Robert Welch, RIP.

In 1962, the editors of NATIONAL REVIEW felt it necessary to disavow Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. The way we put it, on that occasion, was that Welch suffered from the delusion that the "subjective intentions of an individual can be inferred from the objectives effects of the policies he pursues." Thus if, under Secretary of State Marshall, we lost China to the Communists, then it can be inferred that Marshall intended that we should lose China to the Communists. It never was that way, as anyone knows who has reflected on the maxim that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It is true that, for a period, Robert Welch's organization did a great deal to inhibit the recrudescence of an informed anti-Communist movement in America. But it is also true that his zeal awakened in many otherwise slothful Americans a concern for the fate of the Republic. It is hard to imagine that it will ever happen that history will forgive Robert Welch his strange interpretation of the causes of the Western decline. But by no means inconceivable that, one day, he will escape the muddled coils of his own thought and emerge as a man thoroughly devoted to the continuing freedom of the Republic he sought to serve.