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Paradigm UnShift Still Needed
by Tom Gow
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Art and the bureaucrats in Appleton still haven’t got the message: “It’s the member (and Chapter), stu***!” (See earlier “Paradigm UnShift Needed.”)
Although we strongly disagree with several arguments in “Chicken Little – Wrong Again!,” Art Thompson’s front-page article for the February 2007 JBS Bulletin, we focus our attention here for a moment on one easily overlooked, but self-indicting “slip.”
Continuing on the back page of the Bulletin, Art’s article includes this observation: “The current letters and other communications are attempting to convince our members, and especially our donors, that a huge split exists in our ranks. This is not true, the primary reason being that there is now complete harmony among present members of our management team. The dissenting opinions all originate from outside our organization.”
Read it twice! Note the huge jump in subject: There is no huge split in our ranks, because “there is now complete harmony among present members of our management team.” Since when has management team harmony been a measurement of organizational unity? Members certainly aren’t contacting headquarters because they are concerned that the Appleton bureaucrats might not see eye to eye.
Members look to the Bulletin, and to their Coordinator (the few who still have one), for direction and inspiration. The percentage of satisfied headquarter employees drawing a paycheck is really not a traditional concern of members.
Let’s say it again: The John Birch Society is a body of members (almost all of whom are in the field). These members were recruited into the Society so that they could work more effectively in the cause of freedom. They are the ones who must undertake the critical work of opposing the Conspiracy and building the JBS body of Americanists to a sufficient size for victory. While the home office operation must provide critical leadership and support, it is the efforts and influence of the members in the field that ultimately matter.
It is easy to understand how headquarters employees of any membership organization may take the distant member in the field — the one who sends donations, buys the books, and does the vital volunteer work — for granted and come to think of the organization as merely the fellow employees he sees everyday. But those who represent themselves as an organization’s leaders have no excuse for that kind of thinking!
Another observation: The overthrow team incorrectly tries to characterize our opinions as “dissenting.” They are the true dissenters. The opinions of those who question the legitimacy of their coup and its tactics may well “all” have originated “from outside our [JBS] ranks,” but only because the true dissenters have revoked our Life Memberships, not because we resigned our memberships. Moreover, our opinions are now shared by many others who are still considered members.
As another aside, we don’t recall letters ever suggesting that there was a huge split in member ranks — only that there was a sizeable group who agreed with us and were unhappy with how the leadership change was brought about. However, it’s obvious from the attention devoted in the February Bulletin to the topic of critical letters that many members have been asking tough questions of the “functional leaders” in Appleton, whoever they may be.
Have we overreacted again? Was this paragraph just another slip of some ghost writer’s pen? One might reasonably answer, yes — if there were no other evidence pointing to this mindset. But in the wake of the well publicized criticism of Art’s earlier paradigm boggle (see "Paradigm UnShift Needed" on this website) and the corroborating evidence cited therein, this latest blunder confirms that the bureaucratic mentality is well entrenched in Appleton.
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