The Homemade Revolution – July 1970

With regard to international affairs the Communist cry is “peace,” while Communist agents on both sides of every alignment unceasingly plan, start, and utilize more wars and bigger wars as needed. On our domestic scene, the catchword is “reform.” Under this slogan, Communist-controlled agitators make wild demands, then foment riots if those demands are not granted. If the demands are granted, the Communists immediately make still wilder demands. They do not have any more interest in “reform” itself than they have in “peace.” Their strategy is to use both ideals as deceptive banners under which their forces of tyranny steadily advance.

Obviously, if enough people understood this brazen fraud it would not work. And all of us in the Society are struggling, with some growing measure of success, to increase the number of those who do understand. But one problem is the way our own people can be fooled by each new twist or activity in the Communist line. For the relationship between what the Communists claim to be after, and some of the ends they are really seeking, is frequently difficult to detect unless you have run across the same formula being used in other times and places. And we have been tempted into delivering this short lecture by a relatively insignificant but very current illustration.

One of the strange new devices on the Communist banner of “reform” is the word ecology. The comrades are now showing extraordinary concern about the pollution and desecration of man’s earthly home. Of course their “free speech” movement is polluting the sound waves that reach our ears. Their unwashed hippies and yippies pollute our olfactory environment. Their pornographic publications pollute the literature that comes before our eyes. Their “sensitivity training” converts even our sense of touch into the mechanics of pollution. And their garbage-can style of feeding the enormous crowds they pull together (for everything from marches to “music” festivals) is polluting even the American taste for food. All five senses are suffering from pollution fostered by the Communists themselves.

We could go on for pages about Communist promotion of the “cult of the ugly”; in our architecture, where they deliberately get apartment houses built to look like grain elevators; in our music, where the discord of an orchestra tuning up could now readily pass for a great new symphony; in our painting, where a Communist like Picasso sells bizarre daubs on canvas as masterpieces of art, and then publicly ridicules the gullible dopes who bought them. We could mention the squalid man-made living quarters and surroundings of the Russians themselves today (outside of the narrow tourist pale), after fifty years under Communism. And we could say a few things about the disregard for any conservation of natural resources in the countries which the Communists rule.

We could also bring out considerable evidence to show the amazing extent to which Communist plans and voices are behind the present, new, and exorbitant agitation over “ecology.” And we believe we could convince you that the Communists have no more real concern about pollution (of the earth, the atmosphere, or anything else) than that darling of the Communist-dominated American Civil Liberties Union, Ralph Nader has—in our opinion – over the safety and welfare of the American consumer. They both have other fish to fry – and maybe it’s the same fish.

But all of that would take us—in fact has already taken us —entirely too far off the track. Let us, therefore, merely restate the obvious. Which is that the primary purpose of the Communists, in all of this furore over ecology, is to provide one more means and excuse for our central government to increase its interference with, and its control over, the businesses, the homes, and the daily lives of the American people. And let us then come to the comparatively minor “plus benefit” for the Communists which set us off on this wild ride in the first place.

Somebody, evidently, has passed down to the government schools (still generally miscalled public schools) quite a bright idea—from the Communist point of view. It is to have the teachers of the middle grades marshal their pupils into snooping brigades, which will spend one or more of their afternoons each week looking into the alleys behind the stores of the community to see if they can find any unsatisfactory conditions to report. If so, they are then to make heroes out of themselves by telling all about the uncovered ash cans, or other derelictions, to the teacher, who in turn will pass this information on to the local health authorities.

Now, to understand the iniquity of this scheme, you must remember that the greatest and most honored youthful hero in any Communist country is the twelve-year-old who tells the authorities about some criticism of the Communist regime which he has heard his mother and father whispering together. And that Jerry Rubin’s most emphatic pitch to the college youngsters, who go into ecstasies over his line, is: Kill your parents. And that creating a sanctimonious rebelliousness against authority and tradition and customary values, on the part of ignorant, inexperienced, and half-baked youth, has been a mainstay of collectivist power-seeking revolutionaries since the days of Sparta.

It is not a far cry – as the Communists know only too well — from having a self-righteous boy of ten, with the applause of his teacher, report that the John Smith restaurant has been sloppy with its garbage containers, to having the same youngster two or three years later enjoy the glow of hot idealism by reporting to the local commissar that his parents are not faithful devotees of the new regime. And in the meantime his reports, and those of thousands like him, will have given the central government and its subservient bureaucracy the desired excuse to engage in more harassment of all American business enterprises, large and small. The Communists move in nefarious ways, their evil aims to accomplish. What we are trying to tell all the parents of America who will listen is: For goodness sakes, do not help them. Or let your youngsters help them. And if this organized snooping by children is started in your community, we would appreciate your letting us know about it.

The John Birch Society certainly supports the goal of a clean and more beautiful environment, and believes in conserving the assets nature has given us. But our people must not be led into thinking that Marxist creeps who do not even keep themselves clean have any real interest in cleaning up America. Or that turning children into professional spies is a proper way to make our country a better place to live.