The Unseen Hand - Ralph Epperson |
The question of what the reader can do about this national crisis is perhaps the most important question posed by this study.
If this book has convinced the reader that there is indeed a giant conspiracy at work in the world, it is hoped that each will seek a solution to the problem.
The author is convinced that the only solution to this immoral Conspiracy that moral men and women can accept is a moral one, and the only moral solution to this enormous Conspiracy is education.
Education is not only part of the problem, it is also part of the solution.
Simply put, this means that all informed individuals must first continue to educate themselves to the point where they are convinced of the correctness of their position, and then secondly, they must be willing to do all within their moral power to inform other individuals of the menace this Conspiracy presents to the rights and freedoms of all free people.
There are really only two areas of activity for the concerned activist that the author has chosen to call:
These are organizations that will assist concerned individuals in their quest for additional information on the Conspiracy or for additional information about economics or politics from groups that do not teach the existence of a conspiracy.
1. Non-Conspiratorial Assistance:
There are several excellent organizations that can assist the activist in acquiring the knowledge that it will take to enter the contest for the freedoms of the individual. These are:
A. The National Center for Constitutional Studies:
This organization is a "non-profit, tax-exempt educational foundation dedicated to restoring constitutional principles in the tradition of the founding fathers."
It was founded by Cleon Skousen, an author of several books on the subject of the Conspiracy, most notably the book entitled $$The Naked Capitalist##. He was in the FBI for sixteen years and served as the Police Chief of Salt Lake City for four years and as a teacher at Brigham Young University for seven years.
The Center publishes excellent books and treatises, including excellent
tapes and lecture series, on the subject of the Constitution, the founding
fathers, and the free-enterprise system. They may be contacted at:
The National Center for Constitutional Studies
P.O. Box 31776
Salt Lake City, Utah 84131
B. The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):
This organization is a "non-political, non-profit, educational champion of private property, the free market, the profit and loss system, and limited government"
They publish a monthly magazine which will be sent to those who
request it without charge, explaining such economic subjects as inflation,
money, tariffs, land use zoning, etc. The magazine is called The Freeman.
(The Foundation does ask for donations to cover their costs, however.)
They also promote and sponsor seminars on these subjects.
The Foundation can be reached at:
The Foundation for Economic Education
Irvington-on-Hudson
New York, 10533
C. The Institute for Creation Research (the ICR):
The largest and best organized entity advancing the cause of creationism in the scientific world is the ICR. This organization is now actively debating the evolutionists on the college campuses around the United States and in foreign countries, and is having phenomenal success. They operate a large publishing operation, making their books and publications available to all who desire them.
The Institute also publishes a monthly newsletter called Acts and Facts, which will be sent to those who request it at no charge to the reader, although they also request donations to help defray their costs.
They also put on a week-long seminar at various locations around the
United States on the subject of the proofs of creationism that is well worth
attending. The ICR can be reached at:
The Institute for Creation Research
2716 Madison Avenue
San Diego, California 92116
D. The Summit Ministries:
This organization's promotional material states that "The Summit is a
Christian, summer youth retreat, located in Manitou Springs, Colorado.
Today's teenagers are being pressured from every side to reject the Bible's
teachings concerning God, His creation, and the role of the family. Through
lectures and the finest films . . . Summit courses provide the needed antidote
by emphasizing the Word of God and how Christianity affects every area of
the believer's life. Students also study America's Christian heritage (freedom
is a gift of God), the Marxist-Leninist threat to that freedom, and the
Liberal-Humanist broadsides against Biblical Christianity. It is our purpose to arm
Christian young people with facts and information concerning God, home,
and country so that they wil 1 be able to hold fast to the true and the good in
building their lives for the future." They may be reached at:
Summit Ministries
Postal Box 207
Manitou Springs, Colorado 80829
2. Conspiratorial Assistance:
There are two groups that know that an international Conspiracy exists: those that are members of the Conspiracy, and those that are trying to expose the Conspiracy.
The strategy of the conspiracy has always been: "Never try to refute the accusations, but always destroy the accuser."
J. Edgar Hoover, the late director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been quoted as saying: "The best yardstick of the effectiveness of the fight against Communism is the fury of the smear attacks against the fighter."
Perhaps the greatest test of the effectiveness of the strongest exposer of the Conspiracy is that this group has survived the greatest onslaught of smear tactics in the history of the Conspiracy.
The charges that the John Birch Society was "anti-semitic, pro-communist, crazy, secret, hysterical or connected with the Ku Klux Klan" have all been proven false. But the ferocity of the attack against the Society shows that they were indeed correct in their assertions that the Conspiracy exists.
The Society was founded in 1958 by Robert Welch who sensed, quite correctly, that there was indeed a master conspiracy active in the major affairs of the United States and the world.
Mr. Welch was born in Chowan County, North Carolina in 1899. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1916 and attended the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School. He was an officer of a large company manufacturing candy from 1956 and was active in the campaign to elect Robert Taft as President in 1952. He served as a director of the National Association of Manufacturers during the years 1951-57 and was a vice-president of the Association from 1955 to 1957. He founded the monthly magazine American Opinion in 1956 and is the author of hundreds of published articles and essays.
Books written by Mr. Welch include May God Forgive Us, The Life of John Birch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, The Politician, The New Americanism and The Romance of Education.
Mr. Welch became an instant celebrity when his book entitled The Politician was made public in 1963. The book, about Dwight David Eisenhower, made the charge that President Eisenhower was a "dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy." What Welch said in the book caused perhaps the greatest controversy of the early 1960's. Mr. Welch never intended for the book to be published, at least that early, but to protect himself and to make it clear just what he had said in the book, he published it in 1963. The book has had repeated reprintings, as the American people became first curious and then, after reading it, shocked by its contents.
Some, however, knew that Mr. Welch was correct in his views about the existence of the Master Conspiracy. One of these supporters came from an unlikely individual, Jerry Rubin, who wrote in his book Do It!:
"The right wing is usually right too. The John Birch Society understands the world we live in better than fools like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Max Lemer who don't know what. . . is happening."
The Society has stated its position quite clearly:
"The John Birch Society holds that the freedom, prosperity, moral character and very existence of the United States are threatened by a Conspiracy whose Insiders include men with power of decision not only in government but also, Big Business."
They feared that the Conspiracy was a machination of evil people inside the American government, as Cicero felt of the Roman government. Cicero said:
"You [the Roman Senate] have encouraged treason and have opened the gates to free the traitors. A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within."
And Petrarch, a great Italian poet, who wrote:
"Behold, the relics of Rome. Neither time nor the barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction; it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons."
In other words, Mr. Welch agreed with those observers of the past who feared an internal conspiracy more than the armies of a threatening conqueror.
So it was in 1958 that Mr. Welch met with eleven other American patriots in Indianapolis, Indiana, and formed the John Birch Society, as an educational organization to awaken the American people to the internal conspiracy sensed by others of the past.
Mr. Welch chose to name his new Society after the young John Birch, who was killed by the Chinese Communists on August 25, 1945. Mr. Welch felt that Captain Birch, who was in China in the American Army at the time and on a mission when he was killed, became the first casualty of the undeclared Third World War, the final war between capitalism and communism.
Mr. Welch, as he researched the buried story of John Birch, discovered that the American State Department had kept the circumstances of his death a secret, and he decided to break the true story to the American people. Mr. Welch found the circumstances of his death to be rather strange, as America was not at war with the Chinese Communists and could not imagine why his death had been covered up by the American government.
His story about John Birch became the book entitled The Life of John Birch. Mr. Welch also thought that the moral virtues and the values of Captain Birch also exemplified the traditional American values that were being eaten away by the new moral values of the "modem" American.
So, Mr. Welch was proud to name his newly created society after the American patriot, John Birch.
The Birch Society, in keeping with the high moral values that Birch himself embodied, offered the world a positive program:
"We can never win unless both leadership and following have a positive dream which is more important as a hope than the negative nightmare is as a fear; unless the promise of what we can build supplies more motivation than the terror of what we must destroy, and unless this faith in the future is based on a deeper faith in eternal truths."
Mr. Welch became aware that the truths that the organization supported were far more important than the distortions that had to be opposed, so he constructed an organization based on positive values. He wrote that these included:
The basic belief, then, of the Birch Society was summed up in this short paragraph:
"We have to be for something; we must know what that something is; and we must believe it is worth a fight to obtain. Reduced to its simplest and broadest terms, that something is:
"Less Government, and More Responsibility, and With God's Help, a Better World."
Whom was Mr. Welch asking to join?
Merely being patriotic or anti-Communist is not sufficient qualifications for membership. We must have associated with us, now and in the future, only men and women of good will, good conscience, and religious ideals. For we are striving to set an example, by dedication, integrity, and purpose, in word and deed, which our children's children may follow without hesitation.
Because Mr. Welch saw this as a world-wide battle: "the first in history, between light and darkness; between freedom and slavery; . . . for the souls and bodies of men," he was not optimistic unless freedom loving individuals had a greater vision: "We have no chance unless the specific battles are fought as part of a larger and more lasting movement to restore once again an upward reach in the heart of man."
Mr. Welch not only was forming an organization but, in the Blue Book of the John Birch Society, which was a verbatim transcript of the speeches he delivered to the founding members of the Birch Society, he also made some rather prophetic statements. Here is what he wrote about Richard Nixon: "[He is] an extremely smart man. He is one of the ablest, shrewdest, most disingenuous [not noble or honorable] and slipperiest politicians that ever showed up on the American scene."
And this is what he said about the future Vietnamese War (once again, this was written in 1958:) "Others, like the very pretentious American Friends of Vietnam, in my opinion, form major parts of a whole plan and drive for gradually turning some country over to the Communists, while pretending to be leading the opposition."
Because the Birch Society became successful at an early stage of its career, it became the subject of a vicious smear attack. In fact, Cleon Skousen, not a member of the Society, wrote that "A former member of the Communist Party National Committee personally told me: The Communist leaders look upon the stamping out of the John Birch Society as a matter of life and death for the Party."
Mr. Welch was correct. There was a conspiracy, and the forces quickly aligned against him and the Society.
The smear tactics started on July 29, 1960, when the Communist Party in Moscow told the Party in America to "destroy anti-Communism."
This tactic was picked up and repeated by a manifesto of eighty-one Communist Parties in December, 1960, and they were also told to destroy "anti-communism."
And in January, 1961, the Communist Party of the United States singled out the Birch Society, as they were told to "render it ineffective." Later, on February 25, 1961, People's World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, printed an article entitled: "Enter From Stage Right: The John Birch Society." In this article, the Birch Society was called "secret," and their members were called "fascists," and they met in "cells."
And within a matter of weeks, the news magazines of the United States picked up on these stories and they began their own smear jobs, in many cases using the same smear words as the People's World article.
On March 22, 1961, Mr. Welch sent Governor Pat Brown of California a telegram asking the California Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities to investigate the Birch Society openly to determine if these charges were correct. His request was granted, and after the open hearings were conducted, the Subcommittee issued its report in 1965. This is what it concluded about the Society:
"The John Birch Society to be a right, anti-communist fundamental organization. We have not found the Society to be either a secret or a Fascist organization.
"Nor have we found the great majority of its members in California to be mentally unstable, crackpots, or hysterical about the threat of Communist subversion.
"We believe that the reason the John Birch Society has attracted so many members is that it simply appeared to them to be the most effective, indeed the only, organization through which they could join in a national movement to learn the truth about the Communist menace, and then take some positive concerted action to prevent its spread.
"Our investigation and study was requested by the Society, which has been publicly charged with being a secret, Fascist, subversive, un-American, anti-Semitic organization.
"We have not found any of the accusations to be supported by the evidence."
In other words, after fair and open deliberation by this Subcommittee, and after hearing both proponents and opponents, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that the vicious smear job was just that: a vicious smear job.
The Society approached the problem of the Conspiracy's existence in the only way a moral organization can counter lies and deception. They simply told the truth. The plan was to offer the American people the truth through a campaign of education. The Birch Society would have to become the largest university in the world to educate the American people on a one-to-one basis through a group of amateur professors.
The leadership of the Society realized that they would need their own book outlets so they quickly organized over 400 bookstores, the largest bookstore chain in the United States. They realized that they would have rather limited access to the public through the major media, so they organized a speaker's bureau (on the average, three times a night somewhere in the United States there is a paid speaker speaking on some aspect of the Conspiracy.)
It was the Birch Society that organized the speaking tours of Julia Brown, Mel O'Campo, David Gumaer, Sgt. Peter Stark, Douglas Durham, and the others who explained the nature of the Conspiracy to groups of willing listeners. It was the Birch Society that inspired authors, like Gary Allen, Alan Stang, G. Edward Griffin, Herman Dinsmore, and others, to write the books and pamphlets that were awakening the American people.
It was the Birch Society that printed the bumper stickers which reminded the American people to "Support Your Local Police and Keep Them Independent."
It was the Birch Society that helped expose the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group.
It was the Birch Society that formed the TRIM (Tax Reform Immediately) Committees to inform the American people of the intentional waste in Congress and to expose the voting records of their congressmen to the voting public. It was the Birch Society that, after the death of its national chairman, Congressman Larry McDonald aboard the Korean Airlines flight 007, formed the Larry McDonald Crusade to Stop Financing Communism, a national educational committee of citizens trying to stop the aid and trade that is keeping worldwide Communism alive. It was a member of the Birch Society, Bill Barlow, of Idaho, who took on the government in the issue of OSHA, and won. It is the Birch Society that has eighty paid Coordinators in various congressional districts or states to continue its educational efforts. It was the John Birch Society that circulated petitions among its fellow citizens to stop the aid and trade going on between the American and Russian governments. These petitions have been signed by over four million Americans.
The Birch Society, concerned about the influence of both the Communist Party and the Council on Foreign Relations in the magazines of America, publishes a weekly magazine, called The Review of the News, and a monthly magazine, called American Opinion, to continue their educational efforts and to present the other side of the various issues. (Those who wish to receive either or both of these well researched and topical magazines may subscribe to them through the John Birch Society, Belmont, Massachusetts, 02178.)
They have developed the largest publishing house of conspiratorial literature in the nation. It was the John Birch Society that published Anastosio Somoza's book, entitled Nicaragua Betrayed, that exposed President Carter's betrayal of that country. That book has been printed in both English and Spanish and is being widely circulated in Latin America to assist those countries in their fight against Communism.
Members of the Society meet twice a month and pay dues at the rate of $4.00 per month for men and $2.00 for women. They receive a monthly bulletin that explains the projects that all members work on together.
In summary, then, and in the words of the Society:
"It was the John Birch Society, taking the point on the hard issues and leading the way, that made possible the victories cited above.
"For more than two decades, the Society has labored assiduously to create an understanding among the American people of free market economics, of constitutional principles of government, and of dangers posed to the preservation of our Republic by the existence of a Master Conspiracy.
"We have taken matters of great import, little understood by our fellow citizens, and made them the overriding issues in an increasing number of political campaigns.
"We have helped many good citizens look beyond the surface gloss of media hype to question the basic principles underlying pieces of proposed legislation and to ask tough questions of political candidates to determine where they really stood on the issues . . . .
"There is no other organization in the Americanist movement with the track record, the battle-tested membership, or the experience necessary to wage and win the critical campaigns ahead in the climactic fight for America."
These words beg the final question;
If the John Birch Society does not play the leading role in stopping the Communist Conspiracy, just who is there to do so?