Thought members of ZION would be interested in this from the Deseret
Morning News (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510033210,00.html?):
John Birch Society forges on in Utah
By Jerry D. Spangler and Bob Bernick Jr.
Deseret Morning News
The Berlin Wall has crumbled, the Soviet Union is splintered into
inept republics and the Cold War is moving to a distant memory.
So it might stand to reason that the guardian of anti-communist
vigilance, the John Birch Society, would find itself a relic of bygone days.
Not so. In fact, under a different name one many Utah lawmakers
didn't associate with the society the old communist fighters appeared
before the Utah Legislature last session. And they nearly got an
anti-United Nations resolution passed in the House.
The 45-year-old society hasn't abandoned its roots, however.
There is an assumption that communism has fallen, said Bliss Tew,
Utah coordinator for the John Birch Society. But you look at Red China
with its military threat, at Venezuela where they have a communist
president, look at Fidel Castro in Cuba, and look at North Korea and
Vietnam, and one-fifth of the world's population still suffers under a
communist regime.
Tew, who lives in conservative Utah County, is not only preaching the
society's message of anti-communism and getting out of the United Nations
to disciples there, but he has coordinated an unprecedented media campaign
to take that message to the Utah masses via billboards, radio and
television ads running during the 2002 Olympics and LDS Church biannual
general conferences.
In the 2003 Legislature, Get US Out! of the United Nations, a
nationwide committee sponsored by the John Birch Society, which has three
Utah chapters, took its cause to the Utah House. It raised thousands of
dollars and spent months leading up to the Legislature mailing out
information kits and meeting with lawmakers.
I would say the message (on the United Nations) is resonating very,
very well, Tew said, pointing to independent polls by Utah media that show
from 27 to 33 percent of Utahns agree the United States should get out of
the United Nations. The society failed in getting HR7 passed in the House.
But leaders of Get US Out! of the United Nations say they will be back
before the 2004 session to try again.
The new society
Make no mistake. Today's John Birch Society is not exactly your
daddy's John Birch Society.
Sure, the messages warning of unlimited government power, foreign
regimes and a one-world government threatening constitutional freedoms
carry the same tone and tenor. And the society's extensive bookstore offers
up writings dating back almost a half century.
But the society is operating more subtly these days, often under the
public's radar. For example, most Utah lawmakers the Deseret News spoke to
said they did not connect Get US Out! with the John Birch Society.
I was not aware of that, said House Majority Leader Greg Curtis,
R-Sandy, who led the fight to kill HR7, the resolution that asked Congress
and President Bush to get the United States out of the United Nations.
Curtis said a group of Get US Out! members in his district came to
his home during the last session, lobbying for HR7. He met with them and
was given a package of information, which he admits he only glanced at.
But knowing the John Birch Society was reflected in HR7 wouldn't have
changed anything, Curtis added.
I'm not opposed to discussing this issue at another time, he said
of the January debate. But I had several (GOP) caucus members come to me
and say now was not the time with the Iraq issue before the United Nations.
Despite claims by Tew and Ann Turner, northern Utah Get US Out!
chapter director, that Gov. Mike Leavitt and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
asked legislators not to take up HR7, Curtis said he had no discussions on
the issue with any GOP leader outside of the Legislature.
The resolution's sponsor, Rep. Don Bush, R-Clearfield, said he was
aware the John Birch Society was behind Get US Out! of the United Nations.
Get US Out! approached him about sponsoring a model resolution drafted by
the John Birch Society, Bush said, but he instead wrote his own resolution.
Bush, a veteran of the Korean War and World War II who often carries
patriotic and veteran-related measures, said he introduced the resolution
because he believed it was the right thing to do, not because any group
asked him to.
I don't belong to any of those (Get US Out! or the society) groups,
he said.
Unlike opponents to HR7, Bush saw no problem with the timing of the
resolution in the 2003 session.
I thought it was the right time to run the resolution because of
what was going on with President Bush trying to get U.N. support, said
Rep. Bush, who is not related to the president.
Even though Saddam Hussein had flouted U.N. resolutions for a decade,
