Wrapped in the Flag (11 page)

“The Christmas tree at Marshall Fields will be no more,” Mother said.

To thwart this assault on our Savior’s birthday, the Birch Society had published
There Goes Christmas
. “All the Communist plans are exposed, right here,” Mother said, tapping the booklet’s cover.

I was put to work on the booklet assembly line and stuffed
There Goes Christmas
into envelopes addressed to a slew of folks. Everyone from our family Christmas-card list to the members of the local country club was sent a copy. By the time the project was over, I swore everyone in Chicago must have received one.

“This is a war on Christmas,” Mother said. “You watch. Before long, they’ll write it like this:
Xmas
. That’s the clue. They’re x-ing Christ out of his own birthday.”
¹⁰

Playing on a potent mix of fear, patriotism, and religious fervor, the John Birch Society became the right wing’s rising star. Before long, the society had units in thirty-four states and was collecting dues from more than sixty thousand members.
¹¹

The growth proved that Welch’s top-down, authoritarian model featuring rigid control from the main office was working. The small cells, which the society called chapters, made membership personal, and the activities detailed in each monthly bulletin kept everyone focused in the same direction at the same time.
¹²
A Birch leader’s manual put it like this: “There is no room in the John Birch Society for dreamers, drifters or deadwood.”
¹³

Welch bestowed a new name on all of his patriots:
Americanists
.
¹⁴
They were the real Americans, battling the bad guys who lived inside our own government, the men Welch had christened “Insiders.” Insiders were not themselves Communists, and they’d never be caught at party meetings, but they controlled and financed the card-carrying Communists.
¹⁵

Across the country, the Americanists (Birchers) hammered home their message: the Commies are coming; in fact, they’re already here. Thousands of people believed what they heard and joined. Those new members went out and recruited their neighbors and friends.

After hearing the society’s growth figures, my father was cautiously optimistic. “If this keeps up, we may be able to beat these bastards,” he said to my mother.

Mother put it a little differently: “We’re taking our country back.”

At our house, the Birch parade marched on, picking up new members every week. Our chapter grew to thirty members, enough to split into two. Then, those two chapters split. It didn’t take long before Chicago boasted four chapters. Then eight.

In the spring of 1960, my father joined a small group of men chosen by Robert Welch to serve as his advisors. That inner circle, the National Council, had one major responsibility: to pick the next Birch leader “if and when an accident, ‘suicide,’ or anything sufficiently fatal is arranged for me by the Communists,” Welch said. Other council functions included “showing the stature and leadership of the Society” and giving “your Founder the benefit of the Council’s advice and guidance.”
¹⁶

One historian studying the Birch Society described the council as “ornamental, designed to impress through its collection of powerful Americans united behind Welch’s beliefs.”
¹⁷
I’m sure my father would have argued—loudly—against that assessment. He held his council seat as a sacred trust and a singular personal accomplishment. “I gave my all,” he said. “With no regrets.”

During his thirty-two years on the National Council, Dad rubbed elbows with some of the right wing’s most interesting and infamous fellows. He met decorated former military officers, including Colonel Laurence Bunker, who had been a personal aide to General Douglas MacArthur, and Lieutenant General Charles B. Stone, who had served in China as the commander of the 14th Air Force. Dad became close friends with Clarence (Pat) Manion, former dean of Notre Dame Law School, and William (Bill) Grede, a Milwaukee industrialist. Before long, my father knew successful business owners, doctors, lawyers, and even a former IRS commissioner, T. Coleman Andrews.
¹⁸

In the first few months of his council tenure, Dad befriended a dynamic Serb, Dr. S. M. Draskovich, who had immigrated to the United States after World War II and built the Serbian Cultural Club on Chicago’s north side.
My father and Dr. Dan, as we called him, served together on the council for over six years. Their relationship came to an abrupt end when Dr. Dan hatched a scheme to unseat Welch from his leadership position and take over the society himself.
¹⁹

Over the years, Dad knew several congressmen, a candidate for president, a young physician shot down in a Korean Air disaster, a leader of the Mormon Church, authors, publishers, and former FBI agents. Most of those Birch council members, whether scoundrels or saints, are buried deep in the recesses of American history, known only to politics junkies, history wonks, and Birch kids like me. There is one exception, however, a Birch council member whose name booms across today’s political landscape. That name is Koch.

Before Koch became synonymous with vast wealth and unlimited corporate power, the family patriarch, Fred Koch, amassed a small fortune in the oil-refining business. When my father met him, in 1960, Fred was the president of Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, a private firm headquartered in Wichita, Kansas.
²⁰
Dad was drawn to Fred for two reasons: he hated the Communists and he hated the labor unions.

Fred Koch had something most people in the United States did not have: a firsthand, on-the-ground experience of Joseph Stalin’s Russia. He’d seen Communism for himself in the early 1930s as he traveled across Russia overseeing the installation of fifteen oil refineries, systems that played a significant role in building the Soviet economy. The money Koch was paid made him a wealthy man, and a quiet one. It took almost thirty years before he went public with his Russian experiences.
²¹

In 1960, a little over a year after he’d become a founding member of the John Birch Society, Fred published
A Businessman Looks at Communism
, a harsh critique of the Communist system. The book became a hit in the growing anti-Communist movement. According to Koch himself, “Over two and a half million have been printed and circulated in one form or another.”
²²

Koch’s book outlined the steps the Communists planned to take over America: “Step one: Infiltration of high office of government and political parties until the President of the U.S. is a Communist . . . even the Vice-Presidency would do, as it could be easily arranged for the President to commit suicide.”
²³

Step two was a general strike, which “could bring our country to its knees.” Wrote Koch, “Labor Unions have long been a Communist goal. . . . The effort is frequently made to have the worker do as little as possible for the money he receives. This practice alone can destroy our country.”
²⁴

As much as my father aligned with Koch on Communism, on the issue of
labor unions, they were clones. “As long as there is breath in my body,” Dad vowed, “there will never be a union in my company. I’ll board it up first. Fred sees it like I do, one hundred percent.”

I never visited my dad’s Southside factory, but I do remember him talking about firing any employee who talked union or union organizing. Over the years, several efforts to organize Dad’s companies did get as far as a vote, but my father prevailed every time. The Banner Mattress Company was never a union shop. Nor was the Conroth Company or Modern Sleep Products.

Fred Koch’s views on Communism were universally accepted within the Birch Society as gospel, including his bleak vision for the coming Communist takeover of the country. The United States “looks like it is going down the Communist drain,” Koch wrote. “. . . It will probably happen so quickly that most people will never realize what is happening to them.”
²⁵

Fred Koch died in 1967, leaving his company and his fortune to his four sons—Freddie, Charles, David, and Bill—who spent the next twenty years warring over the estate. Eventually, David and Charles emerged with control over Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held corporations in the country.
²⁶

The Koch brothers have enormous personal fortunes, at least $60 billion in net worth as of September 2012.
²⁷
They’ve invested millions and millions of those dollars in their favorite right-wing, libertarian, anti-government causes. David identified himself as the wallet behind Americans for Prosperity, the big umbrella organization for Freedom Works and the Tea Party. Charles founded the Cato Institute, a powerful think-tank specializing in selling right-wing policies on everything from taxes to entitlements.
²⁸

In their book
The Betrayal of the American Dream
, Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele described David and Charles’s legacy from their dad as a “burning hatred of governments of all types.”
²⁹

Every few weeks, my father received a large manila envelope from Birch headquarters containing materials for the next meeting. Everything was stamped confidential, intended for council members only, but as Dad shared with Mother over dinner, I listened to their conversation. Most of the information I forgot as soon as I heard it, but one evening, I paid more attention.

“Listen to this,” Dad said to my mother. “Bob [Welch] says that our federal government is already, ‘literally in the hands of the Communists.’”

My father proceeded to read the names of senators who Welch included in that Commie cabal. Most of them I’d never heard of, but I did recognize
one: John Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts. “Every one of those men,” my father read, “is either an actual Communist or so completely a Communist sympathizer or agent that it makes no practical difference.”
³⁰

“That means we’ll have another Commie in the White House if Kennedy ever becomes president,” Dad said.

“What do you mean by ‘another’?” I wondered.

“Hush, young lady. These are adult conversations. Someday, when you’ve read more, you’ll understand,” Mother said.

My father loved the game of golf. As winter turned to spring, he’d take a stance—in the living room or the kitchen, it didn’t matter. He called the process “grooving his shot.” After he positioned his feet, gripped his imaginary club, and straightened his left arm, he’d swing. Not once, not twice, but over and over. I knew he was dreaming of perfect drives leading to one-putt greens.

I could not believe that any cause, even saving the country, would keep my father from his Saturday round. But once he joined the Birch council, he spent at least one weekend a month at a meeting. Sometimes, when he complained about the impact the meetings were having on his score, Mother cajoled him: “There will be no golf when the Commies come. Besides, you’re making such wonderful contacts, dear.”