The roots of seething paranoia, ground out like sausage by right-wing radio evangelists like Dr. Burpo go deep and run long. I have run a couple of his other broadcasts in recent months, where he interviews some like-minded individual in Congress and today is not an exception.

Representative James B. Utt was a Republican from the Santa Ana area of Southern California. During the time of this broadcast (1969) the big brouhaha was over a program called SIECUS being introduced into the California school system. It was all about sex education and it attempted to shed light on an area that had been woefully inadequate since schools began.

Of course, the Dr. Burpos of the world would have none of it and so he enlisted the support of like-minded individuals in Congress like Utt and several others, to come on the radio and alarm listeners that all this talk about SEICUS was a communist plot and in fact, SEICUS was held by these people to be a communist front.

Yes, it got like that.

James B. Utt: “The whole thrust of SIECUS was to make pornography acceptable in the parlor at home. And the publishers of the SIECUS program are the greatest publishers and purveyors and distributors of pornography that there is in America. And why should we, the tax payers and the moral people of America be supporting the . .these pornographic uh . . mills that are making so much money in California in fact all over the United States. And I became concerned mainly because, time after time I was getting letters from concerned mothers enclosing some of the pornography . . .pornographic literature that they were receiving and that their children were receiving and wondering what they could do about it.”

It was interesting to realize this controversy is still going on, some 41 years later. I've noticed a number of websites claiming SIECUS extols the virtues of homosexuality and godlessness and promotes moral decay.

Hmm - 2011, moral decay, screaming evangelicals. Yeah - makes perfect sense . . . .

(Rep. John Rarick (D-Louisiana) - our tax dollars at work)

Looking at what was Hate Radio in the 1960s, I keep coming across quasi-religious programs with such benign names as The Bible Institute Of The Air that began and ended with a certain amount of evangelical lip service but in the middle of each program came a blast of fear, hate and paranoia directed straight at the uninformed public. In the 1960s and all the way until the late 1980s it was pretty much masquerading as anti-Communist tirades. But as was evidenced by this interview between Dr. C.W. Burpo and Congressman John Rarick (D-Louisiana), it made no bones about its blatant racism, particularly in the area of schools.

Rep. John Rarick: “They come out and say if you’re against sexual education, which is really perversion, it’s the art of sex in itself, it’s the animal act, then you’re against education and against academic freedom. They at no time have made any suggestion that the way for this to handle is through the home, or that we educate the parents, you see because they do not believe in the home. They’re really opposed to any parential control because it would deny them some control over the minds and the bodies of these small American children. Now, I think the other amazing thing is, we’ve just received word that the Head Start program, which was devised under the Communist theory of environmental factors that genocide or genetics have nothing to do with children or their mentality. The Head Start Program which is for five and above is now to be abolished because their experience or the actual testing shows that all the Head Start money has been wasted; it’s accomplished nothing. And the children who are not in these Head Start Schools or in these kindergarten facilities came into school and were able to compete and they were just as mentally alert and their i.q. was the same as the other youngsters. In other words, the i.q.; the basic common sense or know-how or incentives are born in us. So now in desperation the environmentalists, and this goes clear back to basic Communism because, to believe in heredity you have to believe that people are different. And you have to believe in different racial strains and you have to believe in selective breeding of the people, like you do high bred cattle or dogs or anything else.

Rep. John Rarick: “In Washington D.C. alone one of the Negro militants, a woman, has come and she says that this sex education is a necessity because it’s the only solution to the race problem because this is the only way we can teach the young children to not discriminate in their sex activities so that of course they will in-breed with different races, going back to the same theory again that by changing the environment, changing the education and like events, we will wind up with the, what is it, the One International Brown Man. And intelligence and of course intellect, heredity are given no acknowledgment. In fact today anyone who even dares suggest the difference between two kernels of wheat I guess would be made out to be a lunatic or some kind of a radical.”

It is no surprise that, as the result of his support of George Wallace in the 1968 election, he was stripped of any seniority he had by his own party (which he whines about at length at the beginning of the broadcast). Although it should be noted, Rarick was one of that breed of politician known as the Dixiecrat all throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s. He was no isolated case. And also remember the Dixiecrats have morphed into that seemingly harmless title of Blue Dogs now.

The leopards may change their names - but the spots are just the same.