Did the John Birch Society Win?

I have a new piece up at The Bulwark asking, “Did the John Birch Society Win in the End?”

A foundation of the folklore of the American right is the story of how National Review’s William F. Buckley, in the early- to mid-1960s, cast the John Birch Society—and by extension the entire kooky, conspiracist wing of the right—out of the conservative movement.

I …