William Norman Grigg

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William Norman Grigg

Born William Norman Grigg
February 4, 1963 (1963-02-04) (age 45)
Burley, Idaho
Residence Payette, Idaho
Other names Blarney con Carne
Cuchulain Cuauhtemoc
Occupation Writer/Author/Blogger/Editor
Religious beliefs Mormon (-2003)
Christian (2003-Present)
Spouse Korrin Weeks Grigg
Website
http://prolibertate.us/
http://www.rightsourceonline.com

William Norman Grigg is a writer of Mexican and Irish descent.[1] He was the senior editor and a prolific contributor to The New American, the official magazine of the John Birch Society. His writing reflects views heavily influenced by constitutionalism, libertarianism, and anti-communism. He had been a columnist for LewRockwell.com since June 26, 2004. He co-hosted The Right Source radio show with Kevin Shannon every Friday from December 30, 2005 until May 4, 2007. He has recorded the radio spot A Liberty Minute every weekday since February 19, 2007. Every edition since the July 2, 2007 edition ends with the quote referencing Galatians 5:1, "Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free." William Norman Grigg is also the editor of the Pro Libertate e-zine, an irregularly published internet magazine of investigative journalism.

Contents

[edit] Hired by The New American magazine in 1993

Grigg served as an award-winning columnist for the Provo Daily Herald before being hired as a Senior Editor for The New American magazine in 1993. The New American is the John Birch Society’s (JBS) flagship biweekly magazine. As a correspondent for The New American, Mr. Grigg covered numerous United Nations summits and conferences, including the 1994 population control summit in Cairo, Egypt, the 1995 social development summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the 2000 Millennium Forum and 2001 small arms conference, both at UN Headquarters in New York City.

Grigg was among the leaders in the JBS Appleton office to call for the resignation of former JBS CEO G. Vance Smith in 2005, who had promoted two of his sons to key leadership positions within the organization. When Smith was narrowly deposed in a September 2005 Board of Incorporators vote, Grigg was initially supportive of the Society’s new leadership (CEO Art Thompson, President John F. McManus and Vice President Larry Waters). But differences in both style and emphasis led to a rift after just a few months.

One of the first actions of the new JBS leadership after the September 2005 change was to initiate a staff blog. Grigg quickly became the most prolific contributor, and eventually -- by default -- the only contributor.

[edit] Differences in style with JBS

While Grigg favors a polemical style that can only be termed “verbal pugilism,” The New American and the John Birch Society increasingly favored a more subdued text from its writers. While still maintaining a traditional conservative point of view, The New American adopted a modified version of the Associated Press Stylebook for publication, eschewing the most emotional terms and heavy satire that often laced Grigg’s prose.

The style controversy could be termed a generational one. Grigg is younger than all of the senior officials in charge of the John Birch Society, and he clearly favored the crusading verbal style popular with modern blogs and radio talk show hosts over the style championed by the JBS leadership, the latter popularized by mid-20th century print journals.

The end result was that an increasing number of articles Grigg submitted were deemed too charged with emotional terms, and were refused by The New American. Grigg thereafter sent many of the rejected texts to LewRockwell.com and The American Conservative for publication, sometimes recrafting them for those publications. The exposure at LewRockwell.com in particular won Grigg a large following on the internet.

Stylistic differences also spilled over onto the JBS blog, where Grigg’s posts were occasionally altered or removed entirely, over stylistic differences at first.

[edit] Differences of Emphasis with JBS

The “JBS Blog” revealed some differences between Grigg and JBS leadership on political issues over time. Perhaps the most striking was the immigration issue, which the new JBS leadership launched as its first major campaign. Grigg, of Mexican-American descent, had authored numerous articles in JBS publications calling for controls on immigration. But by 2006 he had concluded that the immigration issue – while a legitimate problem – had become a drummed up issue designed to keep big government, pro-war Republicans in control of Congress. The most important issues facing the American nation in 2006, Grigg argued, was the attack on personal liberties by the Bush Administration: torture, detention without trial, warrantless surveillance and wars of empire. And the national Republican Party had settled on the immigration issue as their driving cause in the 2006 elections. Grigg viewed Republican control of Congress – which had served as a rubber stamp upon Bush Administration depredations against the Bill of Rights – as an impediment to the restoration of liberty.

The JBS leadership did not take this view. Though generally non-partisan, the pages of The New American represented the opposite and more popular view that the Republican Party has remained the party of comparably smaller government than that proposed by Democrats.

The JBS leadership sought to rebrand itself with this 2006 marketing campaign in the wave of mass media coverage over the issue, but Grigg panned the “wave” of media attention to his friends as “nothing more than the swirl in the bowl after the chain has been pulled” on the Republican Party as the nation headed toward the 2006 elections.

On his JBS blog, he likened the public debate over immigration to the stage-managed fights of professional wrestling[1], only to find that JBS leadership had deleted the June 22, 2006 post. Frustrated by this and other deletions, Grigg formed his personal blog, which he called Pro Libertate[2], in August 2006. Like the article cast-offs that appeared on LewRockwell.com[3], blog posts rejected or deleted from the JBS blog eventually found their way onto Pro Libertate.

Grigg was fired[4]by JBS leadership on October 3, 2006, officially for unstated reasons. But it is logical to conclude that Grigg’s public differences with the timing of his employer’s immigration campaign were the primary reason behind the firing.

[edit] After The New American

Grigg found himself unemployed in October 2006, and sole caretaker of his five young children and an ailing wife. He ramped up his freelance activities with The American Conservative, and eventually was commissioned by the Welch Foundation to write a book on the attacks on liberty by the Bush and Clinton Administrations. The Welch Foundation had been founded in 1997 by cast-offs from the John Birch Society, most of whom lived in California. This book was published in December 2007 as [Liberty in Eclipse: Rise of the Homeland Security State][5].

The Welch Foundation, which has recently re-styled itself as RightSourceOnline.com[6], also absorbed the Pro Libertate blog and made Grigg a weekly regular on the afternoon drive-time radio show “The Right Source” with host Kevin Shannon (real name: Kevin Bearly), which was nationally syndicated by the Genesis Radio Network from 1997-2007. The Right Source also launched a Pro Libertate e-zine[7], where Grigg brought in prominent writers such as author James Bovard (Attention Deficit Democracy), fellow LewRockwell.com columnists Scott Horton and Lawrence Vance, and his friend from The New American Thomas R. Eddlem.

[edit] Musical career

Grigg has from time to time found employment as a guitarist in several bands. Most notably, he served as lead guitarist in the Wisconsin band “Slick Willie and the Calzones.” (No, Grigg wasn’t the “Slick Willie.” The name was chosen before Grigg joined the band.) The band toured across the Midwest in the late 1990s and early 2000s, playing mostly “classic hits” style rock music and cutting the CD Green and Gold in 2001. The CD featured a variety of music styles – from rock to country to jazz. Because all of the song lyrics were related to the Green Bay Packers, the CD gained some airtime on Wisconsin radio stations, especially the novelty song “Tailgate Polka.” And the guitar riffs from the bluesy “Goin’ to Green Bay” track were used as bumpers by Grigg’s friend Tom Eddlem on his radio show “Dangerous Talk” (aired on WPEP in Massachusetts from 2004-2007).

Grigg’s move to Idaho in 2005 ended his professional association with Slick Willie and the Calzones, and his wife’s subsequent illness has suspended his secondary career as a guitarist.

[edit] Books

  • (1992) The Gospel of Revolt: Feminism Vs. the Family. Northwest Publishing Inc.. ISBN 1-880416-75-1. 
  • (1995) Freedom on the Altar: The UN's Crusade Against God and Family. American Opinion Publishers. ISBN 0-9645679-0-3. 
  • (2001) Global Gun Grab. John Birch Society. ISBN 1-881919-05-6. 
  • (2004) America's Engineered Decline. John Birch Society. ISBN 1-881919-10-2. 
  • (Dec. 2007) Liberty In Eclipse: The Rise of the Homeland Security State[8]. Welch Foundation. 

[edit] References

  1. ^ Conservative camp roasts more than just weenies

[edit] External links

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