"Our economic stability and national well-being, of course, are dependent upon the existence of the middle class."

—Robert Welch, August 1975 JBS Bulletin, "The EPA – Take It Away"

In most lands, "born into poverty, always in poverty" had been the norm for centuries. But during the 19th and 20th centuries, the rise of the American middle class offered hope to impoverished peoples throughout the world, hope that upward mobility was possible, if not for them then perhaps for their children.

However, both the freedom that spawned the middle class and even the middle class itself became targets as totalitarian movements organized and spread during that same period. Those who desire total power cannot tolerate a substantial segment of the population that is not dependent on the favors of government for its livelihood, medical care, other necessities, and even for its information. A middle class that has the time and resources to organize for political change makes would-be tyrants quake.

The American middle class and an independent United States of America are the two major obstacles to internationalist-orchestrated revolution. It is evident that the same internationalist forces that have been plotting to destroy American independence by submerging it in a hemispheric government have also been pursuing policies the effect of which will be to destroy the American middle class. Both the assault on quality jobs and the open borders movement certainly contribute to that objective.

Almost a half-century ago, Robert Welch, founder of The John Birch Society and indefatigable student of history, would write:

"As a government increases in power, and as a means of increasing its power, it always has a tendency to squeeze out the middle class; to destroy or weaken the middle for the benefit of the top and the bottom. Even where there is no conscious alliance for this purpose, ... the forces to that end are always at work—as they have been in England for fifty years. In the nations that the gods would destroy they first make the middle class helpless, through insidious but irresistible government pressures."

—"The New Americanism" One Man’s Opinion, September 1957

But Robert Welch was also convinced that in the 20th Century the extinction of the middle class was very much the intended objective of powerful internationalist Insiders with a grip on our own government:

"The attempt by the Insiders to wipe out the middle class wherever one exists, and to destroy the private enterprise which is the basis of all economic prosperity, is now under way with a vengeance from Ireland to Japan—including many intermediate areas when you move in either direction. But, because of our productive and commercial momentum, this destructive undertaking is far harder to carry out in the United States than anywhere else on earth. Which is why we could readily name for you more than a hundred departments or agencies of our own government that have been created for that purpose since this process was begun here, with the Interstate Commerce Commission, eighty-seven years ago. And, with rare exceptions, all of them are still diligently at work with huge staffs, most of whom from top to bottom are utterly unaware of the ultimate effect of what they are doing...."

—October 1974 JBS Bulletin

Today the remarkable resistance to this continued assault shows signs of cracking. It’s past time for Americans to wake up to the fact that the opportunities which have led to a vibrant, independent American middle class are targeted for extinction.