C-Span: Book Discussion "John Birch: A Life"

[TomSea]

http://www.c-span.org/video/?407999-1/book-discussion-john-birch (video)

 John Birch: A Life by Terry Lautz.

Looks like there is a transcript of the show at the above website as well.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-19-026289-1

Lautz, a scholar of Sino-American relations, draws on myriad sources—including government archives and personal letters—to piece together the life of John Morrison Birch (1918–1945), the man who was posthumously enshrined as the figurehead for the John Birch Society (JBS), an archconservative political advocacy group. This book, the first academic account of its kind, is a full account of Birch’s brief life that covers his humble, pious upbringing, his calling as a Baptist missionary in China, his in-field recruitment and work as a military intelligence officer, and his death in a quarrel with a band of Chinese Communist operatives. In 1958, Birch’s fate was seized upon by Robert Welch, a right-wing ideologue, in his establishment of an organization that advocated for limited government, propagated a form of “conspiracy-minded anticommunism,” and soon came to signify “radicals, extremists, paranoiacs, and super patriots.” Lautz dispels numerous myths and convincingly argues that Birch was much less interested in political conservatism than he was in religious fundamentalism, and that the JBS “transformed him beyond recognition.” By identifying connections between the JBS and the modern conservative movement, particularly the Tea Party, Lautz rounds out a commendable study that fills a significant scholarly gap. Maps. (Jan.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_(missionary)

[don-o]

My Dad was a Bircher and absorbed a great deal, but abandoned them after some retrenchment in his spiritual life.

The left had almost complete success in marginalizing them; and as I recall, Buckley also condemned them.

[TomSea]

Now after the hub-bub this weekend over some organizations, I'm not sure of how much JBS stuff could be posted and that was certainly not my intention. I don't even know if they would fall under that kind of "umbrella".

On the other hand, listening to this lecture on John Birch, the individual, that was quite interesting.

He, John Birch, became a Missionary in China,  received a Fundamentalist religious education. Then, with the war breaking out, from the best I understand,  he became of use to the armed forces.

He died at 27 years old.

The war had ended and he was in China; they came across some Chinese Communist Soldiers who asked for his pistol. Birch would not give up his pistol and was saying things like "Haven't you heard? The war is over". Anyway, the author is uncertain of the exact events but it sounds like a melee ensued and John Birch was shot and killed. The act is classified as a murder though, per the C-Span book discussion.

Per the discussion: John Birch himself was probably not very political but was very much interested in his evangelical missionary work and his religion.

Birch's parents gave the society permission to use his name and John Birch's mother was a "Bircher".

[Sanguine]

So, John Birch was not a Bircher.