillan, 1963), 162.

121 For favorite speakers on the right-wing circuit, see “Combatting Right-Wing Activity in Your Community,” ML, Box 29/Group Research. For W. Cleon Skousen's firing, see
Time,
December 8, 1961; and George B. Russell,
J. Bracken Lee: The Taxpayer's Champion
(New York: Robert Spellers and Sons, 1961).

122 For Reagan's peak, see Gary Wills,
Reagan's America: Innocents at Home
(New York: Penquin, 1988), 177.
“Going over Niagara Falls”:
Douglas Brinkley, “The President's Pen Pal,”
The New Yorker,
July 26, 1999.

122 Sources for General Electric's unusual corporate culture and “Boulwarism” are Herbert R. Northrup, “The Case for Boulwarism,”
Harvard Business Review
(September-October 1963); Mike Davis,
Prisoners of the American Dream
(New York: Verso, 1986), 117-21; Stanford M. Jacoby,
Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism Since the New Deal
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 232, 242-47; and Lemuel R. Boulware, “The New Requirement for Business Success,” speech, in HR, Boulware Folder.

123
“Today,” he would say:
Ronald Reagan and Richard Hubler,
Where's the Rest of Me?
(New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1965), 303.
“Let's give it a try”:
Anne Edwards,
Early Reagan: The Rise to Power
(New York: Morrow, 1987), 455.

123
“Shouldn't someone tag”:
Edmund Morris,
Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
(New York: Random House, 1999), 315-16.
“The inescapable truth”:
Edwards,
Early Reagan,
543-46.

124 For southern California's competitive edge over the East and statistics, see James L. Clayton, “Defense Spending: Key to California's Growth,”
Western Political Quarterly
15 (June 1962). For Santa Ana lease, see McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 34. Population boom is in McGirr, 32, 39.

124 Irvine's origins: ibid., 56-57. For James Utt and the “Liberty Amendment,” see Kurt Schuparra,
Triumph of the Right: The Rise of the California Conservative Movement, 1945-1966
(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 47.

125 R. C. Hoiles: Schuppara,
Triumph of the Right,
43-44. For residential segregation: McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 60-61.

125 For Orange County religion, see McGirr, 120-30.
“Preachers are not called”:
Michael B. Friedland, “Giving a Shout for Freedom, Part II: The Reverend Maclolm Boyd, the Right Reverend Paul Moore, Jr., and the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements of the 1960s and 1970s,”
Viet Nam Generation
5, nos. 1-4 (March 1994). For Billy Graham quote, see William Martin,
With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America
(New York: Broadway Books, 1996), 44. For Oxnam, see ibid., 38. For FCC ruling, see Sara Diamond,
Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing
Movements and Political Power in the United States
(New York: Guilford, 1995), 162. The pamphlets are ones that found their way into the vestibule of “Fighting Bob” Wells. McGirr, “Suburban Warriors,” 124-25.

126
A 1961 issue:
ibid., 77.
“Show me one, just one”:
ibid., 35. North American Aviation's lobbyist is noted in G. R. Schreiber,
The Bobby Baker Affair: How to Make Millions in Washington
(Chicago: Regnery, 1964), 10.