Opinion: The Real Poop

In a twelve-page editorial, titled "If You Want It Straight," in his own American Opinion magazine, the John Birch Society's founder and presiding genius, Robert Welch, last week managed to blame everyone but himself and his organization for Barry Goldwater's overwhelming electoral defeat.

In Welch's view, the 42-million-plus who cast ballots for Lyndon Johnson "actually voted, of course, for repeal of the Declaration of Independence," for "scrapping the U.S. Constitution entirely as an absurd and useless antique," for "completely disarming the U.S., for doing away with our Army, Navy and Air Force,"...