The beginning of the end of the society's national prominence came in 1965, when the Republican Party steering committee, still smarting from the Goldwater "extremism in the defense of liberty" fiasco, condemned Welch and his group. Welch had offended nearly everyone by then, especially with his call for complete and unilateral American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1965. By Welch's peculiar reasoning, Communists were running both sides of the war, and the United States was paying for it. A last gasp of attention came in the late '60s, as a result of a campaign more renowned for its slogan than its effect, "Support Your Local Police."
"What is Communism but total government control?" McManus asks honestly ignorant of any answer. Every political issue fits into the government/Communist control spectrum. "Are you aware that one of the planks of the Communist Manifesto is free public education?" he inquires with a smile. "You don't have a right to an education." He smiles some more when he describes how the society is spreading the good word: the speakers bureau is the second largest in the country(only Sports Illustrated's is bigger) and schedule people like ex-Marine hero Lewis Millett to expound the society line on grueling month-long tours of duty.
*****
Since the mid-'60s, the society's has been a prosaic; if mildly prosperous, existence. With little turnover in membership, about 200 people constantly work in Belmont, the western headquarters in San Marino, Calif., and in the field. A council whose members include former New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thompson and Bunker Hunt, of the Texas oil family, raised and administer an 58 million budget that has not changed in about five years. The latest major project is something called TRIM, Tax Reform Immediately, an organization of local pamphleteers who rate their congressman by his stands on raising taxes. Far from extremist, TRIM fits right into the Republican mainstream-more Howard Jarvis than Robert Welch.
Yet the John Birch Society will never work into the mainstream, never become acceptable. Defeat has been welded on their faces as clearly as anti-Communism has been grafted into their hearts. They know that the public's conception of their organization is a lunatic fringe of the right wingers. No matter how moderate the society s stands on specific issues, that image will remain.
In a sense, though, the John Birch Society likes it that way. its public image allows the society the smugness available only to someone who knows he will never have to test his theories, never have to put his hide on the line. The folks at 395 Concord Ave. revel in their ideological purity, knowing-like the Spartacus Youth League and the Revolutionary Communist Party know-that they will never have any power, so they will never have to take responsibility. They're untouchable.
I'm not paranoid," McManus says, laughing. "They are chasing me."