In another thread, poster "btgr" asks:

"You have spoken much about your grandfather here in the past. I think he is the foremost GA who set in motion today's conservative position of the church. Have you ever considered or identified the factors that made ETB the fear-filled man (communism, Blacks, Democrats) that he was? Did his rural Idaho upbringing with an absent father and judgmental mother cause him to be deeply insecure and fearful about his position in life?"

("Question for Steve Benson," posted by "btgr," at "Recovery from Mormonism" bulletin board, 5 May 2011, 11:21 p.m.)
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The primary driving force behind my grandfather's radical political views was, in my opinion, his oldest child Reed.

Evidence for that includes the following:

--Reed helped write ETB's speech, "Fourteen Fundamentals of Following the Prophet," in which ETB declared that God's Mormon prophet, seer and revelator had the power and authority to address any and all political issues--and who, in that process, was not required to preface his "prophetic" views with "thus saith the Lord" in order for them to carry official doctrinal weight. The controversy sparked by that speech resulted in the Mormon Church putting official distance between the speech and the institution of the Church.
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--Reed's wife, May Hinckley, provided the resources for and wrote another of ETB's famous sermons, "Beware of Pride," which was largely cribbed from the writings of Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, as found in Lewis's book, "Mere Christianity." May as the source of that sermon was directly confirmed to me by a member of the Benson family who was in a position to know. May later complained to me that all of her research on the topic of pride (about which she felt strongly and which she had eventually planned to publish in a book of her own) was taken by the Mormon Church for incorporation into ETB's "Pride" sermon. (The fact that she essentially wrote that sermon, however, was something I learned from another Benson source close to Reed and May).
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--Reed was a high-level official in the John Birch Society (who opened its Washington, D.C. chapter in the early 1960s). Reed espoused the view that Dwight Eisenhower (under whom my grandfather served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1952-60) was a least a dupe of the Communist's international conspiracy to control the world and perhaps, even worse, a knowing Communist agent in that conspiracy (This was a view strongly expressed by the JBS's founder Robert Welch, who my grandfather greatly admired).

Reed provided constant Bircher fodder, reading material, magazine subscriptions and books to my grandfather which premiered the Red Scare mindset, including the poisonous notion that the American Civil Rights movement was funded, supported and orchestrated by Kremlin-based Soviets--and that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was supposedly a tool of the Russian Communists to incite a nation-destroying race war within the borders of the United States. My grandfather's blatantly racist, anti-Black views reflected those found in JBS literature.

My grandfather, in personal correspondence to me, declared that, outside the Mormon Church, the JBS was the greatest tool fighting Communism in the world today.

Reed was part of the JBS move to honor ETB at a national JBS "God, Family and Country" rally, held in Boston in the early 1970s (As a teenager, I was invited to drive back to Boston with Reed and his family for that event).

Efforts were made (with ETB's blessing) to get Mormon Church President David O. McKay featured on the cover of the JBS's flagship magazine, "American Opinion," but were canceled when McKay found out and strongly objected.

ETB also claimed publicly that the Mormon Church supported the JBS, which greatly upset then-First Presidency counselor to McKay, Hugh B. Brown, and led to ETB retracting his claim.
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--Reed was a close, personal political confidant of ETB (much like Roy Cohn was to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare era of the 1950s).

Reed, in fact, accompanied ETB to Montgomery, Alabama in 1968 where, in the state mansion of then-Alabama governor George Wallace (an avowed segregationist and White supremacist), Wallace tried to persuade ETB to join him (Wallace) on the 1968 presidential ticket of Wallace's states'-rights American Party movement as his vice-presidential nominee. My grandfather (under Reed's influence, no doubt) was quite interested in the offer and only turned it down after then-LDS Church president McKay rejected a personal plea to McKay from Wallace asking McKay to allow ETB to join the ticket.
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Reed Amussen Benson--first child and oldest son of Ezra Taft Benson (whose first name eventually became my middle one, since he and I were born on the same day, January 2nd) had a profound and lasting influence on the life, times and political mind of his father, Ezra Taft Benson.

(Being born and raised in Mormon-populated, poliically conservative, overwhelmingly White and socially sequestered rural southern Idaho also didn't help, I'm sure).



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2011 05:09AM by steve benson.

...a member of the ward told him ETB was a member.

On the way home my father said, "I don't care who's a member. Those people are crazy."

When I told this members daughter, with whom I went to school, she was forbidden from hanging out with me anymore.

He supported it to the hilt, nonetheless.

Steve:

As I have noted before, I served my mission in Kentucky under Reed Benson, and was his mission assistant for approximately 8 months. During that time, I got to know him well, along with May and the kids. In my experience, May actually seemed more militant and outspoken than Reed, ceasing every opportunity to talk JBS politics, while attempting to link such views to Church doctrine. Thus, I can well understand when you point out her influence.

I was older than most missionaries (26 when I came home), and came from a liberal background. I was well-versed in JBS nonsense, and was very dismayed when I found out that Reed Benson would be taking over for George Durrant as our Mission President. I found Reed to be a complicated character. Smart in a lot of ways, and sincere, but wildly fanatical politically, and extremely opinionated and intolerent. Right wing politics seemed even more important to him than religion. I remember on one occasion we were attending a concert by a group called "Up With People" (as I now recall) and they were singing a song called "What Color Is God's Skin." I was sitting next to Reed, and he winced noticably, and finally leaned over to me, and with that wry smile, firmly whispered, "WHITE." I was in the mission field when the "revelation" on Blacks and the priesthood was announced, and he was clearly troubled by it.

When I came home in 1976, Reed arranged a meeting with ETB for me and other returned Assistants. We met with ETB for about 2 hours, as I recall. I expected faith promoting experiences, and his testimony, but it was all about politics. He was adament in his Bircher views, with religion of little interest to him (at least that is how it seemed). He particularly bad-mouthed people at the University of Utah, notably Sterling McMurrin, who at the time was a controversial figure in Mormonism. Later, when I was a student, McMurrin was my Senior Research Paper advisor, and he discussed with me his rather terse relationship with ETB. (Remarkably, though an apostate, McMurrin remained friendly with many of the other Church Leaders)

In short, it seems from my perspective that although Reed (and May) undoubtedly had a strong influence on ETB, at least some of these seeds were sown before, perhaps during the aftermath of WWII, when ETB witnessed first hand the rise of communism in Europe. ETB's extreme anti-communist passion during our meeting with him seemed to reflect more than just the influence of a son who had adopted and was acting out extreme views.

Nonetheless, I will defer to you on these judgments.

Reed Smith

"What Color is God's Skin?" I remember listening to that song in my younger days and found it refreshingly embracing and kind in its tone and rendition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNqVw9gN7a0&feature=related
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The wacky, extremist views of ETB on Communism (way outside the mainstream of, I would say, general American political conservatism) were fed, encouraged and exacerbated largely by international-bankers-one-world-government-Commie-conspiracy John Birch Daffy Duck doctrines, coupled with the racist teachings of Mormonism, as they were dished out from Reed to his approving father. A potent brew, to be sure--one that became worse over time in the sheltered, intolerant realms of Mormon thinking that permeates the LDS Church from top to bottom.

As far as May is concerned, over the decades that I have know here she appears to have moved decidedly to the right on the politically ideological spectrum, to the point where I regard her as a full-blown conspiricist, off-the-charts fanatic (which has also been a perception appropriately applied to Reed, by the way). Conversely, when I knew May as a boy (when she was then a young married woman), I recall her as being bright, happy and almost carefree. Over the years, however, she became much more observably regimented in her thinking and, in fact, the last time I chatted in their home with her in Provo, Utah, she struck me as being in some ways even more politically radical than I recall Reed ever being.

I'm not so sure that perception is entirely accurate, however. Reed and May are perhaps equally yoked in their extremist political points of view--but I tend to agree that Reed seems to evidence a better, more natural and even warm sense of humor--which can be noticed even in the midst of his basic poisonous tendency toward racial, political and religious intolerance. He, for instance, was famous for performing hilarious skits at Benson family reunions and in my own chats with him displayed a dry, self-deprecating wit.

As they say, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. :)



Edited 15 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2011 04:21PM by steve benson.

Everything was a communist plot when I was a kid.
Drugs, rock music, protests, the UN, all part of the conspiracy, The race riots were orchestrated by the Russians to distract us from the commies sneaking into the White House.

The divine plan of food storage would protect us not during natural disasters but during political disasters that were surely at the very door. And now 40 years later the big O and socialized medicine is prophecy fulfilled with the big O poised to had America over to the Communists in China.

Yeah, family dinner was a hoot.

brian-the-christ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...a member of the ward told him ETB was a
> member.
>
> On the way home my father said, "I don't care
> who's a member. Those people are crazy."

Your dad had a very good head oon his shoulders.

"We are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika!
In order to survive we steal cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal.
We are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young.
But we should be together."

Thanks to my high school friends who had Bircher parents I was turned on to this wonderful little ditty. They had a magazine with rock lyrics that were supposedly Communistic or drug oriented. Turned me on to a lot of my favorite groups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxA3Q96a8XE&feature=related

We had some home teachers in the 60s who used to preach against rock n roll. They had some pamphlet one time that they handed us that had something to do with communism, drugs, rock n roll, mind control, etc. I was a bit disturbed when they tried to tell me the Beatles were just part of the communist propaganda. My BS meter was working even as a child.

Looking back, I would imagine the senior companion must have been a bircher. The poor kid he brought along didn't say a lot.