It shouldn’t have been surprising that the John Birch Society was able to win a membership in the tens of thousands in an officially encouraged atmosphere of fear and suspicion. The John Birch Society was also a voice for conservatism—its motto was “Less government and more responsibility”—at a time when the Republican Party was turning more liberal. At a time when a housewife from suburban New York, Betty Friedan, was writing a book arguing that the alienation and boredom of housewives was America’s “problem that has no name,” the Society gave housewives world-historic purpose to their lives.
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