William Jasper: North Idahoan and New American

COEUR d'ALENE - Hardly anyone knows, but the senior editor of the John Birch Society's national and Wisconsin-based magazine, The New American, works from his ranch just outside Coeur d'Alene.

We decided to ask William F. Jasper this week how he manages to cover national and sometimes international issues from there. We also asked a few other questions, too, including about the John Birch Society, a political advocacy group.

So, how do you do it?

Obviously, it poses some challenges and limitations, in terms of my direct, personal involvement in real-time events, versus, say, living in New York City, Los Angeles, London, or Washington, D.C. Those venues offer certain advantages to a journalist inasmuch as one is much more likely to have access to "newsmakers" - politicians, business moguls, authors, scientists, inventors, entertainers, etc. - major news events, press conferences and the like. Early in my career, after graduating from college here in Idaho, in 1975, I journeyed to "Planet California" and lived in Los Angeles (and) Pasadena for a decade, and then moved to Sacramento.

I thought that would be a short-term move, as my wife and I intended to move on up to Idaho in a couple of years, so our kids could grow up here in Idaho. But our sojourn in Sacramento turned into nearly 25 years.

I have also spent a fair amount of time in Washington, D.C., covering political issues there, and have been our accredited correspondent at the (United Nations) headquarters in New York for more than 30 years, as well as attending and reporting on UN summits around the world.

There is a distinct advantage to being "on site" when covering an event - there's really no substitute for it - but as a small news organization, it is really impossible for us to have boots on the ground at every event we report on. That's why contacts are so important. Over the decades, my colleagues and I have developed many reliable foreign sources - government, military, intelligence, academic, business, industry, media, religious - that we rely on for facts, information, and perspective about developments and news events around the world.

I'm fortunate to be living in a time when I can access those sources - via telephone, email, or Skype - from my office here at my little ranch in the woods. My work now still involves some travel, but much less than in my earlier years.

Why does the John Birch Society have its own magazine?

In the 1950s, before founding the Society, Robert Welch had begun his own monthly magazine, One Man's Opinion, which attracted the attention of many leading conservative, anti-communist, and free-market minds of the day. Many of these prominent historians, economists, and political figures began writing for the publication, which was renamed American Opinion magazine in 1958.

Professor Charles Callan Tansill, J.B. Matthews, Hans Sennholz, Holmes Alexander, Dean Clarence Manion, Russell Kirk, Francis X. Gannon, E. Merrill Root, and best-selling novelist Taylor Caldwell were some of the writers who appeared in American Opinion, which was a monthly journal, and The Review of The News, our weekly news magazine.

Many of those names are not well known today, except in paleoconcervative circles. But they once were important voices, back before William F. Buckley and the neoconservatives co-opted the conservative movement and turned it into a cheering section for the big business (and) big government forces that had taken over the Republican Party. In 1985, we combined both of those magazines into The New American, which is a bi-weekly print magazine, but we also publish an online version, with new, exclusive stories daily at www.thenewamerican.com.

What does the name "The New American" mean?

"The New American" was derived, largely, from a collection of Robert Welch's essays and speeches published under the title, The New Americanism, as well as the founding document, The Blue Book of The John Birch Society.

In both of these, and his other writings, he promoted the revival and renewal of the noblest elements of the political philosophy and moral temperament of the founding era of our country.

He saw the rise in the size and power and cost of government - at all levels - as one of the greatest tragedies of our modern age. This was especially evident in the cases of Naziism, communism, and fascism, but no less true of the various shades of socialism that came to dominance in both developed and developing countries throughout the world in the post-World War II years.

And, of course big government collectivism, which had already been wreaking havoc under FDR's New Deal, was galloping onward here in the U.S. as well.

The term "Americanism," as Welch explained, encompassed a philosophy and world view that included many things, some of the most important being: that each individual is endowed by God with inalienable rights (as stated in our Declaration of Independence) and that it is the purpose and function of government to protect those rights, that our U.S. Constitution especially limits the national government, leaving most powers with the states or with "the people," that the right to own and control private property must not be abridged, that the free market will always produce greater abundance and prosperity for all than will any form of state-managed economy, that national sovereignty is essential and must be protected against the encroachments of the United Nations, as well as treaties and agreements that would override our constitution and our rights with so-called "international law."

What makes a good story for The New American?

Our purpose is encapsulated by the slogan appearing on the cover of The New American: "That freedom shall not perish."

We are very concerned that freedom is indeed perishing. So we tend to center on stories having to do with threats to freedom, as well as positive, inspirational stories that demonstrate the ability of free people to solve their problems and accomplish good things that benefit not only them but all of society as well, rather than seeking solutions through more government intervention and more government programs.

We have covered, for instance the case of Sackett family here in Priest Lake, Idaho, a typical case of David versus the Goliath of the federal EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, over a phony "wetlands" issue.

We have reported on numerous similar cases over the years, cases that haven't gotten the kind of national press as the Sackett case, where rogue agencies have steamrolled over private citizens.

It's not right, it's not just. And when anyone's rights are violated with impunity, then everyone's rights are endangered. Unfortunately, most of the major media ignore these daily violations, or even side with the government violators, because the agency action is justified in the name of "environmental protection," "helping the poor," "affirmative action" or some other politically correct "public good."

Another example: I went to Oklahoma City recently and interviewed doctors Keith Smith and Steven Lantier, co-founders of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, a model, private facility that does many surgeries for a fraction of the cost of other facilities, with high-satisfaction rates and zero infections. That became a cover story and several online video interviews and stories.

A good news story - the same as with a novel or a movie - always involves conflict: man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself, man versus the supernatural.

And in that conflict there is right and wrong, good and evil. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of conflict in our world, and all too often wrong and evil are triumphing. So we never run short of stories.

What types of issues are you most interested in as a writer?

That's a tough question because I have broad interests and I see the very foundations and pillars of our civilization under siege and being destroyed, not just here in America, but throughout what is often referred to as post-Christian Western Civilization.

Our culture, morality, the family, the economy - all are under constant, vicious attack.

So I see a great many things worthy of defending, and an equal or greater number deserving to be exposed and opposed. I have written a great deal over the years on education, the U.N., property rights, regulation, constitutional issues, trade policy, immigration, the Federal Reserve, taxation, national security, communism, defense policies, environmental issues.

I began writing on terrorism back in the 1970s, during the Cold War, and went undercover into various communist organizations and terrorist groups and their support apparatuses. I was privileged to work in that regard with former Congressmen Larry McDonald (D-Ga.) and John Ashbrook (R-Ohio), former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, Maj. General George Patton IV, U.S. Marine Corps General Lewis Walt and other great Americans.

Congressman McDonald, who was a successful surgeon and a courageous statesman - and chairman of the John Birch Society - was aboard Korean Airlines Flight 007 when it was shot down by the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1983. I had worked closely with Dr. McDonald and losing such an important young leader in the freedom fight had a deep impact on me.

I attended the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The New American was virtually alone at that time in exposing and opposing the dangerous programs that came out of that conference, such as Agenda 21 and the Global Warming treaty.

Over the years these issues have continued to be of major interest to me and I've interviewed many of the world's leading scientists who challenge the phony (and rapidly collapsing) "consensus" regarding what is now referred to as "climate change."

I have also had the opportunity to interview Medal of Honor recipients, former Vietnam War POWs, and other military heroes, as well as educators, authors, inventors, entrepreneurs, philosophers, economists, and much more.

Although I did spend a decade in the L.A./Hollywood environs and, as a film reviewer and received frequent invites to press premieres, I was rarely interested in interviewing movie celebrities.

One exception was Charlton Heston (Moses, Judah Ben Hur, El Cid, Michelangelo, Mark Antony, et al). He was very gracious, invited me to his home and was a wonderful interviewee. Another celebrity I very much enjoyed meeting and interviewing was historian and Western novelist Louis L'Amour.

The problem, of course, in having so many interests and being spread over so many issues is that it is impossible to be expert on everything, so one is forced to become a generalist. And even so, being a knowledgeable generalist means lots of research and reading.

What drew you to writing for The New American? How long have you been there?

Well, actually, I began writing for the precursor magazines American Opinion and The Review of the News back in the late 1970s, and have been with The New American since it began.

So, it's been over 35 years. What attracted me was the opportunity to write about things that really matter, issues that I am passionate about, and to, hopefully, make a difference. It also allows me to wear many hats: investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, copy editor, book reviewer, movie reviewer, interviewer, and commentator. I have been very fortunate to have an editor-in-chief, Gary Benoit, and a publisher, John F. McManus, who have been very supportive over the decades.

What do you read when you're not reading The New American?

Well, I have a large personal library of over 15,000 books - history, philosophy, biography, theology, poetry, literature, economics, film, health, nutrition, travel, natural sciences, as well as how-to books on carpentry, gardening, firearms, archery, wilderness survival, animal husbandry - so I never run out of reading material.

I try to make reading the Bible a regular part of my daily schedule. Right now I'm re-reading professor Warren Carroll's six-volume "History of Christendom," a wonderful, enlightening series I read a number of years ago.

When you're not part of the so-called "mainstream media," but work as a writer for a national magazine, how do writers for The New American distinguish themselves from those working at other magazines, newspapers and news websites?

Good question. Although we are often categorized as political-social-economic "conservatives," that's not a label we've ever been totally comfortable with, and especially since the neoconservatives hijacked the label and the movement to promote perpetual war, foreign interventionism, global corporatism, central planning and many other collectivist nostrums now falsely called "conservatism."

So we find ourselves at odds frequently with other "conservative" publications and websites that favor, for example, the perpetual and undefined "war on terror" and that think it's fine for the president (Republican or Democrat) to launch military attacks and commit U.S. troops and ships to the far corners of the Earth in saecula saeculorum, without so much as a declaration of war by Congress, as demanded by our Constitution.

Likewise, we are at odds with many other "conservatives" who have jumped on board the ObamaTrade Express in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which are huge, sovereignty-destroying "trade" pacts, that have been negotiated in secret and will take us a giant step further down the road toward world government, as we have detailed in many articles in The New American.

These pacts will also finish the economic destruction wrought by NAFTA, CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement), and the WTO (World Trade Organization), causing a renewed wave of outsourcing of America's remaining jobs, factories, and industries that are essential to our national survival.

That puts us sometimes in the awkward position of being in the same boat with groups we otherwise have little in common with, such as Ralph Nader's Public Citizen and Democracy Now!, both of which oppose the TPP/TTIP agreements and the Bush/Obama perpetual warfare state.

They oppose these things for different reasons than we do and their opposition is conditional (subject to bargaining) whereas ours is definitive, non-negotiable.

Both of these "progressive" groups, of course, on the other hand, support the welfare state, abortion, climate alarmism, and many other things that we thoroughly oppose.

We stand for eternal verities, moral absolutes, "First Principles," whereas many of the faux conservatives have adopted "progressive" positions (illegal alien amnesty, war by executive decision, nationalized education, and homosexual "marriage," for instance) that would have been anathema to genuine conservatives of the Robert Taft era.

You're a University of Idaho graduate. What did you study and why? How has that helped you in your career?

I started out in 1970 in pre-med and pre-veterinary studies. But the Vietnam War was on then and the country was in turmoil, so I also spent a lot of time studying political science, philosophy and economics. In my third year, as a result of some psychology classes, I developed an interest in epistemology and developmental psychology and ended up switching to getting degrees in child development and education. Perhaps one of the most immediate effects of that change of course was my involvement in the then-infant homeschooling movement. The youngest three of my 10 siblings were still at home at the time and my parents did not want them attending the public schools in Boise, where my family had moved for my father's job. Based on my research at the U of I, I put them in touch with Dr. Paul Lindstrom (a Birch Society member and speaker) whose Christian Liberty Academy in the Chicago area had already built (back then in the early 1970s) a homeschooling program that was being used by tens of thousands of students. Homeschooling at that time was considered a subversive activity and the educational establishment and teachers unions were determined to stamp it out. Many parents were arrested and many children were taken away from their families. Thankfully, Idaho and most other states are more enlightened now on this issue.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up about three hours south of here (Coeur d'Alene), in Orofino, where the high school mascot, of course, is the Maniac. So I went from being a Maniac to a Vandal.

Why do you like living in Kootenai County near Coeur d'Alene?

Coeur d'Alene is a very beautiful area and it offers the rural living I want, combined with fairly easy access to an airport that allows me to get to the West Coast, East Coast, or overseas for my work, when needed. Also, for as small as it is, Coeur d'Alene has a surprising number of events that draw prominent national and even international figures to the area, which is helpful in my line of work. I'm very fortunate to have wonderful neighbors on all sides of me, which makes for very enjoyable living. I'm a member of North West Property Owners Alliance and the Rural Property Owners Committee and want to do my part to make sure that property rights are protected so that ranching, farming, and rural family life continue to be vital and viable in this area.

As a writer you no doubt have a busy schedule. What do you enjoy in your spare time?

After being pent up in the city for many years, I am so thankful to be able to simply shut down the computer and head outdoors. I chop wood (the main source of heat for our house), clear brush, take care of my critters (chickens, ducks, goats, rabbits, dogs, cats, turkeys) and most days take a pretty vigorous hike up the mountain. I enjoy archery, fencing, and shooting my firearms. When you hear gunshots in the city, it's accompanied by sirens and police helicopters with bullhorns blaring telling you to stay in your house. When I hear gunshots out here I say, "That's the sound of freedom." It's the sound of my neighbors practicing so that they'll hit what they're shooting at - and that's a good sound.

Do you stay in touch with John Birch Society members in North Idaho? Do members meet regularly in Coeur d'Alene or Post Falls? What are some of the top issues of interest to local JBS members?

Due to my very busy (and often erratic) schedule, I am not always able to attend meetings. However, in recent months I have been able to attend most monthly luncheon meetings at local Coeur d'Alene restaurants. Two of the top national issues, which are also top priorities with local members, involve contacting their congressmen and senators to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and contacting state legislators to oppose an Article V Constitutional Convention, which risks tossing out our entire Constitution. They are also active educating the public on these and other issues, such as the very controversial Common Core education program.