Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey West Archived listeners, I wanted to share a
Speaker 1: story I just released over on the Revisionist History podcast
Speaker 1: about the history of American conservatism and Halloween candy. It
Speaker 1: felt appropriate for this election year Halloween. It's a story
Speaker 1: that traces the rise of an ultra conservative political organization,
Speaker 1: the John Birch Society, and its attempt in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties to take over the Parent Teacher Association. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy it and have a happy Halloween.
Speaker 2: I want to read to you from a very important
Speaker 2: historical document, the April nineteen sixty two edition of the
Speaker 2: Welby Way Elementary School Parent Teacher Association newsletter, the Wellby Buzzings,
Speaker 2: written of course by the PTA of the elementary school
Speaker 2: in the West Hills area of Los Angeles. First item,
Speaker 2: President's message. I would like to say thank you to
Speaker 2: the ladies that work so hard on the and this
Speaker 2: is all in caps double parking safety campaign. Second item
Speaker 2: sing along with progress PTA meeting for April. Our hostesses
Speaker 2: will be the sixth grade Mutters. Third item a meeting
Speaker 2: on safety to fire prevention. Fourth item an interesting and
Speaker 2: informative trip to the fire station. Fifth item the local
Speaker 2: council meeting. Key detail. It's going to be a luncheon.
Speaker 2: Are you still there? Still awake? Four announcements on school safety,
Speaker 2: a fifth on participatory democracy, a luncheon. I'm guessing you're
Speaker 2: poured to tears. It's all so very Pta. The only
Speaker 2: things missing are the potluck supper, the newspaper drive, the
Speaker 2: book fair. But that's where you're wrong. This newsletter is,
Speaker 2: in fact the skeleton key to understanding our political moment
Speaker 2: right now, Like this exact moment, if you're listening to
Speaker 2: this episode soon after its release, there are two things
Speaker 2: going on in your world, the US presidential election between
Speaker 2: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and more Halloween candy than
Speaker 2: you know what to do with. Well in this episode,
Speaker 2: a story that manages to bring both together. It all
Speaker 2: really begins with the well beway PTA newsletter from April
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, and specifically with the sixth and final item,
Speaker 2: the editor's message, which begins the power to seek the
Speaker 2: truth is within all of us, but there are some
Speaker 2: who abuse this freedom and cloud the answers and the issues,
Speaker 2: so that seeking the truth and knowing it is the
Speaker 2: truth becomes a harder task than it was ever meant
Speaker 2: to be. You're listening to revisionist history. My podcast asked
Speaker 2: about things overlooked and misunderstood. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. Here's our question. Why,
Speaker 2: in this otherwise very dull PTA newsletter does the mother
Speaker 2: who wrote it feel the need to write an urgent
Speaker 2: defense of democracy? She doesn't say, But as my colleague
Speaker 2: BENDADAPF Hafrey discovered, it has to do with a man who,
Speaker 2: perhaps more than almost anyone else, is responsible for creating
Speaker 2: the modern style of far right conspiratorial thinking running rampant today.
Speaker 2: A man who write, at the time that Editor's note
Speaker 2: was published, held in his hands the fate of the
Speaker 2: PTA and American public life. Here's Ben.
Speaker 1: The video is grainy, but you can make out an
Speaker 1: older man, late sixties, standing in a suit and tie
Speaker 1: against a black back, clasping his hands on the.
Speaker 3: Lecturn, Faithful citizens, wherever.
Speaker 4: You may be.
Speaker 1: He's got big ears, a big nose, and a high
Speaker 1: forehead well suited to an indignant raising of the eyebrows.
Speaker 1: The media coverage of him lately had given him many
Speaker 1: opportunities to do this. As he speaks, the camera pushes in.
Speaker 1: It's a recruitment video.
Speaker 3: It is our deliberate and careful purpose to pull together
Speaker 3: into one group a body of morally good and truly
Speaker 3: responsible citizens who are proud of each other and of
Speaker 3: the society to which they belong.
Speaker 1: He then proceeds to reassure his viewers that the identities
Speaker 1: of people in this group are never shared with anyone,
Speaker 1: not least of all because their enemies abound.
Speaker 3: The carefully coordinated attacks against us from all points of
Speaker 3: the ideological compass have reached a crescendo stage since the
Speaker 3: first of this year, with the surprising but visible result
Speaker 3: of solidifying the dedication of all the numbers still further
Speaker 3: end up stimulating the recruiting efforts.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Welch Junior. Consider the facts. He speaks
Speaker 1: a little like a dictator. He seems to run some
Speaker 1: sort of secret society, and consider himself public enemy number one.
Speaker 1: Who is this titan? Well, naturally, he's a candy tycoon.
Speaker 1: Robert Welch Junior was born on a former plantation in
Speaker 1: North Carolina just before the turn of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: As a kid, he was precocious and a daydreamer. Wanted
Speaker 1: to be a writer, an intellectual but he felt that
Speaker 1: before he could do so, he had to get rich.
Speaker 1: So one night, as a young man, he had a brainstorm.
Speaker 1: According to Edward H. Miller, who wrote a biography of
Speaker 1: Welsh called A Conspiratorial Life, Welch stayed up late into
Speaker 1: the evening, writing and writing to answer a single question,
Speaker 1: what specific goods in demand would be best for me
Speaker 1: to start manufacturing without either capital or experience. This is
Speaker 1: a quote Miller found from an associate of Welsh's recalling
Speaker 1: this legendary moment quote. As the sky began to show
Speaker 1: the first streaks of dawn, Roberts stared at the notes
Speaker 1: in front of him. One word remained amid the maze
Speaker 1: of dark lines scratched across the pages. That word was candy.
Speaker 1: We've arrived at the Halloween portion of our programming. So
Speaker 1: if in your baskets this year you find the following candies,
Speaker 1: Sugar Daddy, Sugar Baby, or the Junior Mint, you're encountering
Speaker 1: a piece of the Welsh legacy, and actually the legacy
Speaker 1: of his brother too, who naturally also worked in the
Speaker 1: candy business. The Welsh nuclear family of Hit Candies, the
Speaker 1: patriarch of which the Sugar Daddy I have to say,
Speaker 1: I find totally inedible has been a mainstay forever. Children
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties may remember the jingle subary beby for.
Speaker 4: Shuby beerby.
Speaker 1: Welch. Was part of what I've come to think of
Speaker 1: as the American sweets aristocracy. I'm talking about a special
Speaker 1: class of confectioners and bakers who turned out to have
Speaker 1: a surprising number of ideas about how society ought to
Speaker 1: be run. In the pantheon, we have Milton's navely Hershey,
Speaker 1: whose chocolates were so delectable he was able to put
Speaker 1: his social ideas to the test, building utopian town called Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Then there's Sylvester Graham, the clergyman who invented the Graham
Speaker 1: Cracker to combat youth masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg, the Seventh
Speaker 1: Day Adventist, who invented cornflakes to do the same. The
Speaker 1: candy makers, in particular, tended to be extremely paranoid because
Speaker 1: there was actually quite a bit of spying in their industry.
Speaker 1: They had to guard their secrets, their recipes, their fortunes.
Speaker 1: Some would even blindfold the people who repaired their mission genes.
Speaker 1: But I digress. After establishing himself in the candy business
Speaker 1: and drinking deeply at the trough of its paranoia, Welch
Speaker 1: set out to elbow his way into the intellectual class,
Speaker 1: specifically the anti communist class. Over the years, he wrote
Speaker 1: a number of articles in books about the rise of communism, including,
Speaker 1: per his biographer, a novel about inant society oppressed by
Speaker 1: a monolithic state, which somehow went unpublished. But it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four that one of his ideas finally
Speaker 1: broke through.
Speaker 4: He was very secretive about these because Welch was always
Speaker 4: worried about the Communists as he saw getting a hold
Speaker 4: of what he was saying.
Speaker 1: Historian Matthew Dallak, author of the book Bircher's, talking about
Speaker 1: Welch's penchant for sending secret.
Speaker 5: Letters because they exposed him and they damaged You know,
Speaker 5: these true, this patriotic movement to destroy communism, it would
Speaker 5: be it.
Speaker 4: Would basically be like killing his movement in the crypt.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: The letter he sent in nineteen fifty four, in particular,
Speaker 1: merited sensitivity. It was a roughly nine thousand word attempt
Speaker 1: to explain why he disliked Dwight Eisenhower so much. The
Speaker 1: first Republican president in multiple decades. The letter built to
Speaker 1: the irrefutable conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was not really a Republican.
Speaker 1: He was quote a dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy,
Speaker 1: operating under the direction of his brother, the affable Milton.
Speaker 4: They're really divorced from, you know, any semblance of the truth.
Speaker 4: The other thing, though, is that the argument against Eisenhower
Speaker 4: I think fits into the Joe McCarthy argument that clearly
Speaker 4: the setbacks in the world for the United States in
Speaker 4: the fight against communism is a result of communists in
Speaker 4: the government, including Eisenhower, allowing the communists to win.
Speaker 1: Where the ant book had failed, the letter succeeded wildly.
Speaker 1: It ballooned into a book that is over four hundred
Speaker 1: pages long, complete with an extremely tedious footnote section explaining
Speaker 1: the sourcing for his atlandish claims. As Welch once wrote,
Speaker 1: explanations are like government. Nobody loves them, but a minimum
Speaker 1: amount of both is a necessary evil. But anyway, Welch
Speaker 1: was not content to mail secret letters the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. He wanted to build a movement. So four
Speaker 1: years after that letter, in October nineteen fifty eight, Welch
Speaker 1: brought together eleven of his most powerful friends to a
Speaker 1: secret meeting in Indianapolis. He didn't say what for, but
Speaker 1: he did tell them each book their own hotel rooms
Speaker 1: so people wouldn't see them together. Then he promised them
Speaker 1: that there was nothing conspiratorial about what they were about
Speaker 1: to do, which was to gather in a secret location
Speaker 1: for two days and conspire.
Speaker 3: My undertaking today is to try to tell you all
Speaker 3: about the background, methods, and purposes of the John Bird Society.
Speaker 1: This tape is from a recruitment video he made later on.
Speaker 1: We don't have a recording of what he said that
Speaker 1: day in Indianapolis. I mean, it was a secret meeting,
Speaker 1: but I think it's safe to assume he was on message.
Speaker 1: Welch was there to start a new anti communist organization,
Speaker 1: after all, with the Communists already in control of the
Speaker 1: US presidency, the situation was getting a little out of hand.
Speaker 3: As we have said many times before, the fundamentally decent
Speaker 3: American mind simply refuse us to recognize the nature of
Speaker 3: the cunning beasts who constitute our enemies today. This is
Speaker 3: especially true when these criminal gangsters assume all of the
Speaker 3: suavity and regalia of high office.
Speaker 1: Eleven men walked into that room in Indianapolis, and the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society walked out, named by the way for
Speaker 1: an American missionary who'd been killed by Chinese communists and
Speaker 1: then became a kind of patron saint for people like
Speaker 1: Robert Welch Junior. These were important men with money and
Speaker 1: time to burn and an axe to grind. They had
Speaker 1: Eisenhower's former IRS commissioner, presidents of major companies, a former
Speaker 1: aide to Douglas MacArthur, and Fred Cooch oil man and
Speaker 1: father to the Koch brothers, was there too.
Speaker 3: I'll wake my friends and arise now I'll be forever fallen.
Speaker 3: We mean business and we can still win, but we
Speaker 3: are in our race against time, with the enemy advancing
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 1: Welch knew what he was doing. He took his show
Speaker 1: on the road, giving versions of that speech across the country,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the listeners, bored Americans rattled by
Speaker 1: war and free doubt by integration, thought, hey, this guy's
Speaker 1: got a point. He started with just his friends who
Speaker 1: thought like he did, then his friend's friends, and then
Speaker 1: his friends friends friends. But Welch's dreams were always much grander.
Speaker 3: By any realistic appraisal of our size against our need.
Speaker 3: We are still very small, but we certainly expect our
Speaker 3: present growth to continue until we have the million members
Speaker 3: of fervat patriotism and unassailable character, which is our goal.
Speaker 1: Despite Welch's vision for one million patriots to join the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, estimates show that the membership was likely
Speaker 1: at an all time high when it hit thirty thousand
Speaker 1: members in the sixties.
Speaker 4: The mission was not explicitly to take over a political party.
Speaker 4: It was not to even take over in nes silly
Speaker 4: American institutions. It was to wage a mass education campaign
Speaker 4: to allure Americans, to educate them about the dire nature
Speaker 4: of the communist conspiracy inside the United States.
Speaker 1: And so a small but influential group of right wingers
Speaker 1: became convinced that there was a war going on at home.
Speaker 3: A continuous, undeclared war in which our our enemies observed
Speaker 3: no rules of international law, of civilization, or of human decency.
Speaker 1: But where was the front in this war? Exactly two
Speaker 1: years after its founding, the Birch Society had part of
Speaker 1: the answer. The Parent Teacher Association, of course, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. The bitter Root Valley lies in the southwest
Speaker 1: of Montana between the Sapphire and Bitterroot Mountains. It's the
Speaker 1: place they filmed Yellowstone Today. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 6: Okay, so small town.
Speaker 1: Gail Laro Munson was a little girl growing up in
Speaker 1: the valley in the nineteen sixties in a town called Darby.
Speaker 1: Back then, its population was three hundred and ninety eight.
Speaker 6: Close snit, neighbors looked out for each other. Kids could
Speaker 6: be out till dark and from back home they would
Speaker 6: be safe. If you were caught doing something wrong, the
Speaker 6: neighbors would let your parents know and they'd be ready
Speaker 6: when you got home.
Speaker 1: Darby was the kind of place where you knew everyone,
Speaker 1: especially if you were in Gaylee's family. Her dad, Orville Row,
Speaker 1: was the superintendent of the school district, but in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties strangers began to show up in the valley.
Speaker 1: Orville was busy right around then getting new Bibles for
Speaker 1: a local school because there as we're all beaten up.
Speaker 1: He asked a local clergymen how to get rid of
Speaker 1: the old ones in a respectful way, and he was
Speaker 1: told to burn them. So he gathered up the bibles
Speaker 1: and set them on fire, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: those strangers leaped into action. It turned out they were
Speaker 1: part of a club, the John Birch Society.
Speaker 4: Merch members appeared at the regular school board meeting with
Speaker 4: a petition demanding that Laoe not be offered a new contract.
Speaker 1: It was all over the local radio.
Speaker 3: The majority of the board rejected that demand, and this
Speaker 3: action of the board intensified an already steady program of
Speaker 3: intimidation against the Row and his family.
Speaker 1: The Birchers were turning Orville's quiet life in Derby with
Speaker 1: his three kids and his wife, completely upside down. Here's Orville.
Speaker 7: There are individuals, of course the community who will drive
Speaker 7: by and make have scene signs. There have been an
Speaker 7: incidents where people are called the house my life had
Speaker 7: answered and have used a'bscene language on the telephone. Basically,
Speaker 7: it's it's a joy, simple postant harassment.
Speaker 1: An archivist in Montana named Kristen Gates wrote an essay
Speaker 1: about all this. She found letters from the principle of
Speaker 1: the local school who said the Birchers were quote using
Speaker 1: the local pta as a springboard to infiltrate the schools.
Speaker 1: Here I'm telling you about what unfolded for the LaRose
Speaker 1: in a tiny town in Montana. But they weren't the
Speaker 1: only people involved in local ptas or schools who became targets.
Speaker 1: This is not the case now, but in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: according to one study, almost half of all families in
Speaker 1: America were represented in the PTA fifty percent. The PTA
Speaker 1: became such a well known part of public life that
Speaker 1: it was even the subject of a number one song
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, Harper.
Speaker 3: And it was signed by the Secretary Unprevaletta.
Speaker 1: The PTA played a huge role in modernizing American education.
Speaker 1: Every local PTA was part of the National PTA, which
Speaker 1: was run out of Washington, and they worked together to
Speaker 1: petition schools to adapt and modernize, like a miniature version
Speaker 1: of the federal government. He was actually originally called the
Speaker 1: Congress of Mothers. Anyways, all this paid dividends. If you've
Speaker 1: drunk fluoridated water, which you have gotten vaccinated in schools,
Speaker 1: gone to a public kindergarten, or just been at a
Speaker 1: school that received federal funds, you can thank the PTA
Speaker 1: next bakesale, maybe by a cookie. As a sociologist, Robert
Speaker 1: Putnam writes, the PTA in its day was quote one
Speaker 1: of the most impressive organizational success stories in American history
Speaker 1: end quote, and who at that exact moment wanted to
Speaker 1: pull off another of the most impressive organizational success stories
Speaker 1: in American history Dark Willy Wonka Robert Welch Junior, whose
Speaker 1: recruiting methods were slightly more apocalyptic.
Speaker 3: The wise and the brave do not hold back until
Speaker 3: it is too late.
Speaker 1: In its newsletter, the John Birch Society told its members
Speaker 1: to quote join your local PTA at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise,
Speaker 1: and go to work to take it over. You will
Speaker 1: run into real battles against determined leftists who have had
Speaker 1: everything their way. But it is time we went on
Speaker 1: the offensive to make such groups the instrument of conservative
Speaker 1: purpose with the same vigor and determination that the liberals
Speaker 1: have used to the opposite aims. With encouragement from the
Speaker 1: John Birch Society, extremists of all stripes started showing up
Speaker 1: to local ptas across the country trying to take them over.
Speaker 8: You know, all kinds of methods were being used.
Speaker 1: Sarah Heath, a historian at Indiana University Kocomo.
Speaker 8: So the Birch Society might pack cars full of people,
Speaker 8: so if I bring thirty people to a local meeting
Speaker 8: of a PTA.
Speaker 6: But basically what they.
Speaker 8: Would try to do is, if I can get thirty
Speaker 8: people to go to this one local meeting, we can
Speaker 8: try to take over the proceedings of that meeting.
Speaker 1: Suddenly, amid the conversations about fire safety and participatory democracy,
Speaker 1: parents had to consider things like whether skipping the pledge
Speaker 1: of allegiance at the start of a meeting made you
Speaker 1: a Stalin level communist or an Eisenhower level one. Such
Speaker 1: considerations it turned out demand quite a bit of everyone's time.
Speaker 8: Because what they wanted to do was first get some
Speaker 8: people to get so tired that they would just say,
Speaker 8: I've got to go.
Speaker 5: Home, right.
Speaker 8: PTA meetings are usually in the early evening, so some
Speaker 8: people would leave. Then they call the vote, and then
Speaker 8: they have a majority.
Speaker 1: The virtuers wanted to use the ptas to reach school
Speaker 1: boards so they could change the textbooks and root out
Speaker 1: all the comedy and sex education stuff. But a lot
Speaker 1: of what they did was actual harassment.
Speaker 8: You know, there are examples of people throwing trash on
Speaker 8: the lawns of PTA members or threatening people by the phone,
Speaker 8: calling them at all hours of the night, you know,
Speaker 8: just to keep them awake.
Speaker 1: The PTA fought back in classic PTA form, with pamphlets
Speaker 1: and lists of meeting best practices. But this was a
Speaker 1: little like bringing knives to a gunfight. At this point
Speaker 1: there'd even been a report of a bombing at a
Speaker 1: restaurant where a PTA meeting was going to be held.
Speaker 1: This is what happens when you talk about national politics,
Speaker 1: like Robert Welch Junior, like you're in a shadowy war, a.
Speaker 3: Continuous, undeclared war in which our enemies observed no rules
Speaker 3: of international law of civilization are of human decency.
Speaker 1: The PTA kept pushing back their own way against the Birchers.
Speaker 1: There's even a quote from the PTA president in the
Speaker 1: congressional record saying these extremists are not really after the PTA,
Speaker 1: but are attempting to gain control of it to get
Speaker 1: at their real objective, the educational system. But for Orville Row,
Speaker 1: the superintendent in Darby, Montana, these extremists weren't some faraway thing.
Speaker 1: They were at his doorstep, and I walked home in
Speaker 1: the evenings.
Speaker 7: At times I have had a car follow me. Ordinarily,
Speaker 7: they apparently are cowards because.
Speaker 6: When I am.
Speaker 7: Stopped and gone over to take their license them.
Speaker 3: But there was a holy picture.
Speaker 1: But the aggression wasn't just limited to Orville. Orville's eldest
Speaker 1: son was a fifth grader in the local school. One day,
Speaker 1: there was a basketball game. He was sitting in the
Speaker 1: stands watching. He was not an unpopular kid, but midway
Speaker 1: through the game, a couple of classmates to him. They
Speaker 1: pulled him out of his seat and they began to
Speaker 1: beat him mercilessly. This is Gail again, his sister.
Speaker 6: And when they were beating him up, he was at
Speaker 6: a basketball game in the gym and other kids were
Speaker 6: sturing it on.
Speaker 1: The kids weren't Birchers all they knew he was Orville,
Speaker 1: the Bible Burner's son.
Speaker 7: Then he's coming into the house and ask pissed why
Speaker 7: they are calling him names.
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything, and.
Speaker 7: Of course it's rather had to explain forty youngster in
Speaker 7: that age.
Speaker 6: He came home bloodied. He was We were all confused,
Speaker 6: Why you know, what did I do? Why did this happen?
Speaker 1: The tipping point came when Orville A. Row was driving
Speaker 1: his whole family along one of the roads around Darby
Speaker 1: suddenly another car appeared and tried to run them off
Speaker 1: the road. They all could have died, and that was
Speaker 1: the last straw. After years of harassment, he decided it
Speaker 1: was time to leave Darby.
Speaker 6: He sacrificed for the family. And I know that was
Speaker 6: a really difficult thing to not stay in fight because
Speaker 6: my dad has so much integrity and he was a
Speaker 6: tough guy. And if he hadn't had a family, I
Speaker 6: firmly believe my brothers and I believe he would have
Speaker 6: stayed and he would have fought this situation.
Speaker 1: The people of Derby had a picnic for the LaRose
Speaker 1: before they packed up and left. Montana had been Orville's
Speaker 1: home since he was a kid, the place he'd loved
Speaker 1: to fish and hunt, taught school, and raised a family.
Speaker 1: When the LaRose left, the school system didn't just lose
Speaker 1: its superintendent, It fell apart. There were twenty three teachers
Speaker 1: in the Darby Consolidated School that fall, only seven went
Speaker 1: back to work. Things were never the same for the
Speaker 1: row family either. When I called the kids up, none
Speaker 1: of them really wanted to talk about this. Then they
Speaker 1: changed their mind. I think, if I had to guess,
Speaker 1: because they wanted to stand up against the people who
Speaker 1: did this to their family, to their father, and also
Speaker 1: to their mother. Dorothy, my dad.
Speaker 6: Said, before this happened, she was such a fun person,
Speaker 6: great sense of humor. I'd love to hear my dead
Speaker 6: stories of my mom because I didn't, I didn't witness
Speaker 6: a lot of this, and so you know, we were
Speaker 6: all cheated out of an amazing person. And just I
Speaker 6: just I just can picture her kind of don't don't
Speaker 6: tell you know the neighbors is, don't tell the neighbors that,
Speaker 6: don't tell anybody this. Don't tell anybody this.
Speaker 1: They moved from one small town to another, but Dorothy
Speaker 1: never could quite trust her neighbors again. What came up
Speaker 1: the Birch Society in the PTA after the break? A
Speaker 1: little while ago, I stopped by a house in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It was shaded by a sick More tree and there
Speaker 1: was a Route sixty six sign leaning in the front windowsill,
Speaker 1: facing the quiet street. I was there to talk to
Speaker 1: a woman named Marva Felchlin. Marva grew up in California
Speaker 1: and was a student at welby Way Elementary School. She
Speaker 1: was a baby boomer in the classical sense. A house
Speaker 1: in a safe and lovely subdivision, a dad in the
Speaker 1: defense industry, and a mom in the PTA that, yes,
Speaker 1: Birchers had tried to take over. Her mom's name was Zelda,
Speaker 1: and she never got over what happened.
Speaker 9: It's a big thing that happened in our lives.
Speaker 1: Why do you think the story had added to your
Speaker 1: mother so much?
Speaker 9: Because I think you know, the PTA and her activities
Speaker 9: in the PTA probably represented, as with other women in there,
Speaker 9: a lot of what they believed in, and here they're
Speaker 9: being accused of being liars and dishonest and Unamerican. Those
Speaker 9: of those people were probably children of immigrants. I mean,
Speaker 9: that's a serious accusation in those anytime.
Speaker 1: But in those days, Zelda had always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a writer. She once abmitted a script to the Twilight Zone,
Speaker 1: but the place she really wrote was her Parent Teacher
Speaker 1: Association newsletter. It's the one we read from at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, the April nineteen sixty two edition
Speaker 1: of the welby Way Elementary School PTA newsletter web Buzzings
Speaker 1: with the curious editor's note, Zelda wrote that when Bircher's
Speaker 1: across the country, we're trying to take down the PTA.
Speaker 1: She took to her newsletter to fight back.
Speaker 9: I don't. I'm not surprised that my mother pushed back
Speaker 9: in any way, because that's I think she's kind of
Speaker 9: that kind of personality that she didn't stand for a
Speaker 9: lot of crap.
Speaker 1: You know, Marva has held on to the original copy
Speaker 1: of that newsletter for years. I asked her to read
Speaker 1: me the editor's message.
Speaker 9: Okay, the power to seek the truth is within all
Speaker 9: of us. The way in which we seek it is
Speaker 9: privilege and write of all of us. We are fortunate
Speaker 9: enough to live under a system of government that secures
Speaker 9: and protects that right. But there are some who abuse
Speaker 9: this freedom and cloud the answers and the issues, so
Speaker 9: that seeking the truth and knowing it is the truth
Speaker 9: becomes a harder task than it was ever meant to be.
Speaker 9: I say this, Give me the right to seek the truth,
Speaker 9: but justly and rationally and kindly. Give me the wisdom
Speaker 9: to understand and recognize the truth simply, without unseen or
Speaker 9: unknown factors behind it. Give me the wisdom to use
Speaker 9: the truth properly, openly, knowingly, and in its entirety, without
Speaker 9: bending or twisting said truth to fit my own purposes.
Speaker 9: Give me the graciousness to accept the truth, although it
Speaker 9: may disagree with or disapprove my own personal opinions and beliefs.
Speaker 9: And last, give me the wisdom and right to seek
Speaker 9: the truth in whatever manner I so choose, so long
Speaker 9: as I in the manner I have chosen, do not
Speaker 9: belittle or deface the object of my search, so long
Speaker 9: as I can honestly say to myself it is the
Speaker 9: truth alone that I am seeking. So the last off editor.
Speaker 1: During those same years when were mobbing PTA meetings, the
Speaker 1: PTA as a national organization began to die for good.
Speaker 1: It just kept losing members until it became effectively a
Speaker 1: loose group of local organizations. It still exists, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't write a number one song about it anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't think that was all the doing of the Birch Society,
Speaker 1: though it certainly didn't help. The rise of the Birchers
Speaker 1: in the fall of the PTA were both part of
Speaker 1: the backlash to Brown versus Board of Education, a response
Speaker 1: to integration and civil rights. The Birch Society went into
Speaker 1: decline then too. It had become radioactive, mocked to death
Speaker 1: in the press, repudiated by even William F. Buckley, turned
Speaker 1: on my mainstream Republicans, torn by its own infighting investigated
Speaker 1: by the Anti Defamation League in the FBI, but it
Speaker 1: never vanished. Robert Welch Junior was involved with the Birch
Speaker 1: Society almost until his death in nineteen eighty five. Under
Speaker 1: the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who, true to Welsh, once
Speaker 1: called the communist Lackeye. His society lives on in diminished
Speaker 1: form these days. They're a lot less notable. They're just
Speaker 1: one in a sea of right wing groups. But why
Speaker 1: did people like Welsh hate the Parent Teacher Association so much?
Speaker 1: It seems to me like the Birch Society and the
Speaker 1: PTA were locked in that kind of death match between
Speaker 1: two visions of American civil society. The PTA was the
Speaker 1: vision of the American vital center, progressive, orderly, incremental, and
Speaker 1: evidence based. Its model was the US federal system, local
Speaker 1: and national working patiently together. But the John Birch Society
Speaker 1: was modeled on communist cells, secretive with hard caps on
Speaker 1: membership to keep things decentralized rather than optimistic. It was
Speaker 1: paranoid rather than incremental. They called for kind of revolution.
Speaker 1: The PTA was about trusting your neighbors to share your
Speaker 1: trusts too. The John Birch Society was about always suspecting
Speaker 1: them of betraying you. I don't know if that sounds
Speaker 1: familiar to you, but it shore does to me. Revisionist
Speaker 1: History is produced by me Ben That Ofhaffrey and Lucy
Speaker 1: Sullivan with Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Schakerji.
Speaker 1: Fact checking on this episode by Sam Russick. Original scoring
Speaker 1: by Louis Gara, mastering by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, the State
Speaker 1: Historical Society of North Dakota, the University of Montana, and
Speaker 1: the UCLA Library Special Collections. I'm ben That of Aaffrey.