In January of 1959, my mother and my father found the perfect place to fight Communists: The John Birch Society, a new, populist, anti-Communist, anti-federal government movement.
My parents had met JBS founder Robert Welch several years earlier and the three immediately became allies and friends. Just a month after the Birch Society was born, my parents paid $2000 to become life members. (That’s about $15,000 in today’s dollars) They were Birchers #1 and #2 in the city of Chicago.
In the winter of 1959, my parents gave me a Birch membership form. I signed on the line and became a full-fledged, adult member of the society. The monthly dues ($1.00 for women) were deducted from my allowance. I was 13.
My father was promoted to national leadership in 1960. He remained on the National Council for 32 years—until his death.
The John Birch Society defined its first mission as saving America from the Communists. As the Communists continued and accelerated their conquests, it was easy to believe that they were unstoppable. “They’re coming for us,” my father said.
Robert Welch believed the same thing and he even calculated in percentage terms how close we were to becoming a satellite of Russia ruled from Moscow. By the early 1960s, Welch estimated the U.S. to be 60% Communist controlled. Only a few years remained, he said, before the United States would cease to exist as a free, independent nation.
Making matters infinitely more dangerous, the problem wasn’t just from the U.S.S.R. or Red China. There were traitors in Congress, the Department of State and every other federal bureaucracy. Welch believed that we had a Communist president in Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But, that wasn’t the worst of the problem. Robert Welch had unmasked an even more sinister enemy—the Illuminati, a conspiracy founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt in Bavaria. Weishaupt and a group of Enlightenment era Masons devised a plan to destroy all governments and institute a New World Order. They, of course, would be the sole rulers in this new utopia.
According to Welch, the Illuminati had influenced every major event in the last 180 years including the World Wars, our Civil War, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. The Communists were not separate from this Master Conspiracy—they functioned as the terror arm of the Illuminati.
The Communists provided the brawn for the revolution but the ideas came from think tanks and foundations. These organizations controlled by “Insiders,” prominent Americans and Internationalists working to further the goals of the New World Order.
You could find the conspirators running the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations and the dreaded Skull and Bones club at Yale. Presumably, these were the men and women Robert Welch described as “secret Communists.” These Commies looked like and acted like regular, patriotic Americans until the perfect moment arrived. Then, they would be activated by their handlers and rise up to take over the country.
As a Conner kid, I was required to be present for every Birch meeting at our house. My parents were prolific recruiters for the fledgling group and they packed the living room five or six times a week. That meant a lot of filmstrips to watch, dozens of coffee cups to refill and piles of ashtrays to empty.
It was, as my mother liked to say, "wild."