The Deep-seated Rage of Lou Midgley

[_Trevor]

Wasn't Pres Benson a member of the John Birch Society?

According to the Prince & Wright biography of President McKay, he was not, but he did sympathize with their cause, advocate it, and attend many of their meetings.

[_guy sajer]

Some years ago some conspiratorial fruitcake wrote some book called "None Dare Call It A Conspiracy." William F. Buckley, presumably, referred to it snidely as "None Dare Call It b***s***."

Maybe an apocryphal story, but I like it.

It sounds like Buckley.

Back when he was very young, when Robert Welch had just started the John Birch Society and was pushing the idea that President Eisenhower was "a conscious, card-carrying member of the Communist conspiracy," Buckley responded "Eisenhower's not a Communist. He's a golfer."

He had no patience for such silliness.

And no, President Benson was not a member of the John Birch Society, though he was more sympathetic to it in the 1960s and 1970s than I could have wished. His son Reid was a member.

Many years ago I visited Reid Benson's house. (He was a family friend of a girl I was dating at BYU, and she went there to get a blessing.) I noted a couple of things.

1. He lived in a beautiful big house in the River Bottoms in Provo. I wondered how the hell a religion prof at BYU could afford such a nice house.
2. On the door of his study was a big sign saying something like "Remember Larry McDonald." McDonald (not sure if that was his name) was a member of the US House of Representatives who was killed when USSR fighter planes shot down a commercial airliner. The Birchers theorized that the USSR targeted this particular flight because McDonald (the 'scourge of Communism' or something like that) was on board.

[_Tom]

The very first time I saw Professor Midgley's rage was at a Grant Palmer book signing at Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore in Salt Lake in which he asked a few questions, was aggressive, and raised a bit of hell with Palmer. I believe that I also spotted him at a Mormon History Association conference session in which he raised a bit of hell with John-Charles Duffy with regard to Duffy's paper, "Deconstruction Saves the Day: 'Faithful Scholarship' and the Use of Postmodernism."

[_Daniel Peterson]

Lou can be aggressive -- which (as you know) isn't my style at all -- and he can certainly be feisty and combative. Filled with "rage," though? That's just a demonizing myth.

[_Tom]

I recall reading Midgley's reference to Larry Foster as "an idiot." Aggressive, feisty, combative. Vociferous?

[_Daniel Peterson]

I recall reading Midgley's reference to Larry Foster as "an idiot." Aggressive, feisty, combative. Vociferous?

Yup.

"Rage"?

No.

[_moksha]

The very first time I saw Professor Midgley was at a BYU debate in which, as I remember, he demolished W. Cleon Skousen and Skousen's fruitcake notions about a vast international conspiracy of Illuminati and communists.

This is the first positive thing I have heard about Professor Midgley. It is good to know he has a positive side as well.

[_Daniel Peterson]

This is the first positive thing I have heard about Professor Midgley. It is good to know he has a positive side as well.

He's a real character, a genuine original, and one of my favorite people on the planet.

Coming from me, does that count for him or against him?

[Anonymous]

The very first time I saw Professor Midgley was at a BYU debate in which, as I remember, he demolished W. Cleon Skousen and Skousen's fruitcake notions about a vast international conspiracy of Illuminati and communists.

I haven't read much from Skousen, but I have thumbed through his books describing the 6000ish or so years of Earth's History which he deduced from a reading of the scriptures. I still shake my head in wonder just contemplating that people actually latch onto the belief system this decidedly.

By the way, my mom took to reading some books when I was younger about worldwide conspiracy theories, the anti-flouridation crap, etc. I think hearing her describe what she believed, from these books, was "really" going on in the world, and realizing how stupid it all was, really did wonders for my skeptical faculties, as it were.

edit: fixed the word "mom" from "mob"

[_Tom]

I have been asked by the Editor of the Daily Universe to make some comments on the John Birch Society. It is difficult to believe that anyone at the university--anyone who reads books and thinks--would take such a movement seriously.... The man who wrote The Politician did so to inform his followers that former President Eisenhower was a communist. Of course he provides no evidence but the usual collection of garbage. For absurdity, the charge against Ike would have to be placed next to the belief, as far as I know, held by no-one, that President McKay is secretly a Catholic. What Welch-Birch really wants is to return to a world without taxes, the U.N., labor unions, racial minorities demanding some kind of legal equality; Birchers want a world without fluoridation, the Soviet Union, large cities and emerging nations and all the rest that goes with our world.

I trust Midgley was chastised by BYU officials for these aggressive, combative, feisty, and vociferous comments.