John Birch Society Analysis

Another less aggressive correspondence, serves to highlight the gap in leadership rural voters felt. Describing himself as not having much education, a voter from Dillon, South Carolina wondered if anyone could make sense of the actions of the government. Kennedy’s tragic death shocked and saddened him, but Johnson had to carry on. To his dismay, elected politicians seemed to be giving in to the State Department and Supreme Court, preferring to send money abroad to communist countries who wanted to buy guns to kill Americans and their allies. He closes his letter by asking Senator Thurmond to “tell a God fearing man who also loves his America as you, what he can do to bring America back to us and what our forefathers died for.” In California,

The John Birch Society and the YAF symbolized the disenchanted, the outsiders considered too square to be anything like the kind of outsider that society began to embrace by the end of the decade. It cannot be understated the significance these groups played on the election, without them White’s plan would likely have come to a halt short of completion. They are often described as the radical right or as extremists. The word “radical” is Latin for “root”, therefore a radical is someone who takes political ideas to their roots. They are committed to changing fundamental political structures, not only superficial ones. Labeling someone as a radical suggests that the person is not being rational, they are operating outside of acceptable social standards either in thought or in action. After the war, industrialization accompanied by rapid economic prosperity within the abnormal climate of anti-communism propelled the growth of the radical right. As a consequence of changes in the population, Americans spread out to the far corners of the country to places like California, Texas, and Arizona where small-town conservatives jelled. A new business class began to emerge in the Sun Belt states, drawn to conservativism out of their distrust for the eastern elite, their animosity towards the hoarding of resources in the industrial states, and the use of the federal government to procure and maintain the establishment. Some of these radicals became members of the John Birch Society or the YAF, at least many of them were familiar with their ideas or knew someone who was a member. Goldwater’s campaign called forth these iconoclastic voters, they understood their alienation could be the spark for burning down tradition and starting something