by G. Vance Smith & Tom Gow
[Transcript of published booklet]
Introduction
A massive, poorly recognized attack threatens to destroy America’s vital middle class.
America’s middle class is much more than an income level. It is a positive, independent force perpetuating a culture that sustains our freedom, promises opportunity, and gives rise to national prosperity.
Throughout history, whenever it has flourished, the middle class has acted as a buffer between the ruling elite and the laboring poor. From her research, internationally respected American novelist Taylor Caldwell argued:
The middle class made the dream of liberty a possibility, set limits on the government, fought for its constitutions, removed much of governmental privilege and tyranny, demanded that rulers obey the just laws as closely as the people, and enforced a general civic morality.
Taylor Caldwell, “The Middle Class Must Not Die,”
The Review of the News, May 29, 1974
Some of the cultural and other characteristics of a strong middle class able to fill these functions include:
- Self-reliance.
- Independence. (Not beholden to government bureaucrats, nature, or a specific employer for theimmediate necessities of life, such as food, shelter, health care.)
- Religion-based morality and strong families.
- Responsibility.
- Value placed on savings and accumulation of capital.
- Ambition, the entrepreneurial spirit.
- Ability and willingness to stand up for what’s right.
- Ownership of property.
- Mobility — the private automobile.
- Respect for the law.
One other characteristic is singularly important — America’s middle class has always been wide open to those with ambition willing to take risks and work hard. Upward mobility has never been frozen by reason of birth as was the case through much of European history.
Just one example, among legions, is the career of the late acting star Charles Bronson. The 11th of 15 children born to a Lithuanian emigrant father and a Lithuanian-American mother, Bronson grew up working in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. The father died when Bronson was 10. The family was so poor that Bronson reportedly once had to wear his sister’s dress to school for want of anything else. After serving in World War II, Charles Bronson decided to pursue acting, and the rest is more familiar history.
Certainly America, through much of its history, gained a deserved reputation as the land of opportunity. “It is a cardinal tenet of Americanism,” insisted the great patriot leader Robert Welch, “that a wide open middle class, into which any laborer can climb, and from which any millionaire can fall, must be the very basis and core of all the best civilizations.”
True altruism must protect the middle class. For as Robert Welch observed:
“The ideal way of alleviating poverty is by enabling and encouraging the poor to improve their own lot. The greatest help in the world to that end is a middle class, especially one with a very wide spread in its economic boundaries…. When class lines are vague, and classes overlap, and the middle class is a comprehensive term reaching from a good percentage of day laborers to an even larger percentage of bank presidents — in each case according to their own self-classifications — it is only extreme irresponsibility or government handouts that will keep the ‘poor’ of today from becoming members of the ‘middle class’ of tomorrow.” — July 1975 John Birch Society Bulletin
The opportunity for every individual to join the middle class through his own efforts is certainly just. But the opportunity also provides a great motivator for the individual to help increase the nation’s productivity.
A strong middle class provides the entrepreneurial spirit for economic efficiency and innovation and creates the savings for capital formation that bids up wage rates for labor. So when the middle class is strong, even those Americans who make no special effort to improve their lot can enjoy a rising standard of living.
Unfortunately, all of the underpinnings of a strong American middle class are today under serious and determined attack.
The middle class has more than enough power to defend itself. But it is currently losing this war, because it doesn’t understand the scope and nature of the attack. Those controlling the major opinion forming institutions are deceiving the public as to the objective of an array of seemingly diverse attacks. And the middle class is being put to sleep by politicians who give lip service to protecting its interests or who champion only token relief.
Although our message here offers a sober look at a very serious problem, it is not a message of doom and gloom. Quite the opposite. As terrible as the problem is, gaining more widespread recognition for it is a major step toward a solution. By contrast, not recognizing the magnitude and scope of the danger — thereby supporting inadequate solutions or simply burying our heads in the sand and hoping for the best — is guaranteed to keep us on the downhill slippery slope to disaster.
In Chapter 1, we describe some of the current threats to the middle class. In subsequent chapters, we provide evidence that the destruction of the middle class is intentional and examine the deceptive strategies and tactics employed. And finally, armed with a clear understanding of the danger, we present what we believe is the only strategy that can save America’s middle class.
Chapter 1 — The AttacksAs a convenient aid to understanding, we will examine the attacks on the middle class in three categories: the economic squeeze, the agendas that undermine middle class independence, and the culture war. We are not saying that destruction of the middle class is the sole objective of these attacks. Actually, as we expect to show, their central driving agenda is to build a global tyranny ruled by an elite. But all of these attacks serve to overcome a primary obstacle to that objective — a strong American middle class.
The Economic Squeeze
Undoubtedly many Americans would be surprised to learn that the primary programs now putting a squeeze on the middle class were advocated more than a century and a half ago in the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Communist propaganda about creating a classless society notwithstanding, Communism (and socialism) have always been about reestablishing two classes — a ruling class and the slaves (the most common political arrangement throughout history). And the middle class stands in the way. Both Marx (the philosopher) and Lenin (the organizer) made clear their hostility toward the middle class.
In their Manifesto, Marx and Engels advised their disciples:
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie [the middle class in Communist parlance], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class….
Lenin would later insist that the creation of a Socialist State necessitated first the destruction of the middle class: “[W]hoever conceives of the transition to Socialism without the suppression of the bourgeoisie is not a Socialist…. [I]t is essential to suppress the bourgeoisie as a class.”
Not so well known is the fact that Marx and Engels were hired to develop their manifesto for world socialist revolution by a group of wealthy and powerful sponsors, deceptively identified as the League of Just Men. (The League renamed itself the Communist League when the Manifesto was published.) The ten so-called planks of the Communist Manifesto provided an agenda for the communization of the “most advanced countries.”
And wealthy American Insiders labored for decades with great deception to fasten many of the provisions of the Communist Manifesto on America. One of their first successes was “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax” — plank number two in the Manifesto. Another was plank number five — “Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly” — the Federal Reserve.
But persuading America to embrace these programs was not an easy task. Early attempts failed. In 1902 the graduated income tax was again declared unconstitutional. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Melville Fuller declared: “It [the progressive income tax] is a method to enslave our people, and deprive them of their liberty and right to the fruit of their labors.”
Then in early 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment became effective, enabling Congress to impose this tax. Although the tax was sold to the public as a soak-the-rich scheme, wealthy Insiders were actually behind the plan and quickly insulated their own wealth in various tax shelters such as tax-exempt foundations. The real burden of the progressive income tax has always been carried by the middle class.
In his 1960 classic, The Constitution of Liberty, economist F.A. Hayek explained the impact of the progressive income tax:
The system tends generally to favor corporate as against individual saving and particularly to strengthen the position of the established corporations against newcomers. It thus assists to create quasi-monopolistic situations. Because taxes today absorb the greater part of the newcomer’s “excessive” profits, he cannot, as has been well said, “accumulate capital”; he cannot expand his own business; he will never become big business and a match for the vested interests. The old firms do not need to fear his competition: they are sheltered by the tax collector. They are virtually privileged by the tax system. In this sense progressive taxation checks economic progress and makes for rigidity.
It is no accident that wealthy Insiders have supported a Marxist expansion of government here at home, clamping a lid on upward middle class mobility. Just as with the Communists, their goal is a two-class system — an upper (ruling) and a lower (slave) class — with nothing in between.
The economic squeeze on the middle class really got off the ground during the Great Depression and the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Aided by an atmosphere of crisis, tax rates climbed, the Fed acquired additional muscle, and radical federal programs based on revolutionary new authority were pushed through Congress.
That period also saw the institution of the welfare state, whose burden is again carried primarily by the middle class. And the idea that government-funded public works should fill the employment gap when “private industry is unable to provide jobs” took root. (Not stated by the promoters of big government, of course, was the fact that only oppressive government regulations and burdens could make it unprofitable for private enterprise to hire the unemployed.)
Today, the U.S. welfare system has also become a magnet for illegal immigration, further increasing the burden on the middle class taxpayer. One of the hardest hit states has been California. In 1994, California voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 187, a referendum to deny non-critical welfare benefits to illegals. This attempted taxpayer rebellion at the ballot box was immediately met with well organized and even international opposition. (After its passage, Proposition 187 was nullified through judicial action before it could be implemented.)
Unfortunately, too few Americans frustrated over amnesty programs and the federal government’s “inability” to enforce our borders understand what they are up against — e.g., the powerful sponsors behind the open borders movement — and why.
In recent decades, government programs have seriously under-mined the domestic economy and reduced the opportunity for quality private-sector jobs. Most especially, government carrots and sticks have altered market forces, inducing manufacturing and heavy industry to relocate abroad.
And the H-1B temporary visa program has exacerbated the shrinking domestic opportunities caused by businesses relocating many of their operations offshore. Created in 1990, this program has allowed a flood of Third World engineers willing to work for half the normal U.S. pay or less to replace college grads with degrees in computer science and engineering.
As Forbes magazine noted: “Indian programmers working in the U.S. on temporary H-1B visas typically earn 25% to 30% less than their naturalized colleagues.” 131,000 of the H-1B visas were approved in FY 2004 alone! (Congress currently caps the number of new H-1B visas at 65,000 per fiscal year, but “exemptions,” such as for those with advanced degrees, regularly allow tens of thousands more.)
The cover story of the February 3, 2003 issue of Business Week offered this forecast by a financial analyst: “[A]t least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries by 2015.” The sobering headline for the story: “Is Your Job Next?”
Until the last several decades, capital accumulated in America has mostly stayed in America. Why the change? Cheap labor forces in other countries are certainly not a new phenomenon. But mass exodus of manufacturing, industry, capital, and jobs are. And it’s unnatural.
The standard of living in an economic area is directly related to the invested capital (tools in a broad economic sense) per worker. In a general way this ratio explains the demand for labor and the price labor can command for its services. Everything else being equal, the natural economic incentive is for labor to move to where there is a greater concentration of capital and for capital to move to where the labor is cheaper. But everything else is not equal. Other factors put a break on such movements.
Among nations, the cultures that sustain stable governments and freedom and protect capital from confiscation are clearly not equally attractive to investment. For example, no sensible company wouldnormally risk investing in an anti-capitalist Communist country.
And private investors would naturally be cautious before investing in even non-Communist countries that had historically not been conducive to the accumulation of capital. (However, if the investment resulted from an honest evaluation of market forces and improved conditions in another nation, a moderate capital movement should be no great cause for concern. In fact, the opportunity for capital to help jump-start other economies or expand its operations into foreign markets can certainly benefit mankind as a whole.)
And so we must look beyond natural market forces to explain the hemorrhage that has occurred. To risk investing in politically unstable or even hostile foreign nations, American capital would need truly reliable guarantees and even incentives.
Perversely, American capital was given this protection by agencies of our own government, such as OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — backed up by the American taxpayer, of course. In effect, America’s middle class has been forced to finance its own demise.
In addition, the rising cost of excessive bureaucratic regulation here at home has made overseas investment more attractive. And through a variety of aid programs, U.S. Insiders have regularly given away the U.S. competitive edge in technology leadership and innovation to other nations. Even our avowed enemies have been recipients of this “generosity.”
In the early 1980s, the U.S. Export-Import Bank extended credit to Red China to help build its steel factories. Most of the large U.S. steel mills have since closed down, and the U.S. has become increasingly and unnecessarily dependent on foreign imports for this critical component of our defense industry and our economy.
“How could our leaders be so stupid?” you might ask. But it’s not stupidity. The internationalist game plan is to remold the world economy and create an “interdependent” world in which sovereign nations, including most especially the United States, cannot go it alone.
But there is another economic threat Americans need to be concerned about — the coming scourge of inflation. It is no secret that the federal government has decided it can operate with enormous, unprecedented deficits. Adding to the cost of foreign wars, we now have massive bailouts and “stimulus packages.”
According to AP (3/20/09): Congressional Budget Office figures project that “President Barack Obama’s budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade…. The 2009 deficit, fueled by the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and diving tax revenues stemming from the worsening recession, is four times the previous $459 billion record set just last year.”
One might expect these deficits to be financed by borrowing. But borrowing drives up interest rates — a chill on the economy. And massive deficits would require massive borrowing. That’s where the Federal Reserve System comes in. It buys up the government debt with new money (kind of like legal counterfeiting), keeping interests rates from soaring — in the short-term.
But there is no free lunch. The new money gradually bids up prices eroding the value of all money and savings. Indeed, the classic example of inflating the currency, carried to the extreme, occurred in Germany after World War I. Hyperinflation by the Reichsbank destroyed the value of the old Reichsmark, wiping out the savings of the German middle class and helping to pave the way for a demagogue promising relief.
This danger is certainly not unknown to government economists and is reflected in the writings of the guru of a state-managed money supply — Fabian Socialist John Maynard Keynes. In his 1920 account of the Paris Peace Conference, The Economic Consequences of Peace, Keynes wrote:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens….
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch its currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose….
Despite his understanding of the subversive impact of inflation, Keynes would later provide the rationalization for “professional” economists to manage a nation’s economy by regularly debauching (inflating) its currency. (See his 1935 “classic,” The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.)
Dependency on Father Sam
Year by year, under pressure from the top and agitation from below, the federal government has been assuming responsibility for more and more of the functions of American life — in violation of the limits on federal powers clearly spelled out in the U.S. Constitution (and reemphasized by the Tenth Amendment).
As these unconstitutional programs are implemented and expand, many will hobble the middle class to government, undermining its potential to serve as an independent check on ruling elites. Indeed the threat is that middle class Americans will become dependent on the federal government (and ultimately government favor) for the basic necessities of life, such as jobs, health care, housing, and even personal security.
We list here several such revolutionary power grabs that have substantial backing:
The drive to have the federal government regulate health care (socialized medicine). Federal control will necessarily limit the availability of quality care, opening the door for bureaucrats to decide who is eligible for what treatment. Already the health care industry is being pressured to make health care decisions based on “quality of [remaining] life” guidelines, such as the QALY (Quality-adjusted life years) index.
Decades ago, economist Friedrich Hayek warned in his The Constitution of Liberty that nationalization of medicine will lead to “the inevitable transformation of doctors, who have been members of a free profession responsible to their patients, into paid servants of the state, officials who are necessarily subject to instruction by authority….”
The health care power grab was given a big boost with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (President Obama’s “economic stimulus bill”).
Persistent efforts to restrict large-scale energy production open up the “opportunity” for government rationing of private and industrial energy consumption. The anti-nuclear movement that killed this American technology on American soil was one step. The anti-development “green” movement, including the proposal for government to regulate carbon emissions in response to the manmade global warming scare, has been another.
Indeed, a year prior to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Canadian multimillionaire Maurice Strong, the secretary-general for the Rio conference, wrote:
It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle-class … involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and “convenience” foods, ownership of motor vehicles, numerous electric household appliances, home and workplace air-conditioning … expansive suburban housing … are not sustainable.
— August 1991 UNCED report
That same year (1991) Strong, demonstrating his Insider connections, teamed up with David Rockefeller to write the Introduction and Foreword, respectively, to Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology. Beyond Interdependence was the Trilateral Commission’s game plan for Rio.
The war on the private automobile. The independence of private transportation is anathema to socialist planners. The automobile gives the middle class a freedom of mobility that is difficult for Big Brother to monitor and control.
The drive for a national police accountable to a central government, whereas local police in America have traditionally been accountable to the citizens of the local communities in which they live. Several major programs (such as the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965) and numerous federal lawsuits against alleged “rogue” big-city police departments have been designed to give the federal government increasing control over local police forces.
The socialist assault on property rights (private property). Socialists (and Communists) seek to separate property rights from human rights. Particularly, they want to abolish rights in land. (For example, in 1935 Roger Baldwin, founder and veteran leader of the ACLU, wrote: “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”)
But property rights are among the most fundamental of human rights. And economic freedom is inseparable from political freedom. The assault on property rights is a backdoor assault on political freedom, prosperity, and the middle class. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto maintained that much of Latin America is mired in poverty primarily because property rights are non-existent.
Here at home, government authority continues to expand.President Obama and Fed Chairman Bernanke have sought to reassure the public that they do not plan to nationalize our banks. Yet prior to the Obama administration who would have thought that the President of the United States could presume to fire the head of General Motors?
Where will it end? Answer: With total control, unless there is informed support for a serious, realistic plan to change course.
In particular, the recent economic crisis is leading to greater federal regulation of the mortgage industry. And owning a home has become a far-off dream for many families. We certainly do not want to repeat the nightmare in the Soviet Union where the government became in effect the landlord. The Soviet population often had to wait in line for years to get permission to move into better housing, and party privilege got you to the head of the waiting list. It ought to make Americans nervous that the unconstitutional Cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) even exists.
The drive for civilian disarmament (gun control). Coupled with the drive for nationalizing police forces, disarming the public would embolden criminals and make Americans dependent on the federal government for their personal security. In addition, when the population is disarmed it becomes easier for government officials to forget that they must listen to and serve the people. Civilian disarmament paves the way for totalitarians to seize control.
One strategy that has been used in an attempt to overcome the limitations of the Second Amendment and the widespread ownership of firearms in the U.S. has been pressure to harmonize U.S. law with international law. In particular, the United Nations is hostile to the concept of private gun ownership. Yet Americans need to realize that were it not for the earlier UN-ordered disarmament in Rwanda, the 1994 orgy of mass murder that befell that unfortunate nation could never have happened.
It is even more important to recognize that the international drive against small arms is sponsored or controlled by Insiders at the top, many of them allied with the New York Council on Foreign Relations. And that the UN itself is their brainchild and tool in a massive deception.
The Culture War
Our objective with this topic is not to present a treatise on sociology. Instead our discussion starts merely from the observation that the convictions and habits of a people are associated with the rise and fall of nations, empires, and even civilizations. And that America’s cultural convictions, such as traditional morality, are under attack.
Pointing to the importance of preserving two elements of America’s culture, President George Washington in his Farewell Address warned:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them….
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Our Founding Fathers were certainly convinced that the American experiment in freedom would collapse if its supporting pillars were not wisely and vigilantly protected.
Certainly, many of America’s cultural convictions, such as the traditional family, are not confined to the middle class or even to America. But many others (such as self-reliance, ambition, and a penchant for savings) are given particular voice by the middle class.
Moreover, the middle class is perhaps most able to defend and propagate the values that have made America great. And the traditional family is certainly important for passing on any culture from generation to generation (other than whatever politically correct culture the State might indoctrinate in our children).
From that perspective, let’s look at several of the threats in the widely recognized “culture war:”
The ongoing attack on the traditional family must certainly be one of the gravest concerns. It is no secret that this institution has suffered. In 1994, Gary L. Bauer, then President of the Family Research Council, offered this sobering statistic: “In 1944, 97 percent of all children in New York City were born into two-parent families. In 1994 it was fifty percent….”
We don’t need to remind the reader of the national campaign to force states to recognize same-sex marriages. However, what most Americans do not realize is that this latest assault on the institution of marriage will not go away, unless the underlying agendas are fully exposed.
A more subtle but even greater threat to strong family life has likely been the economic assault. Compared to a few decades ago, both partners today often have to work if they want to maintain that former standard of living.
The drive for federal control of education. The federal funding spigot for education was first opened in 1958 with “the National Defense Education Act.” The “crisis” that drove through this revolution was the Soviet launch of Sputnik the year before and the supposed need of America to catch up with the Soviets in science.
Congressman Noah Mason of Illinois warned of the consequences of this new federal program at the time: “Federal Aid for Education is not a temporary program to meet an immediate emergency. It is an effort to put our whole educational system under Federal control and to keep it there forever.”
A major expansion of federal “aid” occurred in 1965 during the Johnson administration. The federal education establishment now sees an opportunity to complete the revolutionary power grab, aided by the carrots and sticks in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Those revolutionaries who desire to remake society have long recognized that they must wrest control of the minds of the youth from their parents. Allowing a central government to control the education of a nation’s youth is an enormous, extremely dangerous assumption of power. A clear example of totalitarian ambition to capture the youth was provided by Adolf Hitler in a 1933 speech:
When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already…. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
The promotion of strong multiculturalism. Radical organizations (with help from above) have sought to dissuade the massive tide of illegal (and even legal) immigrants from assimilating into America’s culture, even from learning English as a second language. Yet forcing America to accommodate separate, imported cultures, while disparaging its own highly fruitful heritage, serves to form a divided society. One does not have to look far to find nations beset with problems because of culturally divided populations.
The corruption of government to join in the attack on respect-ability — another front in the culture war. John Frohnmayer, head of the unconstitutional taxpayer-funded National Endowment of the Arts under President George Bush (the elder), insisted that “Our aim is to support the most excellent art.” In response, syndicated columnist Don Feder sarcastically observed:
In pursuit of excellence, the endowment has connected us to such aesthetic treasures as homoerotic cinema, lesbian poetry, sadomasochistic photography, and child pornography … for the umpteenth year in a row, the NEA gave a grant to the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which screens movies with titles that can’t be printed in a newspaper column.
Promotion of homosexuality under the guise of a struggle for homosexual “rights.”
In 1989, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, professionals in neuropsychiatric research and commercial advertising, respectively, published After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear and hatred of gays in the ’90s [an expansion of an earlier influential article Kirk had co-authored with Erastes Pill entitled “The Overhauling of Straight America.”] The Kirk-Madsen book advocated a clever step-by-step strategy of media deception designed to revolutionize public attitudes toward gays:
At least at the outset, we seek desensitization and nothing more. You can forget about trying right up front to persuade folks that homosexuality is a good thing. But if you can get them to think that it is just anotherthing — meriting no more than a shrug of the shoulders — then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won.
But the strategy didn’t end there. The authors also advocated: “Portray gays as victims of circumstance and oppression, not as aggressive challengers. In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to adopt the role of protector.”
The strategy described by Kirk and Madsen has clearly been implemented. Two decades later, we can see the results of that campaign. The man President Obama picked as his Secretary of Education was Chicago Schools Chief Arne Duncan. Just a couple of months earlier, Duncan was caught up in a local controversy arguing on behalf of an incredible plan to establish a homosexual high school in Chicago — the School for Social Justice — Pride Campus.
The Chicago Tribune (10/09/08) quotes Duncan’s endorsement of the plan: “We want to create great new options for communities that have traditionally been underserved…. If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates…. I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”
According to the proposed Chicago school’s mission and vision statement: “Thus, the Social Justice High School — Pride Campus would improve on current conditions for LGBTQA youth in Chicago’s public schools and would be a national model for best practices in the education of LGBTQA youth.” [Emphasis added.] In case you didn’t know, LGBTQA stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth and their allies.”
One might have expected Arne Duncan’s support for the homosexual school to become an issue when the Senate held hearings to establish his qualifications to head up the Department of Education. Apparently not so. According to the Los Angeles Times (1/14/09): “Democrats and Republicans alike lavished praise on Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago public schools. ‘President-elect Obama has made several distinguished Cabinet appointments. I think you’re the best,’ said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who served as Education secretary under President George H.W. Bush.”
So much for the fiction of a genuine opposition party.
Hunter and Madsen aren’t the only strategists who have planned how to subvert American culture. A highly influential conspirator in the culture war was Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian authorities in 1926 and devoted much of the remaining years of his life writing his Prison Notebooks, in which he recorded his strategy for quiet revolution.
Gramsci argued that in the developed Western democracies, the quick seizure of state power was doomed to failure as it was a mistake to “count solely on the power and material force that are given by government.” Instead, Gramsci insisted that for a revolution to be successful the supporting culture first had to be changed. The altered culture would then prepare the people, intellectually and morally, to accept the revolution. In essence, the Gramscian battle cry became “capture the culture.”
So Gramsci urged his comrades to infiltrate and gain control of the institutions of civil society that shape and represent public opinion. Those institutions included the churches, political parties, trade unions, the mass media, and a variety of voluntary private organizations. Rudi Dutschke, one of Gramsci’s disciples, described this strategy of culture war as conducting “the long march through the institutions.”
Gramsci was far from alone, nor even the most important, in recognizing the value of capturing strategic positions for the molding of public opinion. Nevertheless, Gramsci’s influence has been significant. For example, one of Gramsci’s apostles was Derek Shearer, a founder of the radical Campaign for Economic Democracy and adviser to Bill Clinton. And Gramsci was also a primary influence on Hillary Clinton’s political guru, Michael Lerner.
Gramsci particularly targeted religion and morality. He wrote: “The conception of law will have to be freed from every remnant of transcendence and absoluteness, practically from all moralist fanaticism.”
There is little doubt that this strategy of organized cultural subversion has had its impact. In the Winter 1996 issue of the leftist intellectual journal Dissent, editor Michael Walzer listed some of the cultural “victories” won by the Left since the 1960s:
- “The visible impact of feminism.”
- “The effects of affirmative action.”
- “The emergence of gay rights politics, and … the attention paid to it by the media.”
- “The acceptance of cultural pluralism.”
- “The transformation of family life,” including “rising divorce rates, changing sexual mores, new household arrangements — and, again, the portrayal of all this in the media.”
- “The progress of secularization, the fading of religion in general and Christianity in particular from the public sphere — classrooms, textbooks, legal codes, holidays, and so on.”
- “The virtual abolition of capital punishment.”
- “The legalization of abortion.”
- “The first successes in the effort to regulate and limit the private ownership of guns.”
Chapter 2 — Conspiracy Fact, Not Theory
The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
— Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
The first job of conspiracy is to convince the world that conspiracy does not exist.
James P. Lucier, former Republican staff director for the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Most Americans have been exposed to wild conspiracy “theories.” They have heard media experts and academics ridicule such explanations as the product of minds looking for simplistic answers to complex problems. Thus, Americans have been programmed to reject such ideas out of hand. And we would be among the last to endorse the strawmen whose wild, poorly supportable “theories” periodically gain media attention.
Unfortunately, few Americans realize what the Establishment media never tells them: That the existence of a Conspiracy with a solid grip on America’s major institutions, including the Establishment media itself, is not a “theory” but a well documented fact and moreover that there are mountains of evidence to support that conclusion. The evidence has simply been consigned by the media to the collective memory hole.
That, in essence, is the communication challenge we face. And we hope to begin to correct that communication deficiency here. Reasonably, we have enough space only to sketch a piece of the story and introduce the reader to a portion of the evidence. For a more complete and credible presentation we refer readers to Organize for Victory! (see ad on back cover) and the extensive bibliography contained therein.
Just so we are clear on what we mean by Conspiracy, we start with a working definition: “A secret plot among more than one to accomplish a criminal or arguably evil purpose.” Three components: 1) secret; 2) more than one; 3) evil purpose. That’s it. Happens all the time. Note: The members of a conspiracy need not, and often do not, participate for the same reasons.
Since the inner operations of a conspiracy are intended to be secret, there must be much about its inner workings and power struggles that we do not know, even though we have been helped from time to time by revelations at the top. And here is a danger. Those who engage in wild speculation to fill in the gaps undermine responsible efforts to expose the Conspiracy, by handing the Conspiracy’s allies and apologists an opportunity to paint all opponents with the same stripe.
Also note that branding opponents of the Conspiracy as Conspiracy theorists actually serves the Conspiracy. For what busy American has the time today to get excited over something that is just a theory?
We have already suggested a motive for wealthy Insiders to conspire to destroy the middle class — their desire to reestablish their preeminence in a two-class system. Indeed, as Taylor Caldwell suggested, the middle class has been the target of wealthy elites ever since its rise during the Industrial Revolution.
In this chapter, we briefly describe the organization that makes the more modern campaign in America against the middle class particularly effective and dangerous. In the following chapter, we will then visit the strategies and tactics of this Conspiracy. But our immediate task is to provide some credibility for the Conspiracy’s existence and influence.
Establishment Witness Carroll Quigley
A prime example of a witness with Establishment credentials is the late Carroll Quigley. Quigley gained a reputation as a distinguished professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University. He mentored a bright young Bill Clinton who would later become president. Bill Clinton actually paid homage to Quigley in his televised speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1992.
Informed anti-Communists were amazed when they discovered confirmation for many of their claims in Professor Carroll Quigley’s monumental 1966 work Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.A portion of Tragedy and Hope describes the secret maneuvers of a network of international banking families striving to control the finances and affairs of governments. Buried in its 1,348 pages, Quigley provided this gem:
There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies … but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.
What are those aims to which Quigley refers?
[N]othing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in feudal fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret meetings and conferences…. Each central bank … sought to dominate its government by its ability to control treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.
The international network Quigley described has as its core a secret society established in 1891 by Cecil Rhodes, the South African diamond and gold mogul of Rhodes Scholarship fame. After Rhodes’ death in 1902, his successors carried on the conspiratorial activities and established semisecret “Round Table” groups in the chief British dependencies and the United States.
The Council on Foreign Relations
Each semisecret Round Table would then create a public front organization to expand its influence, built around itself as a nucleus. In England the public front was the Royal Institute of International Affairs. According to Quigley, “In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J.P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group.” These front organizations were able to draw into their scheme some of the most influential men and women from a wide variety of fields.
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., himself a member of the Establishment’s Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed Quigley’s assessment of the Council’s influence. The year prior to Quigley’s monumental publication, Dr. Schlesinger published A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House — his recollection of the years during which he had served as a special assistant to the president.
In A Thousand Days, Schlesinger wrote of “the New York financial and legal community — that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply … to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment…. [I]ts front organizations [were] the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs.”
As a “front organization” for the Establishment, one of the ongoing jobs of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has been to enlist, as members, selected men and women of significant or potentially significant influence. Council gatherings provide the internationalists with a convenient opportunity to rub shoulders with, size up, and influence these individuals.
The CFR membership roster has long functioned as a recruiting ground for important government positions (regardless of the party in office) and prestigious appointments. In its 2008 Annual Report, the Council boasted that 458 of its 4,338 members (10 percent) were employed in government. Indeed, following an all-too-familiar pattern, President Obama tapped the following CFR members for his administration:
Robert M. Gates as Secretary of Defense. Gates had been a trusted CFR member in government going back to the Reagan years.
New York Federal Reserve Bank president Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury.
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce. Under Clinton, Richardson served as ambassador to the UN and then Secretary of Energy. (Note: Richardson subsequently withdrew when facing questions about a donor.)
Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle as head of Health and Human Services and leader of a new White House Office of Health Reform. (Note: Daschle also withdrew his name from consideration after coming under fire over tax records.)
Lawrence H. Summers as director of the National Economic Council. Summers served for two years as President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary.
Paul A. Volcker to head up a new economic advisory board.
Susan E. Rice as U.S. ambassador to the UN. Rice served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during Clinton’s second term. She is a Rhodes Scholar, a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, and a Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution and accepted an invitation to join David Rockefeller’s exclusive Trilateral Commission — certainly a resumé for someone committed to the Insider agenda.
Karen Mills to head up the Small Business Administration.
Retired General Eric K. Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
And Arizona Governor Janet A. Napolitano to head up the Department of Homeland Security.
Over the years, the mere possibility of being invited to join this elite group would induce many aspiring ladder climbers to champion the Establishment agenda.
Most Americans are unaware of the powerful and interlocking networks of influence that exist, because they are not advertised. Florida State University Professor Thomas R. Dye has documented many of these relationships, based on public information, in his Who’s Running America? series. During the first half of the 20th Century, congressional investigating committees found reason to dig out some of this information. One of the earliest was the Pujo Committee of the House, which found evidence that there was a conspiracy it termed the “Money Trust.”
Influence of J. Pierpont Morgan
In Men of Wealth, author John T. Flynn refers to the Pujo Committee investigation while examining the influence and empire of J.P. Morgan (recall that Quigley wrote that the Council on Foreign Relations was established as “a front for J.P. Morgan and Company in association with the very small American Round Table Group”):
When the elder J.P. Morgan was alive the Pujo Committee of the House found that Morgan and his partners and the directors of his controlled trust companies and the First National and National City banks together, both Morgan financial provinces then, held:
118 directorships in 34 banks and trust companies with resources of $2,679,000,000.
30 directorships in 10 insurance companies having total assets of $2,293,000,000.
105 directorships in 32 transportation systems with a total capital of $11,784,000,000.
63 directorships in 24 producing and trading companies with total capitalization of $3,339,000,000.
25 directorships in 12 public utility corporations with capital of $2,150,000,000.
341 directorships in 112 corporations with aggregate resources or capitalization of $22,245,000,000.
These are the figures of Justice Brandeis and they are, as he observes, an understatement of the empire that Morgan built before he died.
One of the reasons Morgan was so successful was that he had learned to control both sides of negotiations. For example, Professor Carroll Quigley claimed: “To [J.P.] Morgan all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps.” Indeed, Quigley observed that one Morgan colleague allied with the Democrats, Morgan himself and other partners supported the Republicans, and still other Morgan associates had connections with the “extreme Right” and the Left.
In 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway offered a further assessment of the Morgan influence:
In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press…. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers…. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.
In order to ascribe an evil objective to this network it is only necessary to look at its track record and methods. Not only did the American and British branches of the cabal Quigley described have “no aversion to cooperating with the Communists,” they consistently worked to advance the world Communist revolution.
Such action by some of the world’s wealthiest capitalists may seem strange until one realizes that both groups are pursuing the same goal — unrestrained power. These very wealthy men are not “free market” capitalists, nor are the Communists genuine representatives of the “downtrodden proletariat.” In the previous century, these internationalist schemers worked privately to help the Communists and their socialist and even fascist brethren, while publicly denouncing them.
Both the panics of 1893 and 1907 were deliberately staged, primarily by the efforts of J.P. Morgan. According to historian Frederick Lewis Allen in the April 1949 issue of Life magazine:
[C]ertain chroniclers have arrived at the ingenious conclusion that the Morgan interests took advantage of the unsettled conditions during the Autumn of 1907 to precipitate the panic, guiding it shrewdly as it progressed so that it would kill off rival banks and consolidate the preeminence of the banks within the Morgan orbit.
Allen concludes: “The Lesson of the Panic of 1907 was clear, though not for some six years was it destined to be embodied in legislation: the United States gravely needed a central banking system….” [Note: As earlier advocated by Karl Marx.]
Colonel Edward Mandell House
One of the principal agents who helped bring the progressive income tax and the Federal Reserve about was “Colonel” Edward Mandell House. It would be difficult to identify anyone who had a more disastrous impact on U.S. policy during the first half of the 20th Century.
In Texas, House had developed a reputation as a political kingmaker, helping four governors get elected between 1892 and 1902. But he was only getting started. House relocated to New York City and placed his talent for intrigue and manipulation at the disposal of the New York international bankers.
The Intimate Papers Of Colonel House reveals that the “Colonel” was working hand in glove with certain Wall Street Insiders to promote the Federal Reserve Act by portraying it as a move towards “democracy.” And biographer George Viereck records that “The Schiffs [C.F.R.], the Warburgs [C.F.R.], the Kahns [C.F.R.], the Rockefellers [C.F.R.] , and the Morgans [C.F.R.] put their faith in House….”
In 1911, House had befriended New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson and helped him to the presidency the following year. House developed many of President Woodrow Wilson’s proposals, including Wilson’s famous 14 points, and wrote the first draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
House was one of the key players at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and a driving force for creating the League of Nations, which came out of the conference. When the U.S. Senate refused American entry into the League, House and his Insider co-conspirators regrouped and began laying the groundwork for a future successful attack on U.S. independence — the United Nations.
One of their first steps was to create the exclusive Council on Foreign Relations. The prestige of membership in the CFR was designed to provide the internationalists with the opportunity to indoctrinate America’s academic, media, business, political, and foreign policy elite in the necessity for their new world order.
Although House had no official position in government and insisted on staying out of the limelight, his influence would extend far beyond the Wilson years. Decades later his schemes would find significant success in the Roosevelt administration.
Even though House stayed in the background, he had revealed his political agenda in a boring novel he wrote shortly before Wilson became president. In Philip Dru: Administrator, House mapped out a subversive plan for socialist revolution in America.
Although the book was first published anonymously, House later admitted that he was its author and that the book represented his political and ethical philosophy. Through his fictional Philip Dru, House would express a desire for “Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx” with a “spiritual leavening.”
House privately insisted that the U.S. Constitution was seriously outmoded and had become a burden on efficient government. His fictional character Philip Dru would use a military coup to abolish America’s constitutional order and remake the mechanism of government.
Philip Dru would foretell the fastening on America of three measures extolled in Marx’s Communist Manifesto — the graduated income tax, an inheritance tax, and the Federal Reserve System (a central bank with a monopoly over the issuance of money and credit). All three came about during the Wilson administration.
In July 1937, Thomas W. Phelps, Washington Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, provided this assessment of House’s amazing impact on America:
As Congress puts the finishing touches on the legislative program for the first four years of the Roosevelt Administration, Col. E.M. House, confidant of President Roosevelt, emerges as the prophet, if not the real brain trust of the New Deal. Almost 25 years ago, House wrote of a revolution led by a young West Pointer, who triumphed in one brief but bloody battle; became a benevolent dictator and proceeded to reshape the American Government. In its large outlines, almost the entire revolutionary program has been put through or is in process of being realized under two Democratic Presidents who have served since House turned novelist for a few weeks.
Of particular importance, Dru provides insights into the tactics and revolutionary objectives of the Insider clique House represented, a clique that still dominates America’s political culture. In Philip Dru, House revealed himself as a master of deception and intrigue. Consider, for example, the Drucharacter of Senator Selwyn:
Not only did Selwyn plan to win the Presidency, but he also planned to bring under his control both the Senate and the Supreme Court. He selected one man in each of thirty of the States, some of them belonging to his party and some to the opposition, whom he intended to have run for the Senate.
If he succeeded in getting twenty of them elected, he counted on having a good majority of the Senate, because there were already thirty-eight Senators upon whom he could rely….
He did not intend that his Senators should all vote alike, speak alike, or act from apparently similar motives….
When they came from agricultural States, where the sentiment was known as “progressive,” they could cover their intentions in many ways. One method was by urging an amendment so radical that no honest progressive would consent to it, and then refusing to support the more moderate measure because it did not go far enough. Another was to inject some clause that was clearly unconstitutional, and insist upon its adoption, and refusing to vote for the bill without its insertion.
Selwyn had no intention of letting any one Senator know that he controlled any other senator. There were to be no caucuses, no conferences of his making, or anything that looked like an organization.
Westbrook Pegler, a columnist for the Los Angeles [Herald] Examiner, regarded Philip Dru as an important piece of evidence in establishing that conspiracy was responsible for America’s transformation toward collectivism. In 1954, Pegler wrote:
[E]ven today few citizens have heard of [Philip Dru] and hardly one in a million has read it. And, of course, the press will still ignore it diligently…. Practically all our historians and our teaching professors either know nothing about all this or refuse to teach this historical information to their students. One of the most important political documents of our age has been blacked out.
Chapter 3 — The Conspiracy’s Strategy and TacticsFor lack of real leadership, the public is generally unprepared for the deceptive strategies and tactics practiced by this Conspiracy. We will take a brief look at several of the manipulative techniques in common practice today.
Orchestrated “consensus.” Through their enormous influence, the Insiders often find it helpful to create an appearance of consensus. As a small example, on March 11, 2009 CNNPolitics.com reported:
Former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that overhauling the nation’s health care system should be easier now than when he tried in the early ’90s, despite the current financial doldrums. “I think that the consensus is overwhelming,” Clinton said in an interview … for CNN’s “Larry King Live.” [Emphasis added.]
Because the Insiders do not publicize their networks of influence, few Americans realize when a “consensus” has been orchestrated. Most will simply accept that the many apparently independentvoices reflect a sampling of expert convictions and therefore that the promoted opinions are the only reasonable ones.
Nationally televised panel discussions, particularly following “crises,” provide one opportunity for communicating such orchestrated “consensus.” Few viewers of these discussions will recognize, for example, that among those “invited” to participate three are members of the Council on Foreign Relations and two represent authoritative-sounding grass-roots organizations that have been funded by Establishment foundations.
Controlled opposition. On the other hand, in the face of major revolutionary initiatives, the Conspiracy long ago realized it could not silence all opposition. So the next best step is to control that opposition.
Where resistance is expected, the reliable (and age-old) tactic of clever revolutionary leaders is to field its own opposition (or to support weak opposition). This helps prevent the public from rallying behind any true leadership that might seriously threaten the Conspiracy’s programs.
The career of William F. Buckley Jr. provides an important example. As he launched his career, Buckley earned a reputation among conservatives as an extremely bright critic of the “liberal” Establishment. But Buckley soon made clear to the Insiders his desire to ascend into Establishment ranks (he would eventually earn, and eagerly accept, an invitation to join the Council on Foreign Relations). There is even strong evidence suggesting that the CIA helped finance his flagship magazine, National Review.
The Establishment responded by anointing Buckley as Mr. Conservative — the respectable opposition. In return Buckley betrayed conservatives at every turn (such as by supporting Nelson Rockefeller for Secretary of Defense), ridiculed genuine conservative leaders, and redefined conservatism to mean whatever Buckley said it meant.
As noted earlier, the practice of keeping a foot in the camp of all the political parties is not a new tactic. Indeed, the Insiders certainly control the Republican and Democratic parties at the national level. And they are able to confine the nominees of both parties to candidates the Insiders know will carry out their plans, including staffing key positions with acceptable internationalists. In this way, Americans can enjoy the illusion of making a real choice. (See “The Great American Swindle” atwww.freedomfirstsociety.orgunder “Articles (Conspiracy).”)
Also, the Insiders gain from being able to stage conflict over issues that do not threaten their agenda and by keeping the potential resistance of the American public preoccupied with meaningless contests (as with professional wrestling matches).
Patient gradualism. The Conspiracy primarily moves its programs ahead through patience, persistence, and pre-setting the dials. When one of its programs begins to generate tough resistance, it merely backs off and waits patiently for a better opportunity to try again, perhaps under a different label or as a “new and improved” proposal purporting to address earlier objections.
With superior organization and a wide range of trial programs the Conspiracy can afford to shuffle priorities. Patriots who are not organized to oppose the Conspiracy’s entire agenda cannot possibly maintain their vigilance. Any support for organized opposition generally disappears once the objectionable program no longer appears to be an active threat.
A good example would be the proposal for the misnamed Free Trade Area of the Americas, which was intended as a steppingstone to a regional government for the Western Hemisphere. The Insiders were following pretty much the same script that had worked so well for them in persuading the peoples of the nations of Europe to accept a gradual merger into the European Union. The European process started at the end of World War II and moved incrementally (salami slicing) while the true objective of these early steps (such as the Common Market) was denied. Decades later the process has gained an enormous foothold but is still not complete.
Revolution in response to “crisis.” Capitalizing on crises — real or imagined, engineered or unplanned — is a common tactic that revolutionaries have used to stampede people into accepting radical assumptions of power. Examples of such useful crises include war, terrorism, catastrophic manmade global warming, acts of “gun” violence, pandemics, and economic depression.
Revolutionaries know that when things are going well, the people cannot be driven to accept radical change or a revolution in political arrangements. That high-level planners understand that principle was brazenly demonstrated in a 1962 classified study commissioned for the Kennedy State Department entitled “A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations” (see www.freedomfirstsociety.org“Archives (Conspiracy)”). Incredibly, the study contemplated how the nations of the world could be enticed to give up their sovereignty and accept the authority of the United Nations as a world government.
The study’s author was Dr. Lincoln P. Bloomfield. Dr. Bloomfield had served as an adviser to various administrations, and just prior to the study he had served with the State Department’s disarmament staff. It is safe to say that he understood the thinking at State. As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he also held Establishment credentials. While writing the report, Dr. Bloomfield was director of the Arms Control Project at the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The study leads off with this summary:
A world effectively controlled by the United Nations is one in which “world government” would come about through the establishment of supranational institutions, characterized by mandatory universal membership and some ability to employ physical force. Effective control would thus entail a preponderance of political power in the hands of a supranational organization…. [T]he present UN Charter could theoretically be revised in order to erect such an organization equal to the task envisaged, thereby codifying a radical rearrangement of power in the world.
For several decades following World War II the greatest pretext for empowering the UN was the fear of a nuclear holocaust. But Bloomfield felt that world government would be impossible unless the Soviets were given a tamer image and then new threats would be needed to drive the process. He suggested one possibility: “a crisis, a war, or a brink-of-war situation so grave or commonly menacing that deeply-rooted attitudes and practices are sufficiently shaken to open the possibility of a revolution in world political arrangements.”
It is a sobering, but important thought to realize that the last thing true revolutionaries want is for their programs to alleviate the stress in society. The best way to move their revolution forward is to keep problems unresolved.
Revolutionary Parliamentarianism (a fancy name for the “pincers strategy”). This is a technique for driving change through a national legislature by applying “pressure from above and pressure from below.” Agents of the Conspiracy, using their influence with ostensibly independent grassroots organizations will stage protests and demonstrations demanding that the government take a particular revolutionary action. Other agents in government will introduce a measure claiming it is in response to popular demand. Their measure will be supported at the top by business leaders, think tanks, and scholars. The twin pressures are applied to other legislators making it difficult for them to say no.
A classic example of the successful use of this technique on a grand scale was the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia following the end of World War II — accomplished mainly through legal andconstitutionalmeans. Jan Kozak, official historian for the Czechoslovak Communist Party, documented this record in an internal Communist Party strategy paper clearly not intended for the public, but later published in the book And Not A Shot Is Fired.
As John Howland Snow explained in his introduction to the American edition, the Kozak document is a blueprint for how a “representative government can be made authoritarian, legally, piece by piece. The form remains, an empty shell…. And not a shot is fired.”
A more modern implementation of orchestrated pressure from below is the rise of so-called civil society. The Insiders have been working to give selected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) a greater voice at international conferences, even suggesting that the UN be restructured to give these “representatives” of civil society a real role in decision making. These NGOs ostensibly represent various diverse constituencies. But their independence, for the most part, is a sham. The most influential are merely puppets for the Insiders, providing the appearance of demand from below for Insider schemes.
Some truly independent NGOs have accepted an invitation to participate. Their influence is small, but their presence helps to give the whole charade an aura of legitimacy.
Indeed, the middle class today is being squeezed by a giant pincer movement with pressure from above (the Insiders calling the shots) and pressure from below (the agitating revolutionaries promoted by the Insiders).
Broader techniques. Some broader techniques are perhaps better classified as strategies — for example, steps taken to transform a nation’s attitudes and weaken its morale to resist. The culture war certainly falls in that category. Making expanding government enormously complicated through a giant array of new programs and organizations with overlapping and confusing responsibilities is another.
A classic example of the latter was spelled out in a 1974 article, “The Hard Road to World Order,” inForeign Affairs, the flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. The article’s author was Professor Richard Gardner of Columbia University, a future Trilateralist who, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, would help groom Jimmy Carter for the presidency. While admitting that world government was the goal of his fellow internationalists, author Richard Gardner endorsed the deception of the salami approach:
In short, the “house of world order” will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great “booming, buzzing, confusion,” to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.
Admiral Chester Ward also bore witness to this subversive internationalist agenda. Ward, who had served as Judge Advocate General for the U.S. Navy, was an example of the prominent individual who had been recruited into the CFR. However in 1975, after 16 years as a member, instead of supporting the CFR’s goals, Admiral Ward denounced the CFR for “promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government.”
Admiral Ward also explained how the CFR developed pressure on Congress and overcame public opposition:
Once the ruling members of CFR have decided that the U.S. government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition.
No representative wants to appear foolish opposing a policy that seems to have no credible opposition.
Misrepresentation of agenda. Americans are well aware, of course, that corrupt politicians often misrepresent their character. What is not so well understood is that prominent leaders regularly misrepresent the tune to which they are marching.
Political leaders would certainly never suggest that they want to exterminate the middle class. Instead, they portray themselves as great public servants and disguise their attack as motivated by altruistic objectives, such as saving the planet, preventing war and terrorism, obliterating hunger and poverty, or even helping to save the middle class!
As a classic example of misrepresentation, President Obama recently asked Vice President Joe Biden to lead a task force on the middle class. According to the Big Government-promoting former senator from Delaware: “Quite simply a strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other.”
Biden wasn’t the first big-spender to claim that he wanted to help the middle class. In his televised acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in 1992, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton promised to “change America,” fight for the “forgotten middle class,” and institute a “New Covenant.”
But in his first President’s Day address, President Clinton called for national sacrifice and for the middle class and the “wealthy” to shoulder new tax burdens to reduce the deficit and provide for new government “investment.” Two years later, Clinton resumed his “fight” for the middle class with a budget proposal, which included token tax relief in what the president termed a “Middle Class Bill of Rights.”
As another example of misrepresentation, we look at the “leadership” of Peter G. Peterson, a former Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration and subsequent CEO of Lehman Brothers. In 1985, Peterson was selected to succeed an aging David Rockefeller as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Needless to say, Peterson had become a trusted architect of international socialism.
In fact, in 1977 Peterson was invited to serve on the Socialist International’s Brandt Commission, formed to study world problems. The current Socialist International is the fifth attempt at organizing the world’s socialists (Karl Marx was the honorary secretary for the first Socialist International. The third was called the Communist International). As a demonstration of the Insider support for socialism, the Brandt Commission was formed on a recommendation from World Bank President Robert McNamara (CFR). In 1980, the Brandt Commission presented its recommendations — a blueprint for international socialism — to the CFR’s United Nations.
In 1993, we encounter a typical example of misrepresented images, reinforced by a cooperative media. While still Chairman of the Board of the CFR, Peterson sounded an alarm over America’s mounting debt in his book: Facing Up: How to Rescue the Economy From Crushing Debt and Restore the American Dream.
In Facing Up Peterson portrays himself as a fiscally conservative Republican who is also a “social moderate.” Peterson properly deplores the annual budget deficits and America’s borrowing binge. But for the most part his solution is greater taxation. On page 32, Peterson insists that: “Most Americans — emphatically including the middle class — will have to give something up, at least temporarily, to get back our American dream.” [Emphasis added.] But new taxes, such as Peterson’s recommended national retail sales tax or, alternatively, a value-added tax (VAT), are never temporary.
And President Obama, who has staffed his economic team with CFR members, is now proposing to plunge America into record-breaking debt, also ostensibly to rescue the American dream.
Concealment of connections. The Conspiracy’s success depends on keeping its networks of influence hidden from public view. When most Americans view television coverage of outrageous, violent demonstrations outside international conferences, they don’t realize that the protests are phony. They don’t realize that the protests have been designed to repel viewers into emotionally accepting the internationalist agenda and to provide internationalists with the pretext for broadening their power grab, supposedly to address all concerns.
When most Americans hear the same line from multiple sources and in multiple media (e.g., the alleged threat of manmade global warming) and accordingly accept it as fact, they do not suspect that they may be the victims of an orchestrated multi-media propaganda campaign.
When they hear politicians offer more government to solve crises, they don’t realize that the Conspiracy has invented or exploited these crises precisely to provide the emotional pretext for the people to give up their liberties and grant government revolutionary new powers.
And when their congressman speaks and votes like a fiscal conservative, they have no reason to suspect that he is using that platform to move up the political ladder from which positions he will betray them. The following episode provides unintended confirmation of one such counterfeit conservative.
At a televised program of the Council on Foreign Relations on February 15, 2002, then-Vice President Dick Cheney addressed an audience of CFR members on the subject of economics. He opened with these remarks:
Well, Les, Pete, I want to thank you all for the warm welcome today. I see a lot of old friends in the room. It’s good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. As Pete mentioned I’ve been a member for a long time and was actually a director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming. [This last remark drew a ripple of knowing laughter from the audience.]
Indeed, as a Wyoming congressman, Cheney initially compiled a sterling voting record, endearing him to conservatives. But more astute observers took notice of his new CFR membership and realized that Cheney’s earlier hard-line stance was designed merely to build a useful image.
Continuing. Most Americans relying on the “mainstream” media for information and opinion on national and world events also have no idea that they are the victims of managed news. For how can that be? They see a huge variety of news sources from magazines to radio stations to cable channels offering apparently both “mainstream” and “alternative” perspectives.
But most Americans fail to appreciate the common ownerships and Establishment influences that dominate major sources and even constrain their favorite “maverick” broadcaster. Nor do they appreciate that their independently owned local paper or TV station depends on Establishment-controlled sources for national and international news.
In summary, the Conspiracy’s attacks, such as the attack on our culture, have succeeded not because there aren’t plenty of Americans who hate evil and value goodness, but because too few Americans can see through the deceptions the Conspiracy uses.
Conversely, helping more Americans recognize the deceptions is the path to victory. The Conspiracy must be able to operate covertly to succeed.Which is why Robert Welch would insist: “All we must find and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding.”
Unbelievable?
A natural reaction to a presentation of conspiratorial tactics and influence is to wonder, “How can it be?” How can something so awful and widespread be happening without somebody blowing the whistle on the nightly news or in my local paper? We still live in a free country, at least up to a point. Why aren’t knowledgeable investigators and reporters screaming about this Conspiracy?
The answer is: Some are. But without a pipeline to large numbers of the population, without organization and a plan to enlist people to do something about it, the message and urgency are quickly lost among the press of other things. “Somebody else with time and influence should look into this” is the natural reaction of busy people. And because the Conspiracy is so vulnerable to exposure it takes great pains to ensure that no credible voice of opposition has the respect and attention of the public.
Today there are not enough experts speaking out, in part because of the corruption of the major media, which has historically ridiculed and harassed those who tried to raise an alarm, such as was done to Senator Joseph McCarthy. In fact, the repeated efforts of the media to demonize McCarthy serve as a warning to anyone not to question the agendas or allegiances of those in power.
Much resistance has also been undermined by a concerted campaign to dumb down the public and consign “inconvenient” history to the memory hole. And then there is just the weakening of character that reduces the number of principled people who, in positions to see part of what’s happening, are willing to speak out and jeopardize their reputations or jobs.
Chapter 4 — The SolutionI must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
— John Adams in a letter to his wife Abigail
Don’t Look for a Quick Fix
The first step toward a realistic solution is to recognize the problem clearly and accordingly realize what can’t work. If one accepts our analysis of the existence of a Conspiracy, its influence, objectives, and tactics, it should be apparent that the problem cannot be solved without exposing that Conspiracy to large numbers of Americans.
The normal methods for Americans to respond to national problems and have their voices heard in Washington just won’t work. An uninformed American public cannot merely register its preferences, say at election time, and expect major policies to be changed or the Conspiracy’s influence to be routed. Nor will supporting some political leader who says the right things and promises action get the expected results. The corruption is simply too deep, and the Conspiracy can easily overcome such shallow resistance.
That is why many Americans are so frustrated. They don’t like what they see happening, but they feel powerless to change it. And the politicians they support don’t seem to make a difference either.
Nor can the problem be solved by merely championing the repeal of damaging barnacles fastened upon us by the Conspiracy — such as the progressive income tax and the Federal Reserve. Although both must ultimately go, advocating their repeal with a couple of slogans is not a workable short cut to creating solid public understanding and an organization providing necessary leadership.
Even if sufficient pressure could be generated to expose these two shams, if the Conspiracy’s influence remains hidden and intact, it can easily beguile an otherwise uniformed public into accepting false alternatives (e.g., transferring the Federal Reserve’s functions to the Treasury Department).
So who is going to expose the Conspiracy to large numbers of Americans and provide the leadership to force our leaders to rout the corruption? No one man of influence can do it, because he must depend on the existing corrupted means of communication to carry his case to the American people. One man who tried was Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was threatening to uncover the top Insider influence, so his reputation was destroyed. And the Establishment media still heaps scorn on the “horrible McCarthy era” just to ensure that no other would-be leader is tempted to follow his course.
The Only Solution
Indeed, we argue, as did Robert Welch, that the only realistic solution is to inform, organize, and lead a core of patriotic Americans who have so much to lose. A solid organization of such active opinion molders can then provide an independent channel of communications and leadership to the public at large.
The American public still has the power to rout the Conspiracy; it just needs to be awoken, informed, and channeled by an organization tough enough not to be deterred by the inevitable smears. That organization must also be built on sound enough principles to stay on the right course and provide responsible leadership in the face of the many tempting traps the Conspiracy regularly sets for the unwary.
Pie in the sky? Not at all. A big task to be sure, but history has been changed for the better in the past by determined minorities. All that is needed is to build and organize a sizeable core of dedicated patriots under sound leadership. If evil men can regularly conspire to destroy the existing social order, determined good men, with God’s help, can operate in the light of day to stop them.
At least one such force in the last half of the previous century had threatened to derail the Conspiracy’s plans. This is the solution Robert Welch implemented. After lengthy study, he recognized that partisan politics, a monthly magazine with hard-hitting exposés, and even several excellent books and speaking tours could not by themselves successfully compete with the Conspiracy’s influence.
So what specifically do we insist that Americans reading this message need to do. The first thing is to inform themselves further about the problem and the solution (we recommend specifically readingOrganize for Victory! and consulting its bibliography). The next step is to join Freedom First Society and begin finding and informing other patriots who will make the same commitment.
Unfortunately, size matters. We are not going to change the critical voting habits in Congress, for example, until the climate of understanding is changed back in the districts. Emphasizing the importance of organizing more patriots, Robert Welch wrote in 1969: “Our objective, however, is victory, not martyrdom. And we are very realistic about the chances of a battalion armed only with rifles against a division equipped with field artillery.”
Mr. Welch also recognized that even though size was critical, only a small percentage of voters in any congressional district were needed to change the political climate in that district — if they were properly informed, committed and organized to follow sound leadership. When facing such a change in the political climate, their representative would either discover sufficient backbone to buck Insider propaganda campaigns and vote according to the Constitution or he would be replaced.
Experience in many districts demonstrated that Mr. Welch’s formula worked. But nationally, the building never reached what was needed to turn the tide. (An examination of the obstacles and how they can be overcome is also included in Organize for Victory!)
Many Americans who suddenly become alarmed over the threats to our nation and way of life find it difficult to consider a long-term solution. They demand a quick fix and are eager to listen to those who promise instant results.
A satisfactory answer to such demands requires more than pointing out why the quick fixes can’t save the ship, so to speak. It also requires explaining how much can be accomplished during the process of building a solid organization. The Conspiracy regularly takes programs off the front burner of its agenda when it encounters a growing resistance. This buys time for freedom while energizing those patriots who participated in the immediate victories.
The Conspiracy has achieved the progress and influence it has because of patience and determination and a willingness to plan and organize for long-term goals. The Conspiracy’s plans can be defeated by a core of patriots who display similar traits, often strengthened by religious conviction, and who are willing to invest in a serious plan to preserve freedom.
Long-term and Short-term Campaigns
Freedom First Society has adopted as its first major area of focus a long-term campaign to “Save the American Middle Class,” of which this booklet is a part.
Ultimately, for this campaign to be successful we must not only work to block new inroads that would weaken the middle class, but also go on the offensive to eliminate the many destructive programs the Conspiracy has already fastened on America, such as the progressive income tax and the Federal Reserve System. For as Napoleon wisely observed: “The purely defensive is doomed to defeat.”
Realistically, the only way to accomplish such an ambitious task is to grow large enough so we can give an energized segment of the middle class effective leadership to counter the influence of the Conspiracy. However, such long-term growth must be built on shorter-term campaigns (many of them defensive) that address immediate hot-topic issues.
These shorter, immediate-action campaigns serve to create and maintain excitement. When the campaigns also carry the larger message, which they must or they are merely tangents, they can build real understanding and so help to build the larger organization needed for more substantial victories. And they send an important signal that organized resistance is growing.
Non-member prospects and concerned citizens will be able to hook up with those concerted action campaigns by visiting our website, www.freedomfirstsociety.org.
An Opportunity to Make a Real Difference
Of course, you will not hear this message on the nightly news. But the absence of a well spoken anchor telling us what to think does not make the threat any less real. Nor will the threat go away if we should choose to ignore it — while we still can — or stay on the sidelines, until it is too late.
We are truly facing an epic educational battle — a battle to decide whether we and our posterity will continue to enjoy the fruits of freedom. And we are asking for your help.
Four-star Marine General Lewis W. Walt (1913-1989) served with distinction in three of our nation’s wars (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam) and received many decorations for valor in combat. After retiring from active duty, General Walt wrote: “For thirty-four years mine was a world of war and arms…. But I have learned as well as bled…. I have learned that wrong thinking, carelessness, greed, and apathy kill and maim, too.”
General Walt spoke out against the direction of our nation (for example, he insisted the U.S. should get out of the United Nations and quit financing our Communist enemies), and he argued that specific decisions and decision-makers were at fault. He also understood where responsibility must be found for a nation to remain free — in the people.
Indeed, he warned that pressure for desperately needed change would have to come from the actions of responsible Americans: “I think that the future of our country boils down to this simple proposition: either we as individual Americans will assume the responsibilities of citizenship or our nation, as the land of the free, will be destroyed.”
The stakes are huge. And we intend to win. But we can’t do it alone. Our hope for victory depends very much upon pulling other responsible men and women of character into this fight.
Freedom First Society offers the right patriots a unique opportunity to make a real difference in this struggle. Through our organization, any one member’s efforts can potentially ignite the kindling that leads to a major firestorm of activity and influence. So please consider this booklet also as an invitation to become a member of Freedom First Society.
• • •
Applications for membership can be requested by calling our headquarters toll free at (888) 347-7809. They are also posted on our website at www.freedomfirstsociety.org under the “Membership” tab.
For a more in-depth analysis of the problem and the solution, please read Organize for Victory! (see ad).
We also encourage readers to order additional copies of this booklet and share them widely. For ordering information and quantity discount pricing, please also see ad.
© Copyright 2009 by Freedom First Society
All Rights Reserved