Naming a university after Robert Welch

Obviously the name was carefully chosen. In the context of the recent discussion about the marketing aspect of school names, I guess it is, and will be, self selecting of students, just as the new Patrick Henry College is.

As it happens, I had an extensive correspondence with Robert Welch in 1964-65, since my dissertation research project involved interviewing (among others) 100 members of the John Birch Society.

My reading of much of what he wrote led to my first book, self-published, called Whom To Hate: a guide for the conscientious bigot. It was based on the notion that many of Welch's views were not intuitively guessable, and that if one wanted to be a conscientious bigot, one would need a guidebook. A few examples, of many:

His published statement, in "The Politician," that "Dwight D. Eisenhower is a conscious dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy."

He wrote that the drug Thalidomide was actually the cure for cancer, but that the communists in the US government created the fake deformed baby scare to keep the drug off the market.

He was confident that "American Negroes don't want trouble," and that "the Civil Rights movement was instigated by the Communist Conspiracy and is under its control."

He was, I believe, the first to report the "discovery" that the Beatles' records, played backwards, "invoke a hypnotic state" that "renders our children susceptible to the propaganda of Satanic cults and of the Communist Conspiracy."

And on and on and on.

He was undoubtedly very bright, and a good businessman, and unfailingly polite in our correspondence. I just wouldn't name my university after him, that's all.

 

Or show-up in a place like this as its director of marketing and try to defend it. Although, that said, the guy does show some fortitude doing so. If it's true that it's simply "not yet" accredited; and if it's true that though it's unaccredited, it's nevertheless rigorous, etc., then the old "well, every accredited school had a short period at its beginning when it, too, was unaccredited" saying may apply.

[pause for a moment of embarrassment]

Okay, don't mind me; it's just my liberal, "oh, let's be fair" tendencies leaking out. I don't actually have a lot of faith in Robert Welch University ever being a particularly good place to go to school... even if it becomes accredited; and even if it gives away free, filling-pulling candy.

 

I was never much interested in Sugar Babies/Sugar Daddies but I did consume a fair amount of Welch's Grape Jelly when I was a kid. Is this the same Welch? If the answer is "yes" then I'm sorry that any part of my parents income went into this mans pockets.
Jack

 

If the answer is "yes," then we're all guilty, even if we never bought Welch's Grape Jelly. White grape juice is the base ingredient of just about all other mixed-ingredient juice products (which is more than just cans of juice); and Welch's sells it by the train-car-load even to its competitors so that it can, in turn, become the base ingredient in their products.

Let's hope it's not true. Someone, here, will know the answer and will, hopefully, chime in. Else I'm gonna' have to go research it, and I'd rather not.

But this does raise an interesting peripheral point: The whole notion of the businesses to which we give our money, not really realizing the bad things about said businesses that would make us want to stop doing so if we only knew them. This book sort of addresses that concern, only in reverse, by profiling a dozen companies to which one would want to give one's money. All other companies should try to be like them, I say.

 

No

 

See? I knew someone would straighten it out... and quickly, too.

Good. That's a relief.

 

And here is the obvious connection between Welch's grape juice and higher education. My uncles, Abraham and Jacob Kaplan, were among the group of New York plutocrats who put together the growers' cooperative that bought Welch's in the early 1950s. That was also around the time that my cousin, Uncle Abraham's son was in danger of flunking out of Tufts University. Uncle A.I. donated a new building to Tufts (a cafeteria, I think). Cousin Ezra graduated. Could there have been a connection between these two events? We'll never know.

 

For Christ and Liberty

Hi John,

Is not PHC an amazing success story. One only has to look at PHC's most recent newsletter to see the success continues.

http://www.phc.edu/news/trumpet/monthly/2005/Winter%2005b%20web.pdf

The school has only been in operation for a few years, not even as long as this forum, and is not yet regionally accredited.

Robert Welch College will be doing very well if it experiences even a little bit of the success enjoyed by Patrick Henry College.

 

Charles:
Is not PHC an amazing success story

John:
Indeed. I spoke at their National Home School Legal Defense Fund national convention a few years ago, and spent some time with the PHC people. Smart, well financed, and well connected. That's hard to beat. (When they invited me, I pointed out that I am not a Christian and that I have real problems with a lot of their stances. They replied that yes, they knew that, but they believed I had a lot to say of relevance to them and wanted to hear it. I ended up doing a second talk on effective consumerism as well.

Their belief that PHC will have a major impact, in the decades to come, in producing graduates who become judges and politicians, is undoubtedly exciting to some, and terrifying to me.

 

And me!

In support thereof, I refer everyone to this June 2005 New Yorker article...

...which sent a cold chill down my spine when I first read it; and I'll bet would do so again, if I could bring myself to re-read it.

 

The John Birch Society is a very interesting organization. On the one hand, they are called "bigots" yet have blacks on the membership roles and have actually assisted in keeping some falsely accused blacks from going to prison.

On the other hand, I know some John Birch Society members and former members and they are about as racist and bigotted as anyone I've ever met.

Of course, the KKK has also had black members over the years.

Strange, very strange.

Also interesting is how they (JBS) are aligned with the left in calling Bush a liar regarding Iraq and demanding immediate withdrawal from there.

Yes indeed, politics makes strange bedfellows!

 

I'm a little worried about what it might mean if I expressed any disagreement with Robert Welch University's philosophy of "Americanism". Presumably it would reveal the appalling truth that I'm un-American.

Philosophy

Americanism is the cornerstone philosophy of Robert Welch University. It embodies the core ideals, value, morals and principles of the founding era. Robert Welch defined Americanism as, "…a positive, forward-looking philosophy; a design and example of social organization which boldly and confidently offers leadership along the one hard but sure road to a better world."

Sounds kind of like old-style Marxist rhetoric to me. I get nervous when I see 'academic' programs that really exist to further some political and social agenda. The right isn't much different than the left in that regard.

The biggest difference is that the left-radicals are deeply entrenched in the prestige universities while the right-radicals are the outsider insurgents.

(Isn't that ironic?)

And how is a doctrine that looks back to some imagined conservative unanimity of the "founding era" simultanously a "forward looking philosophy"? Certainly not in temporal terms. Nor in the sense that historical ideas evolve in response to new circumstances.

It's interesting (to me at least) how utopian political philosophies so often look back to an imagined golden age (before the Fall) and to an imagined golden future (the Kingdom), while rejecting the intellectual confusion and moral ambiguity that we confront in real life. Marx had his primitive communism and his ultimate classless paradise, placed like book ends with incessant social criticism and struggle in the middle.

 

Brilliant post, Bill. Thanks.

 

Re: Re: Naming a university after Robert Welch

I remember walking through the Jefferson Memorial during a trip to Washington DC a few years ago. The inscriptions are breathtaking, and ring the chimes of freedom with great strength. From a National Park Service page about the Jefferson Memorial:

Here are two inscriptions from the memorial (text from the NPS site).

and

That doesn't seem particularly conservative to me.

 

Re: Re: Naming a university after Robert Welch

Thanks Bill. Keep it coming.
Jack