In 1958, a group of prominent business leaders founded the John Birch Society. Led by Robert Welch, inheritor of a vast candy fortune, these titans of wealth believed a vast communist conspiracy had penetrated the U.S. government.
In “The Blue Book of the John Birch Society,” Welch presented an apocalyptic vision where politics was no longer a staid battle between the two political parties but a conflict “between light and darkness; between freedom and slavery;...