Recommended Reading, "Wrapped in the Flag" by Claire Conner

Recommended Reading “Wrapped in the Flag”
As Thanksgiving has ended and our thoughts turn to Christmas and exchanging gifts, on my Christmas list this season I added Claire Conner’s new book entitled “Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right”.  Although Ms. Conner is writing about the bygone days of the John Birch Society and McCarthyism, her work is very much prescient as American conservatives and the Republican Party have reintroduced McCarthyism into everyday, contemporary political discourse.

It is not as if McCarthyism was ever put to rest, but it has instead ebbed and flowed over at least the last 60 or so years.  It raises it’s fraudulent ugly head when we hear the false accusation of “redistribution of wealth”, or the false idea that 47 percent of Americans want free stuff.  Conservatives and Republicans have simply dropped the innuendo and now blatantly accuse President Obama and the Democrats of being socialist, without of course the slightest of evidence or the slightest idea of what socialism really is all about.  Social programs, which have been around in America for generations, do not make America a socialist nation.  

Today’s contemporary political discourse now stinks of the red-baiting radicalism of the John Birch Society thanks to right wing propaganda programming on Fox and the dregs of the right wing media world like Rush Limbaugh.  It is now a de-facto plank in the GOP Party platform, and in the routine rhetoric of the Republican Party, even on the floor of the House or Senate, where right wingers castigate the political opposition for socialism and the so-called “redistribution of wealth“.  Realities, such as the Dow reaching a record high at 16,000, the tax burden on America’s affluent reaching a point lower than in the 1950’sand 1960’s, and the gap between rich and poor reaching at a high point much like the 1920’s, are lost on wild, wide-eyed ideologues in right wing world America, who are now bent on ensuring that the ACA, which will bring health coverage to millions who need it, will fail.

McCarthyism has also been repackaged as “Agenda 21” by a rare, strange flock of right wing birds who have blended in decades old distrust of the United Nations with traditional fear mongering over secret communists working within the American government.  This conspiracy theory has taken flight in the mercurial minds of John Birchers and Tea Party people, who have now joined forces to tip their lances at a new windmill called Sustainability. Unfortunately, also alive and well are their favorite ploys of finger pointing, character assassination, and reputation smearing aimed at anyone with the audacity to indicate that the rest of us are thoroughly annoyed with the light reflecting off their shiny tin foil hats.   

Even Pope Francis is not immune from the new McCarthyism, as right wing talk show host and professional liar Rush Limbaugh recently responded to the Pope’s criticism of trickle down economics.  Limbaugh said that this was “pure Marxism coming from the mouth of the Pope”.  Are conservatives in America lacking in that much shame and decency that they would besmirch the character of the spiritual leader of 75 million Catholic Americans and 1 billion Catholic people world-wide? 

All I can say is that we should all remember the immortal words of Joseph N. Welch to Senator McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

I recommend Claire Conner’s new book, entitled “Wrapped in the Flag”. Decent people everywhere, I think, will be interested in what Ms. Conner has to say.  Here is the description of the book from Amazon.com:

  “In Wrapped in the Flag, Claire Conner offers an intimate account of the society —based on (John Birch Society) JBS records and documents, on her parents’ files and personal writing, on historical archives and contemporary accounts, and on firsthand knowledge —giving us an inside look at one of the most radical right-wing movements in US history and its lasting effects on our political discourse today.

Worshipping its anti-Communist hero Joe McCarthy, the Birch Society is perhaps most notorious for its red-baiting and for accusing top politicians, including President Dwight Eisenhower, of being Communist sympathizers. It also labeled John F. Kennedy a traitor and actively worked to unseat him. The Birch Society boasted a number of notable members, including Fred Koch, father of Charles and David Koch, who are using their father’s billions to bankroll fundamentalist and right-wing movements today. 

“The daughter of one of the society’s first members and a national spokesman about the society, Claire Conner grew up surrounded by dedicated Birchers and was expected to abide by and espouse Birch ideals. When her parents forced her to join the society at age thirteen, she became its youngest member of the society. From an even younger age though, Conner was pressed into service for the cause her father and mother gave their lives to: the nurturing and growth of the JBS. She was expected to bring home her textbooks for close examination (her mother found traces of Communist influence even in the Catholic school curriculum), to write letters against “socialized medicine” after school, to attend her father’s fiery speeches against the United Nations, or baby-sit her siblings while her parents held meetings in the living room to recruit members to fight the war on Christmas or (potentially poisonous) water fluoridation. Conner was “on deck” to lend a hand when JBS notables visited, including founder Robert Welch, notorious Holocaust denier Revilo Oliver, and white supremacist Thomas Stockheimer.