The Great Awakening

By C. Mitchell Shaw

Americans are awakening from their political slumber. Many now see the danger to our country, but they need to properly channel their fear and anger.

By C. Mitchell Shaw

Can you imagine being told in early 2020 that in the next 12 months you would be told to “shelter in place” in a quarantine for the non-sick? That millions of Americans would lose their jobs via government mandates? That businesses all over America would be shuttered, never to reopen? That going to church would be forbidden? That funerals and weddings would be limited (or banned) by government dictates? That classes, doctor appointments, and work meetings (for many of those fortunate enough to still be working) would be conducted over Internet video conferencing apps? That you would be required to wear a mask (or two) simply to go out in public?

Can you further imagine being told that Antifa, BLM, and other leftist groups would spend months rioting, looting, and burning their way across more than 200 American cities while receiving praise from both liberal media and high-ranking Democrats? Could you imagine those Democrats publicly saying that America needs more of the behavior of Antifa and BLM and then turning on a dime to condemn conservatives for organizing pro-Trump rallies?

Could you imagine being told that millions of Americans would be allowed — or even required — to vote early or by mail in violation of various state election laws? And that votes would be counted by machines running questionable software while actively connected to the Internet? And that despite overwhelming evidence pointing to voter fraud, millions of suspicious votes would be certified to allow Joe Biden to take the election?

Finally, can you imagine being told that in the wake of that election, President Trump — while still in office and contesting the results of the election — would see social-media giants delete his accounts and ban him from their platforms? And that he would be impeached for “inciting insurrection” for calling on patriotic Americans to push for the truth to be known about election fraud?

In those 12 months, all of that happened. And it has awakened millions of patriots to a nightmare that is real. As they have wiped the sleep from their eyes and shaken off the dreams that “everything is going to be fine,” they have suddenly -realized that while they slept, America was being hijacked.

Two such newly awakened patriots are Peter and Mary Ann Biffel, who live in northern Virginia. Conservative Christians who homeschooled seven children, the Biffels — who asked that we use their real names because they are “proud to be members of The John Birch Society” — told The New Americanthat they have long known something was wrong, but were never really activists until July 2020. At the peak of the lockdowns, mask mandates, and other government overreach surrounding COVID — and while watching leftist violence engulf America’s cities — they realized they had to act. As they searched for answers, their journey led them to join The John Birch Society because they saw that America needs saving and the JBS offered them a real plan for doing that.

When asked why they chose to join the JBS instead of focusing their efforts within the Republican party or some other conservative organization, Mary Ann said, “First of all, the Republican party is one and the same” with the Democratic party, “You can find conservatives, but most of them are neo-conservatives.” As for other groups, Mary Ann said, “It is hard to find like-minded people who actually know what’s going on and are working against the problem.” Peter said the “reading materials and the videos” produced by the JBS are both educational and “encouraging.” Furthermore, he said the monthly chapter meetings and the structure of the JBS “provide a real solution” to the problems facing America. Peter added, “I want to see the solution playing out and I want to be part of the solution.”

The couple has learned — as all the newly awakened need to realize in order for positive change to actually happen — that being awake to a problem is not necessarily the same thing as knowing how to solve the problem. It’s much as if one is shown pictures of starving kids all over Africa and someone says, “Fix it.” The problem seems overwhelming.

Bad News, Good News

It’s often a shock to Americans that the country has seemingly fallen so far so fast, but the truth is that the groundwork for the present changes in our country has been being laid for these happenings for decades. And, truth be told, if one didn’t see the present state of affairs coming, one likely has little knowledge about how to fight back effectively.

A person’s awakening is but the first step in repairing our country. The next step is to become aware as to the depths to which the enemies of freedom have stooped to destroy both America and the ideas of liberty on which she was founded, because if allowed to continue unabated, the actions of America’s enemies will accomplish the goals for which they are intended. Those goals are, to put it plainly, the utter and complete destruction of the American way of life and the utter and complete loss of freedom for Americans — all Americans’ future actions will be monitored and guided by government. The end goal is a New World Order of global government and ridding the world of most vestiges of capitalism.

The next step for patriots is to fight back. Since globalists are well funded, patriots need to be smart. Choosing the correct course has never mattered more. As the storming of the Capitol on January 6 shows, choosing the wrong path leads only to greater loss of liberty as the enemies of liberty use such events to tighten their stranglehold on America.

But if patriotic Americans take moral, legal, reasonable actions, geared toward success, there is indeed genuine hope. The good news is that the enemies of freedom have — by accelerating their plans too quickly — awakened a sleeping giant (and as those enemies of freedom continue to press forward, many more Americans will continue to awaken), and that there is an organization with both the experience and a proven track record of exposing and fighting against the plans of freedom’s enemies. That organization is The John Birch Society.

Liberty’s Abiding Hope

Because of a desire for freedom, men do not want to be slaves, and history is replete with stories of men fighting tyranny. Man’s desire for liberty is so strong that he will fight — even at the risk of his own life — to have it. This has been true all over the world for 5,000 years of recorded human history. It is true of all peoples everywhere. Here in the United States, our history is a shining example of that truth.

The Founding Fathers were brave and virtuous men who — by signing the Declaration of Independence — pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor in the pursuit of liberty for themselves and their countrymen. And they kept that pledge: Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration, five were captured by the British, charged as traitors, and tortured until they died. Some lost sons to the War for Independence. Others lost wives and daughters to the ravages of war. Many of the signers were in military engagements, and nine of them died — either from wounds or from the hardships of war. Twelve of them had their homes destroyed by the British.

One story from the War for Independence illustrates the degree to which the God-given thirst for freedom burns in the heart of man. Thomas Nelson, who signed the Declaration, served as the war-time governor of Virginia and general of the Virginia Militia. His ancestral family home — built by his grandfather around 1730 — sits on a bluff in Yorktown, Virginia, overlooking the harbor. Nelson was directly involved in the the Battle of York-town in 1781. When he learned that Lord Cornwallis had taken over his home and was using it as his headquarters, Nelson ordered cannons to be fired at his home. One of the men hesitated, reminding Nelson that that was his home. Nelson reportedly replied, “That is enemy-occupied territory, and I am ordering you to destroy it, if necessary!” In fact, he offered a reward of five guineas to the first man to hit his house. Cornwallis fled the home as it was fired upon before later surrendering. The home still stands, but cannonballs can be found embedded in the brick walls.

By the way, Nelson went bankrupt as a result of the war. When asked how he felt about it, Nelson said, “I would do it all over again.”

Since only love for America and her freedom will drive men and women to work courageously and tirelessly to preserve and restore liberty, we must love America and paint such a beautiful image of her that others fall in love with her as well. Robert Welch — the founder of the JBS — once wrote that the only way to succeed in the struggle for liberty is for “both leadership and following [to] have a positive dream which is more important as a hope than the negative nightmare is as a fear.” He went on to say that the struggle for freedom cannot succeed “unless the promise of what we can build supplies more motivation than the terror of what we must destroy; and unless this faith in the future is based on a deeper faith in eternal truths.”

It is because of this innate love of and desire for freedom that the enemies of freedom need to rely on lies and deception to convince free people to give up their freedom, and the lies and deception that they must rely upon are very inferior substitutes for truth, which we have at our disposal. Welch said of the tactics and strategy of the JBS, “Education is our total strategy, and truth is our only weapon.” Here, Welch echoes Daniel Webster, who wrote, “There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.”

An Organization for Preserving and Restoring Freedom

An organization giving patriots a fighting chance is the JBS. It has been successfully warding off globalist advances for decades. In that time, it has accomplished much. Consider just the past 10 years. The JBS has played a leading role by bogging down Deep State initiatives to rewrite our Constitution, nationalize our local police, build a North American Union, and establish a UN-led one-world government.

The longstanding “Get US Out of the UN” campaign has educated Americans about the dangerous origins and agenda of the United Nations. Likewise, the JBS campaign to “Support Your Local Police” (by keeping them independent of federal control) — which dates back to the 1960s — has helped tremendously as a counter to the insiders’ War on Police.

Founded in 1958, The John Birch Society is a unique organization. Never before had an organization been formed to provide a sustained resistance to the tyrannical conspiring of globalists — now known as the Deep State — to implement a New World Order, by providing national leadership to direct and assist the local actions of dedicated patriots. And in the nearly 63 years that have passed since its founding, no other such organization has been formed.

There are many things that set the JBS apart from other organizations. One of those is that the JBS is not a “single issue” group. Many conservative groups focus primarily — or even exclusively — on one issue. There are pro-life groups, gun-preservation groups, sound-money groups, and others. But liberty is not a single issue, and in truth, single-issue groups are often willing to sacrifice some freedoms — such as a right to privacy — in order to temporarily safeguard their own cares. But liberty is indivisible. Like a water line, it rises and falls as one entity. Imagine, if you will, a single freedom — such as the right to direct the education of your children. If that becomes your one issue of concern to the exclusion of all others, there is the very real danger that while you attempt to support that one issue in order to homeschool your children, other freedoms might fall. One by one, free and fair elections, the right to keep and bear arms, religious liberty, and uncounted numbers of other freedoms collapse under the oppressive boot of too much government. Then, when you look to your own “single issue,” you realize that it, too, was lost.

By way of analogy, other organizations busy themselves sawing their own individual limbs from the tree of tyranny while the JBS attacks the roots, knowing that once the roots are gone, the limbs will all fall. The JBS is an organization dedicated to preserving all of our God-given rights under the Constitution and exposing all  of the enemies of freedom and the ways they conspire together.

Another important distinction is the way the JBS is organized. The JBS has a full-time, professional field staff covering all 50 states. Field coordinators work directly with volunteer members and chapter leaders. Those chapter leaders and the local chapters they lead are the lifeblood of the JBS. They attend monthly chapter meetings and carry out the agenda of the JBS in their daily lives, and they fulfill the mission statement of the JBS: Less Government, More Responsibility, and — with God’s help — a Better World.

This is important because, in politics, the old adage is true: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” To politicians, might makes right, and substantial concerted action, even by small, but vocal, groups often gives politicians the motivation to choose one course over another.

The value of the tireless efforts of JBS members all across our great nation to increase the level of understanding of American principles cannot be overestimated. As Bill Hahn, the current CEO of the JBS, told The New American, “It is because of the diligent work of the members of The John Birch Society working to educate their neighbors, friends, families, coworkers, and elected officials about the principles of Americanism as part of an organized effort on behalf of the Republic that we have had so many victories over the past years and decades and up to the present.” Hahn added, “It just shows that when you are organized, you can make a difference in this country and where it is going to be heading in the future. No other organization can point to that fact and show that they have a long-term solution to what is a long-term problem.”

The Necessity of an Informed Electorate

And that is — in this writer’s opinion — the greatest value of the JBS: It fixes a long-term problem with long-term solutions. Short-term thinking — for instance, not seeing further than the next presidential election — is not the answer. There is no shortcut. Thomas Jefferson is reported to have said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Americans need to face the simple fact that Rome was not burned in a day. We did not get into this mess overnight, and we will not fix it overnight. The enemies of freedom have worked for more than 100 years to create their vision and bring it to the place it is now — working at it since their creation of the League of Nations after WWI.

The “long-term solution” Hahn speaks of can be summed up as creating an informed electorate. A look at the founding of America illustrates the value of education and truth as part of a long-term solution. Though modern Americans think that the revolution that saw England defeated and America set free from the tyranny of King George happened overnight and in a vacuum, in reality, 1776 had been long in coming.

John Adams said that the “real American revolution” came about before the War for Independence and was due to the education of the American people. In a letter to H. Niles on February 13, 1818, he wrote:

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations…. This radical change in the principles, opinion, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.

Americans were, for the most part, English loyalists who had to be convinced that parting with England was wise.

Adams also said, “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” And George Washington said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light.” Education and truth are the two pillars upon which we must lean as we seek to save America from the vision of her enemies. There is no other way.

Granted, creating an informed electorate is — and will likely remain — hard work. It is more than just overcoming ignorance. Will Rogers famously quipped, “The problem in America isn’t so much what people don’t know; the problem is what people think they know that just ain’t so.” Disinformation is far more dangerous than ignorance. It is also more difficult to overcome. Telling someone something when they know they don’t know it is simple; telling someone something contrary to a lie they have been told and believed is difficult. But it is necessary.

For instance, too many Americans seem to believe that the right president will solve our country’s problems. The past four years — with a good, but imperfect, president who fought to “Make America Great Again” by resisting the Deep State and putting America first — shows that that is short-term thinking. After four years of doing what he did, the establishment moved heaven and earth to burn him to the ground (as has now been confirmed by a Time magazine article, which tells about the actions of some of those involved), steal the election from him, and impeach him a second time under bogus charges. And the establishment succeeded in all of that. The takeaway is this: Patriotic Americans need to stop looking for a hero to save America and be the heroes that save her. Real resistance requires an informed electorate. Period.

The necessity of an informed electorate is made clear by examining the alternative. This writer recently had a conversation similar to conversations many have had recently. The woman with whom I was speaking predicted that with the way things are going, “a war is coming.” I responded by asking the same two questions I always ask when someone presents a scenario or plan for saving America: First, I asked her, “For that war to be a success — to restore liberty — is an informed electorate necessary?” She replied without hesitation, “Yes it would be.” Next, I asked her, “If America already had an informed electorate, would that war be necessary?” She thoughtfully replied, “No.”

Art Thompson, the former CEO of the JBS, told The New American, “Anyone who really thinks it through knows that there is only one solution, and that is an informed electorate.” Thompson added, “If the people remain ignorant, they will become subjects. If they are well informed, they can maintain a republic where they determine their own lives in a system of freedom.” He explained, “The key is how much education they have and what kind of education they have. It’s just a matter of getting people to understand the fundamentals of good government and them teaching those fundamentals to others and then forming action programs along the way to literally change the government back to the level and to the system that it was founded to be — and that is a representative republic.”

As Wayne Morrow, who — as vice president — oversees the full-time field staff of the JBS, told The New American, “Some people listen to QAnon and they think Trump is going to come back from the dead politically and that he’s going to save them. But other people recognize that the problem is a heck of a lot more intense.” As Morrow put it, “Scores of millions of Americans — who had their votes stolen — are fearful and angry. What The John Birch Society offers those Americans is a place and a plan to focus their activities in a positive way by working locally as part of a local chapter at the grassroots level to effect positive change.”

Positive Action Trumps Fear and Anger

That last bit is immeasurably important. Fearful, angry people without a plan to focus that energy positively will make grave mistakes for which they — and the rest of us — will pay.

Ashli Babbit — may God rest her soul — is a tragic example. After joining in with those who stormed and breached the Capitol Building on January 6, Babbit was shot and killed by Capitol police. Her actions and death then became a leftist rallying cry for “putting down insurrection” and are being used as fodder for stripping away more and more of the God-given rights of Americans.
This writer has known many whose fear and anger paralyzed them and kept them from doing anything active. Others were too busy with jobs and family. Some were involved in sports and clubs. They listened to talk radio, voted, complained, debated, and worried. But they did nothing to solve the problem until someone showed them that there is a solution that actually works. I have known many who — once they became active in the JBS and were working to help save America — told me they were happier than they’d been in their lives. One JBS member once told me, “If someone isn’t having fun Birching, they’re doing it wrong!”

You see, action cures fear. This also explains why action and education must always go hand in hand, for as the JBS has long said, “Education without action leads to frustration. Action without education leads to fanaticism.” As mentioned previously, the JBS is an action-oriented organization. Members receive a monthly bulletin that serves as a guide to the monthly chapter meeting, providing an agenda not only for that meeting, but for the members’ activities for that month. The JBS produces professional materials for members to use to educate themselves, their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and elected officials. Every representative of the JBS with whom this writer spoke stressed the importance of concerted action based on the agenda found in the monthly bulletin. Two other points they all stressed were the Restore Election Integrity project launched in response to the unprecedented fraud of the recent elections of both the presidency and the Congress, and the action plan to encourage state legislatures to use Article VI of the U.S. Constitution to nullify unconstitutional federal laws.

When asked about restoring election integrity, Hahn said, “Our Restore Election Integrity project is well under way, with members and supporters using the materials we have to help chart a path for legislators, including a Restoring Election Integrity issue of the magazine and an inexpensive slim jim containing the highlights, and more materials to come soon.” And, he said, referring to applying Article VI, “Our numerous nullification tools can help demonstrate to legislators a constitutional tool that can be used immediately against the unconstitutional actions of the Biden administration and Congress.”

Needed: You!

As a constitutionalist organization, the JBS recognizes that though it is late, it is not too late. We can still use our freedoms to save our freedoms. We still have the Constitution! Despite the fact that the Constitution is often ignored, circumvented, and violated, it still exists, and it can be used once again to restrain the usurpers as soon as sufficient understanding is created to make this happen.

Dave Giordano (who gave permission to use his name) is a JBS member in Marlton, New Jersey. He has been a member of the JBS since 1994. Since the peak of the COVID lockdowns, he has turned to webinars to spread the word. He told The New American that he hosts webinars twice a month and constantly has new people join. His basic format is simple: He uses JBS materials and news items to educate people about principles of Americanism and threats to freedom and gives a call to action at the conclusion.

As more and more Americans awaken to what is going on, Giordano says those people are introducing others to his webinars. He has a friend who drives a truck hauling scrap metal. Giordano told The New American, “He keeps sending me names of people who want to be added to my list.” Giordano says that when he first joined the JBS, he was nervous about his ability to educate people. But then he realized that he could simply pass along books, magazine articles, and videos from the JBS and spread the word. He tells new JBS members who have that same nervousness, “Just keep reading and one day, you’re going to be in a conversation and words are going to start coming out of your mouth.” Because knowledge brings confidence.

Giordano is a great example of someone who is using freedom to save freedom by working in the trenches to create an informed electorate.

The JBS has worked — diligently and consistently — since 1958 to expose the conspiracy of the insiders (the Deep State) and to preserve and restore liberty by creating an informed electorate. This writer is a proud member of the JBS and shares the opinion of many who are associated with this fine group of men and women — this “proud companionship” — that without the effective work of the JBS over past decades, full-blown, dystopian tyranny would already cover the globe.  The JBS is continuing — and will continue — that work.All that is missing — has always been missing — is (to borrow from speeches given by Welch) “more pullers at the oars.” Welch also said, “Our danger is both immense and imminent; but it is not beyond the possibility of being overcome by the resistance that is still available. All that we must find and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding. Let’s create that understanding and build that resistance, with everything mortal men can put into the effort — while there still is time.”

That means you.

If you are already a JBS member, now is the time to redouble your efforts. If you are not already a member, please join us in our proud companionship, and in our epic undertaking.

Joe Biden has promised to “unite the country.” If enough moral, patriotic Americans will join the JBS and help us restore the Republic, Joe Biden’s promise will be kept — just not the way he planned. Then, he and his cohorts will wish they had never awakened America’s patriots.

The New American publishes a print magazine twice a month, covering issues such as politics, money, foreign policy, environment, culture, and technology.

Published with Permission of thenewamerican.com