[lbo-talk] Did Ron Paul really say this ?

[Carrol Cox]

There used to be a radio show in Bloomington entitled Problems & 
Solutions --4 hours every afternoon. Originally it was the sort of show 
where people call in to ask how to clean a blouse or to give away a cat. 
But it often developed quite different subjects. One day the host was 
talking about makign "This Land" our national anthem. I phoned in and 
said, "You know, don't you, that Guthrie was a communist." "Oh no, he 
said, Guthrie was a patriot." "Exactly," I said. Any how, our local 
Bircher was soon on the phone, giving all the details about all those 
Communist musicians in NYC. She had a long list, but the onlyname I 
remember now is Leonard Bernstein. The curious thing about the Red Hunt, 
even in less nutty forms, was that it depended on the target being a 
"secret" communist. So before they could bait an open communist they had 
to somehow show that he/she denied being a communist.  The same woman 
was one of the witnesses before the legislative committee that had 
subpoenaed me in 1970 -- both funny & sort of pathetic. All she could 
talk about (the subject was post-Kent State events at ISU) was being 
able to smell the marijuana blocks away from campus.

Carol

On 9/30/2011 9:01 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I'd remembered that Goldwater shunned the JBS as nuts, so I refreshed my memory on all this. WFB has an interesting memoir on all of it:
>
> http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/goldwater-the-john-birch-society-and-me/
>
> ...
>
> Time was given to the John Birch Society lasting through lunch, and the subject came up again the next morning. We resolved that conservative leaders should do something about the John Birch Society. An allocation of responsibilities crystallized.
>
> Goldwater would seek out an opportunity to dissociate himself from the “findings” of the Society’s leader, without, however, casting any aspersions on the Society itself. I, in National Review and in my other writing, would continue to expose Welch and his thinking to scorn and derision. “You know how to do that,” said Jay Hall.
>
> I volunteered to go further. Unless Welch himself disowned his operative fallacy,National Review would oppose any support for the society.
>
> “How would you define the Birch fallacy?” Jay Hall asked.
>
> “The fallacy,” I said, “is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”
>
> “I like that,” Goldwater said.
>
> What would Russell Kirk do? He was straightforward. “Me? I’ll just say, if anybody gets around to asking me, that the guy is loony and should be put away.”
>
> ...
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