What You Are About to Learn May Forever Change You

Do you want to learn about what goes on behind the scenes in a radical political household? Read the introduction to Wrapped in the Flag for a sneak peek.

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I never wanted to write this book.

When my mother died in 2007, fifteen years after my father, I was sure I’d heard the last of conspiracies and Communists. After all, my parents, and most of their fanatic friends were gone and the Bush administration was killing any lingering America appetite for right-wing Republicans. “The craziness is over,” I told myself. “There’s no one left to carry the extremist flag.”

I was wrong—one hundred percent wrong. I now know that everything my parents believed, everything my parents preached was on the way back, with a vengeance. The extremists had new names and faces, but the ideas were oh so familiar. 2008 sounded like 1958 when my parents were the first two members in the city of Chicago of the John Birch Society: the brand-new, right-wing populist uprising.

My parents had been primed for their lurch to the right for years. They loved Joseph McCarthy and hated the Communists. They’d decided that government help made people weak and lazy and the New Deal was really a bad deal. They loathed Franklin Roosevelt and blamed Democrats for wrecking free enterprise.

So, in 1955, when Mother and Dad were introduced to Robert Welch, a candy company executive turned conspiracy hunter, they immediately recognized a kindred soul. My father said Welch was “a brilliant mind and the finest patriot I’ve ever had the privilege to know.” Three years later, when Welch founded his John Birch Society, Mother and Dad joined with vigor.

My parents immersed themselves in their new crusade; nothing was allowed to interfere with the next meeting, the next project, the next mailing. At fourteen and thirteen, my older brother and I were deemed old enough to take up the cause―making Birch membership and participation mandatory. The other Conner children were banished upstairs where my 10-year-old sister was put in charge of the baby (18 months). My 6-year-old brother fended for himself.  Six months after Mother and Dad became John Birchers, the entire Conner family lived and breathed Birch.

Robert Welch identified Communists as the first targets in the battle to save the country. These Communists were not of the international variety, although we were taught to be really afraid of the Russian and Asian hordes. The Communists Welch worried most about were the ones lurking inside the country, in positions of influence. American Commies ready to jump into action to destroy the constitution and turn the U.S. into a socialist country.

Birchers unearthed Commies all over the place. They found them leading school boards, putting fluoride into drinking water, teaching university classes, organizing labor unions, marching in the Civil Rights Movement and working in the highest levels of the government.

Night after night, Birch activists and new recruits filled our living room. They received hours of instruction about the secret conspiracy, the New World Order, hidden codes on the dollar bill and Commie spies in our government. Birchers were schooled in the evils of creeping socialism, Communism and Marxism. Good Birchers understood the sins of welfare and Social Security.  It was time to rise up against the unholy alliance of the left—Communists, socialists, liberals, union bosses, the press―and take back the country.

Across the land, the Birch message caught fire. Membership exploded and revenue spiked. My father was rewarded for the impressive growth of the society in Chicago: he was promoted to the National Council where he served for thirty-two years.

In the summer of 1960, a rumor spread about secret Birch things, things not shared with the plain-old, everyday members. Somewhere, the story went, there was a book identifying the Communists inside our own government. Supposedly, President Dwight David Eisenhower, the hero of World War II, was one of those Communists.

My father tried to stamp out the whispers. “There is no such book,” he insisted.

At a public meeting in Glenview, Illinois, my father was proven to be a bald-faced liar when a copy of that “no such book” book appeared. For two days, the Chicago Daily News described the contents of that secret book, The Politician by Robert Welch, and the public humiliation of my father. Before long, the national press spread the scandal from coast to coast. The Birchers were pilloried for calling the president a traitor.

During the uproar, my father defended the Birch society in every possible venue. He even agreed to a LIFE magazine photo shoot done in our home. I was the youngest person in that photograph and my 14-year-old face has become part of the image of right-wing politics 1960s style.

Fallout from the “President Eisenhower is a Communist” debacle drove the Republican Party to change course. The GOP, who’d originally applauded the Birchers for their patriotic zeal and embraced them as good Republicans, realized that their election chances could suffer if they looked like the party of crazy radicals. It was decided to push the Birchers to the fringe, label them as crackpots and end the problem.

The effort worked. Before long, the Birchers had joined the KKK, the Aryan Nation and other kooks as the extremists of American politics. The Republican Party took a bow for saving the U.S. from fringe-of-the fringe crusaders who imagined Commies everywhere.

While the politicians and pundits declared the Birchers dead and buried, the moneyed Birch leadership went to plan B. They redirected their cash and their influence into think tanks and foundations. My parents joined in that diversifying effort. They founded a right-wing Catholic foundation, The Wanderer Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota and donated to every single right-wing organization and political action committee they could. They had no money to help with my college education, but they could always find $100 to fight the Equal Rights Amendment or sponsor the Dan Smoot Report on our local radio station.

My parents did everything they could; but they never had big money to spend. The Koch family, however, has spent huge sums to bankroll Birch ideas. David and Charles Koch, sons of Fred Koch—a Birch founding member—inherited their father’s multi-millions and invested liberally in their favorite political causes: the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and others.

Since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited and unregulated corporate donations in politics, the Kochs have raised and contributed millions of dollars to individual candidates and to political action committees.

The Kochs and their allies envision the same framework for American government that I heard from my father and his John Birch Society allies: all liberal social policies since FDR dismantled and the federal government reduced to a quarter of its current size. This libertarian utopia would free business and individuals to do anything unrestrained by regulation while cutting corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy to almost nothing.

In 2008 when the economy tanked and Barack Obama emerged as the Democratic candidate for president, the radical right-wing took the stage. I recognized Birch language in what passed as mainstream political chatter. The country was served daily doses of Marxist, Socialist, palling around with terrorists. There were slogans about debt and deficits, taxes and gun rights. Folks unfurled the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and shouted about trees of liberty being watered with the blood of tyrants.

When I heard frenzied voters at a Republican rally shouting “Treason,” and “Kill him,” in response to one of Sarah Palin’s anti-Obama rants, I was terrified. “My parents are back,” I told anyone who’d listened.

People looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

Six months after President Obama was inaugurated, Americans for Prosperity and scads of Tea Parties arrived waving copies of the Constitution. Self-appointed zealots suggested we might need “second-amendment remedies.” I shuddered when I heard my father’s favorite rally cry, “We’ve come to take our country back.”

These right-wingers were ticking-off every Birch box:

• Immigrants are the enemy. Protect our borders and deport all illegal aliens.
• Gays are ungodly. Pray the gay away from children and teens.
• Unemployed people don’t want to work and poor people keep themselves poor, on purpose. If we cut the minimum wage and eliminate unemployment compensation, everyone will have a job.
• Unions caused the economic collapse by protecting teachers, firefighters and cops.
• Rich folks have to have more and more so the rest of us can have some.
• Forget climate change; carbon dioxide is good for us, and despite the evidence Arctic sea ice isn’t melting.
• Social Security is unsustainable and Medicare and Medicaid have to be restricted so that corporations and “job creators” have lower tax rates.
• Poor people need to pay more taxes.
• Abortion must be outlawed even in cases of rape, incest. No exceptions means no exceptions; even in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.
• The whole economic meltdown came from too many regulations, and the ignorance of poor people who bought houses they couldn’t afford.
• Cut government jobs to decrease the deficit. The government can’t create jobs so stimulus programs don’t work.
• Cutting taxes creates jobs.
• America is God’s chosen nation, but our president may not be a “real” American. He’s actually a Marxist, Socialist, Muslim, racist who hates America. And, the worst shock of all—he wasn’t born here. Look, he has no birth certificate.

I recognized what was happening. This was the rise of the radical right, a rewrite of the old radical right of fifty years ago. This is the old John Birch Society born-again with real political muscle, a big bankroll and right-wing media support.

I know all of this because I lived it.  I know what extremism looks like.

Wrapped in the Flag is my story.

© 2011 Claire Conner.

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