National Review was a publication not dedicated to the Cold War’s liberal containment, but rather by confrontation and rollback. Often forgotten are James Burnham’s arguments for limited nuclear warfare against Russia. Sam Tanenhaus in his authorized biography of Buckley documents National Review’s faux Pentagon Papers in order to counter anti-Vietnam War sentiment. Buckley and National Review had cooked up their own version of the Pentagon Papers in an attempt to undercut the loss of morale around the war, as well as to suggest the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia.
But, of course, the excommunication of the John Birch Society is cited as the shining moment of Buckley’s career. There, we are told, conservatism excised the antisemites and the conspiracy cranks. Never mind that Ludwig von Mises was on the Editorial Board of the Society’s publication, American Opinion, and would defend Welch to Buckley.
The reality is much more revealing of Buckley’s priorities. In 1962, anticipating Barry Goldwater’s eventual presidential run, Buckley, William Rusher (then National Review’s publisher), and Russell Kirk helped the senator from Arizona plan how to handle the popularity of the JBS. They feared that some of Welch’s more outlandish claims—that Eisenhower was a conscious communist agent, for example—and the group’s crusade against Earl Warren’s Supreme Court would rub off poorly on Goldwater. They decided upon a denouncement of Welch and a subsequent letter by Goldwater distancing him from the Society’s leader while not accusing the average Bircher of being a kook.
Buckley declared victory (although Goldwater in the end did not). But the number of Birchers would continue to grow, even drawing in Buckley’s own mother. Soon they provoked Buckley once more.
By 1965, Welch and the Birchers were claiming that the Vietnam War was a communist plot to distract from an internal subversion by communists in the federal government. While this was a stretch, to say the least, the dissent on the Vietnam issue was unacceptable to Buckley.
Aided this time by the former (or “former”) CIA man and senior editor Burnham, Buckley dedicated an issue of National Review to the Bircher question.
Frank Meyer in his column declared that the conspiratorial mind of Welch was “why the patriotic and anti-Communist followers of the Birch Society are now, in the Vietnam crisis, being lined up by its leadership directly in opposition to the interests of the United States and to the struggle against Communism.”
Burnham himself, who had held off from the first round of attacks against the John Birch Society, dedicated his column––Third World War––to attacking Welch for his position on Vietnam. The mastermind behind National Review’s foreign policy had never been a fan of Goldwater, always being more of a Rockefeller Republican. But the John Birch Society’s new stand against the Vietnam War (“Get US out!” their publications and billboards cried) bothered Burnham: "Its stand on Vietnam confirms, not for the first time, that any American who seriously wants to contribute to his country’s security and well-being and to oppose Communism will have to stay clear of the JBS.”