OF DISSERTATION SAVE OUR REPUBLIC: BATTLING JOHN BIRCH IN CALIFORNIA’S CONSERVATIVE CRADLE Previous accounts of the development of the New American Right have demonstrated the popularity and resonance of the ideology in Southern California. However, these studies have not shown how contention surrounded conservatism’s ascendancy even in regions where it found eager disciples. “Save Our Republic” uses one conservative Southern California community as a vehicle to better understand the foundations of a wider movement and argues the growth of conservatism was not nearly as smooth as earlier studies have suggested. Santa Barbara, California, experienced a much more contentious introduction to the same conservative elements and exemplifies the larger ideological clash that occurred nationwide during the late 1950s and early 1960s between “establishment,” moderate Republicans and the party’s right flank. In California’s cradle of conservatism, the ideology’s birth was not an easy one. Santa Barbara should have provided a bonanza of support for the John Birch Society, a staunchly anticommunist organization founded in 1958 by retired businessman Robert H.W. Welch. Instead, its presence there in the early 1960s divided the city and inspired the sort of suspicion that ultimately hobbled the group’s reputation nationally. Rather than thriving in the city, the JBS impaled itself in a series of self-inflicted wounds that only worsened the effect these characterizations had on the group’s national reputation. Disseminated to a nationwide audience by local newspaper publisher Thomas M. Storke, who declared his intention to banish the organization from the city, the events that occurred in Santa Barbara throughout 1961 alerted other cities of the potential disruption the JBS could inspire in their communities. The JBS would forever bear the battle scars it earned in Santa Barbara. “Save Our Republic” argues the events in Santa Barbara exemplify the more pronounced political battle that was occurring throughout the nation in the 1960s as conservatives grappled to determine the bounds of their ideology. The threat from the right that caused so much handwringing in the halls of conservative power had an equally unsettling effect in the city’s parlors, churches, schoolhouses and newsrooms.

/pdf/save-our-republic-battling-john-birch-in-california-s-3183m3i1nc.pdf

Save Our Republic: Battling John Birch in California's Conservative Cradle

Since the 1980s, a ritualized opposition in legal thought between a conservative 'originalism' and a liberal 'living constitutionalism' has obscured the aggressively contested tradition committed to, and mobilization of arguments for, constitutional restoration and redemption within the broader postwar American conservative movement. Conservatives and the Constitution is the first history of the political and intellectual trajectory of this foundational tradition and mobilization. By looking at the deep stories told either by identity groups or about what conservatives took to be flashpoint topics in the postwar period, Ken I. Kersch seeks to capture the developmental and integrative nature of postwar constitutional conservatism, challenging conservatives and liberals alike to more clearly see and understand both themselves and their presumed political and constitutional opposition. Conservatives and the Constitution makes a unique contribution to our understanding of modern American conservatism, and to the constitutional thought that has, in critical ways, informed and defined it.

Conservatives and the Constitution: Imagining Constitutional Restoration in the Heyday of American Liberalism

During the early Cold War, America was gripped by an intense domestic Red Scare. This thesis explores how the United States Supreme Court dealt with the Alien Registration Act (Smith Act) and the issue of freedom of speech in the context of that Red Scare. In particular, this thesis focuses on the change in interpretation which occurred between the 1951 decision in Dennis v. United States, and the 1957 decision in Yates v United States. Dennis upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act, and upheld the convictions of eleven Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) leaders. Yates overturned the convictions of a group of California CPUSA officials, and placed strict limitations on the use of the Smith Act in a drastic change in interpretation.  This thesis aims to explore that change in interpretation by drawing on three different lines of reasoning: the impact of changes to the wider Cold War context, the impact of changes to the personnel making up the Supreme Court, and changes in legal strategy on behalf of the defendants in the two cases. To achieve this, the thesis draws on a wide range of sources, beginning with a discussion of existing literature, and moving to explore previously untapped sources from both a historic and a legal perspective. This includes looking at the records of law firms acting in both cases, analysing other Supreme Court opinions from the time, and drawing on more traditional historical sources like media coverage of various events.  This thesis argues that, contrary to most existing scholarship, the change in interpretation is best explained by a multi-causal approach. The changes to the court’s makeup and changes to the context amongst which the cases occurred were only part of the reason for the change in interpretation. The impact of a change in legal strategy also played an important role in causing the Supreme Court’s change in interpretation.

Cold War Supreme Court: Analysing the Change in Constitutional Interpretation between Dennis v. U.S. (1951) and Yates v. U.S. (1957)

Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the US State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book, first published in 2006, reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.

Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics

The overall objective of the research presented in this dissertation is to establish ways in which the Red Scare and Cold War eras impacted social studies education in Georgia from the 1930s through the 1960s. My position is that the decision by the Communist Party’s international leadership to support African Americans in the southern United States through legal defense and the organization of sharecroppers’ unions impacted white segregationists’ interpretation of subversive activity as being inclusive of racially liberal ideas. Social studies education in Georgia was affected by the policies and curriculum decisions made in the context of Red Scare and Cold War influences. An analysis of the historiography of communism in the United States reflects the changing tenor of uncertainty and fear that gripped Americans when it came to radical ideas contrary to the democratic capitalist tradition. Historians tend to agree that the Party’s efforts in

/pdf/red-white-and-black-the-meaning-of-loyalty-in-georgia-1xmbbs8hr6.pdf

Red, White, and Black: The Meaning of Loyalty in Georgia Education

In 1951, at the height of the Red Scare, Justice Hugo Black predicted that the Supreme Court would one day change its view on the balance between the need to ensure domestic security against subversive influences and an obligation to preserve First Amendment principles. Justice Black predicted that "in calmer times" the Court would favor protecting the rights of political dissenters. He was right: six years later, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover named June 17, 1957, "Red Monday" for the four Supreme Court decisions announced that day, meaning that the "Reds" had won. Arthur J. Sabin investigates the decisions after 1955 in which the U.S. Supreme Court repudiated its earlier endorsement of the political prosecutions that had engulfed the nation after World War II. Those prosecutions had sent hundreds to jail, reflecting a widespread belief that the nation was in serious danger of internal subversion and revolution. He does so in the context of the larger political culture of the times-and also in the context of the history of political dissent in America, from World War I through the McCarthy era and beyond.

Arthur J. Sabin

Papers

In calmer times : the Supreme Court and Red Monday