When I was in high school I used to amuse myself reading the paranoiac articles in the John Bircher’s magazine and a few other extreme-right rags, which for reasons I can’t fathom, were available in the high school library. This should have been odd anywhere, but particularly in a high school which even then had to be classified as inner city. My best guess is that the magazines were put there by one of the teachers, for at least one or two of them were actually Birchers. I suspect the faculty adviser to the rifle club (who was, in fact, a member), but that’s just speculation on my part.
Anyway, I found the magazine amusing since I couldn’t imagine anyone taking the fevered paranoia of the organization seriously. So far as I was concerned, it was funny, and since these organizations posed no threat (LBJ had just soundly thrashed Barry Goldwater) it never occurred to me that these right wing views, if not the particular organizations, would ever wield influence in the halls of Congress. But wield it they now do, though there’s no real indication that their views are any more widely held now than they were in the mid 60s.
Today we get dismal proof of the extent to which we are in thrall to the insane, as Senate Republicans voted down a treaty on the rights of the disabled, citing as pretext their recently acquired yet firmly held belief that it would interfere with the our sovereignty and the sacred rights of our citizens to fill their children’s minds with lies in the name of home schooling. It would do neither, though in the case of the latter it wouldn’t be so bad if it did. So, we have sunk to this: a major political party finds it necessary to cater to people who are literally unhinged. They stood up there and voted against this treaty while their form leader, Bob Dole was present, in a wheelchair, supporting the treaty on behalf of the disabled. These people are sick.
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