Kenn “The Out of State Lobbyist formerly known as Ken” Quinn works for Term Limits USA, but after reading his latest article, “So Voters, What Did We Learn From Last Week’s House Vote on Term Limits (HCR 4)” March 24, it appears that he may be moonlighting with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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A good portion of the article contained a rehash of left-wing diatribes against The John Birch Society.
HCR 4 was not a vote on Congressional term limits; it was a vote to apply to Congress for an Article V Convention, ostensibly for proposing a Congressional term-limit amendment.
Mr. Quinn tells us that “In New Hampshire, over 3/4ths of the voters support term limit for Congress with an average of 77% which breaks out at 74% Republicans, 78% Democrats, and 78% Independents.” If these stats are correct, why did New Hampshire voters re-elect all three of the incumbents running for Congress?
Just maybe, New Hampshire voters and legislators are leery of an Article V Convention. Sixty-six percent of the voters said no to a state constitutional convention in the last election.
Mr. Quinn will never learn that spending most of his testimony trashing the opposition doesn’t generate much support for his cause. In 2021, State Rep Max Abramson sponsored a resolution applying for an Article V Convention. I have known Max for a number of years and respect him. He offered to debate the issue, and I arranged to have him debate Robert Brown, one of the nation’s foremost experts on the subject…The debate took place on Camp Constitution Radio. Max and Robert both made their cases without smearing and vilifying each other. (A link to the debate)
That is how people of goodwill who disagree with each other manage controversial issues.
Refuting Mr. Quinn’s accusations against The John Birch Society:
Its founder Robert Welch called Eisenhower a “communist.”
Robert Welch was a Republican Party activist who was deeply troubled by President Eisenhower’s policies. He did some meticulous research about him and only discovered more troubling history, including his willing participation in one of the little know but darkest chapters in our nation’s history, “Operation Keelhaul,” which was the forced repatriation of people fleeing the Red Army. Several million people, including women and children, who were promised safe haven by the allies, were forced into the hands of Stalin. Some women with babies in hand jumped to their deaths rather than being turned over to Stalin’s henchmen. Most were murdered, raped, and worked to death in Siberia’s labor camps.
Robert Welch published his finding in a book titled The Politician. He concluded that Eisenhower was either naïve, a willing opportunist or a conscious instrument of the communist conspiracy. He let the readers of the book draw their own conclusions. Mr. Welch’s findings were independently corroborated by two authors years later in Other Losses and Target Patton:
The Civil Rights Movement was communist-controlled:
A picture is worth a thousand words. Here is Martin Luther King at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, run by American communists. Seated next to King are high-level members of the Communist Party U.S.A:
President John Kennedy learned of the communists that worked for King, which included Karl and Anne Braden, Hunter Pitt O’Dell, Bayard Rustin, and Stanley Levinson who was the author of King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” Kennedy, during King’s visit to the White House, told King that he needed to get rid of the communists. He never did. To learn more about the sordid record of MLK, I recommend the recently released documentary by my friend Vince Ellison titled “Will You Go to Hell For Me.”
The JBS tried to impeach Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren because the court ruled state laws separating children based on race were unconstitutional:
Here is Mr. Quinn playing the race card, a tactic usually employed by the Left with the purpose of causing hatred and division. For the record, The John Birch Society’s membership has always included blacks.
The John Birch Society launched The Impeach Earl Warren campaign and listed various reasons calling for his impeachment. As California’s Attorney General, Warren enthusiastically supported the interment of over 100,000 Japanese- Americans. Warren had no judicial experience and was little more than a political appointee.
Warren wrote the majority decision in The Brown v Board of Education, basing it on social science studies from Swedish socialist Gunnar Myrdal’s book An American Dilemma rather than court decisions. In so many words, he said that blacks feel inferior in all black schools, which is paternalistic racism. While this decision seemed right in the eyes of many Americans, it granted the federal government total and unconstitutional jurisdiction over local schools-a power the U.S. Constitution never granted to the federal government. It also paved the way to forced busing. I was a student during the disastrous forced busing era in Boston. Thanks to Warren’s Supreme Court, the city erupted in violence. Boston’s public school system was once the best in the nation and now it is one of the worst. The schools are now segregated, with only a 15% white enrollment. Warren’s court also gave us the Engel v. Vitale decision which made prayer in local schools illegal.
John McManus called Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan “communist lackeys.”
Prior to Biden, most conservatives ranked Jimmy Carter as the worst president in our history. Carter’s pro-communist credentials include formally recognizing Communist China, cutting relations with Taiwan, and turning the Panama Canal over to Marxist General Omar Torrijos.
Ronald Reagan is regarded as a great conservative leader even though, as Governor of California, he signed legislation decriminalizing abortion. As a candidate for president, thanks to the influence of Dr. Mildred Jefferson and Phyllis Schlafly, Reagan came out as Pro-Life. Reagan did cut the growth of government but only vetoed one annual budget. I was an enthusiastic supporter of him in 1980, but after he was elected, I learned some troubling things about him, including bailing out Communist Poland, sending millions of dollars worth of military hardware to Communist China, and giving Communist China financial aid. For an understating of the Reagan Administration, I recommend a book by former Ambassador to Rumania David Funderburk, Pinstripes and Reds:
I admit that the term “communist lucky” may be harsh, but I am sure those people suffering under the Communist Chinese brutal regime may beg to differ.
The John Birch Society Bribed New Hampshire State Senator Kevin Avard:
Mr. Quinn did not include this in his article, but he may have if we did not get word of this ugly lie. In 2016, a friend of mine forwarded me an unsolicited E-mail from the New Hampshire Convention of States, led by Mr. Quinn at the time, which accused The John Birch Society of bribing State Senator Kevin Avard to change his support of an Article V Convention. I wonder how many more lies were spread by the Convention of States against their opponents that we did not learn about.
Former JBS CEO Art Thompson called Thomas Jefferson a traitor:
I don’t have info on whether or not Mr. Thompson made such a statement, but if he did, it was his opinion and not a position of The JBS. He may have been referring to Jefferson’s initial support of the French Revolution and some of the correspondence between Jefferson and the man known as “Citizen Genet.”
In the end, the New Hampshire House wisely voted against HCR 1 and HCR 4, both applying for an Article V Convention by comfortable margins. After ten years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, Article V lobbyists on both sides of the political spectrum, which include Wolf PAC, founded by the odious Cenk Uygur, have had no success in New Hampshire. Let us hope that their losing streak continues.
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