John Birch Society

The flag is studded with the names of people who have pushed those freedoms to the brink, from Harriet Tubman to the John Birch Society.

Walker, a supporter of the John Birch Society, espoused radical right-wing, anti-communist views he used to indoctrinate his troops, andopenly accused public figures such as Harry Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dean Acheson of being communist sympathizers.

The John Birch Society was the post-WWII fringe group so committed to rooting out its perceived Communist menace here at home that it saw Commies and their conspiracies even where there were none.

In the 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove,” the unhinged Gen. Jack D. Ripper declares that “fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face” — echoing the position of the John Birch Society.

Extremist right-wing groups like the John Birch Society and Ku Klux Klan looking for commies found them in the government, not only in the Department of State, but in the NIH, and began a campaign to end water fluoridation, which they saw as a Communist-inspired conspiracy to undermine the health of citizens and weaken the United States.