Claire Conner's Parents
In 1958, after more than a decade of hating Communists and Democrats, my father found his ideological home in the John Birch Society, a new movement dedicated to “taking back the country.”
My father was the first member in the city of Chicago. My mother was the second.
Because I was an obedient Conner girl, I didn’t argue when my parents handed me a John Birch membership application to sign. I was thirteen years old.
In no time, our house was all Birch, all the time and my father became a national leader, a position he maintained until his death.
Birchers faced two daunting tasks.
First, defeat the Communists, Communists who were only a couple of years from taking total control of the United States. Adding to the difficulty, secret Commies who’d already infiltrated the government had to be uncovered and exposed.
Second, “taking our country back” meant that every government program not specifically mentioned in the Constitution had to go. Birchers gleefully anticipated the end of federal funding for almost everything. Soon the federal government would be 60% smaller (than it was in 1958).
When I hear Grover Norquist, the king of “no tax increases ever” and his plan to shrink the government until it was small enough to drown in a bathtub, I remember my father and his John Birch Society friends with their 60% smaller idea.
Sounds like Grover copied his ideas from Birchers, doesn’t it?
