The near panic associated with the possibility of Bernie Sanders, after winning the New Hampshire primary and doing so well in South Carolina and Nevada, overtaking Hillary Clinton and becoming the Democratic nominee for president, is treated by the establishment press as a gigantic move into socialism, but it shouldn’t. Seven years ago, Feb. 16, 2009, Newsweek’s cover story proclaimed “We Are All Socialists Now.”
Editors Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas wrote, “Whether we want to admit it or not, the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state,” toward socialism, they observed, “even before Barack Obama’s largest fiscal bill in our history.” The cover of the magazine featured a red hand (republican) shaking a blue hand (democrat) in favor of socialism. Both parties accepted the “growing role of government in the economy,” they observed. “The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries.” Moreover, “it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly.”
If the “growing role in government” was how Newsweek measured socialism, the Obama years thereafter were even more socialist than they could have expected. In this time period the federal government obtained a controlling interest in General Motors, absorbed 1/7th of the economy under Obamacare, and expanded the power of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to oversee most homes in America. This land expansion was in addition to their ownership of a third of all the landmass in the United States known as federal land. This does not count the controlling influence over all businesses by the eighty thousand new pages of bureaucratic rules and regulations descending upon businesses annually that effectively manage most everything else.
Clearly we were replacing our Constitutional Republic, which emphasizes limited government and individual freedom, with socialism long before Sanders became a household name. His appeal to tax the rich even more to pay for free college is but a deeper step into the socialism that already exists in the United States. Newsweek observed correctly then that this was just the beginning. In light of their honesty it might behoove us to understand where socialist might be taking us by noting where socialism has taken others.
In 1975 the book, “From Under the Ruble,” authored by a variety of Soviet dissidents, all but one of whom were still living in the USSR, was published in the West. The participants were fully aware that their commentary on the socialist system smuggled to the “Free World” would undoubtedly unleash the wrath of the Soviet Bear and result in imprisonment, torture, and possibly death for them. Nonetheless, they felt that the West could avoid the loss of freedom they experienced if only it were warned.
Igor Shafarevich, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and former Laureate of the Lenin Prize, attempted, in his chapter “Socialism in Our Past and Future,” to tell the West what socialism eventually worked out to be in practice. This is, of course, after any significant means of resistance had been removed by gun control. That is the first thing that goes in any tyrannical government. He found the economic definition of socialism, the meaningful governmental control of the means of production and distribution, shamefully incomplete.
Socialism resulted in complete control of private property. Property was defined as anything that existed including one’s own family and person. This included subordination of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy and state control of everyday life. Sexual promiscuity is first tolerated, even encourage, but ultimately procreation on a selective and supervised basis follows.
For the USSR socialism meant the destruction of the family as the basic institution of society and the rearing of children away from their parents in state schools or daycare centers. Marriage, as an acceptable practice, was also minimized.
One of the most defining characteristics of all profoundly socialist countries was the government’s extreme hatred of religion and their commitment to its ultimate destruction. It competes with the state as God.
The destruction of the hierarchy into which society has arranged itself was yet another characteristic under which Shafarevich lived. The idea of equality to a socialist had a special character. It meant the negation of the existence of any genuine differences between individuals: “equality” was turned into “equivalence.” Socialism aims to establish equality by the opposite means of destroying all the higher aspects of the personality.
Newsweek’s invitation to “think more clearly about how to use government in today’s world” should dissuade us from going there at all. Why would anyone want to embrace a system that ended all semblances of freedom and which, for them, self destructed in 1989? At least in the USSR, at that time, they would have been happy to trade their socialism for our freedom. Are we smart enough to listen to them and avoid all socialists in either party, of which there are several, this election?
1. Declaration of Independence: Your Right of Revolution
The Declaration of Independence: Your right of Revolution is a 23-minute video of the historical events leading to the necessity of revolution from Great Britain. It identifies “self-evident” truths that justify revolution. Five references to God, or a Supreme Being, as the author of these truths is made in the document. One defines the right of revolution as any time or place when such are not met. It began the philosophical revolution that climaxed thirteen years later with the Bill of Rights which added to the “self-evident” truths noted before. The Constitution cannot be fully understood separate from The Declaration of Independence. It is the first of 17 presentations collectively called “I Want to Be Free.”
Formally we have identified what is the “real” establishment. It has nothing to do with longevity in elected office, as portrayed by the establishment media, and everything to do with Wall Street connections. It is rooted in the international banking fraternity, powerful multinational corporations and media elites. Those who have been bold enough to identify it publically fear to be more specific preferring to use generic names, the eastern establishment, money trust, and Washington cartel. Their most visible and largest organization is the 97-year old Council on Foreign Relations. These people have power.
President Woodrow Wilson in his book, The New Freedom (1913), wrote of his experience with this hidden force. He wrote: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
A subject of great student interest in my classes has been Special Interest Politics. Over the years the voices identifying this hidden power have been many. Perhaps the most prominent of these emanated from presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul.
Probably the most descriptive voice came from Hillary Clinton while Secretary of State. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, then dedicating a branch CFR sub-center in Washington D. C., she said. “I am delighted to be at these new headquarters. I have been often to the mother ship in New York City but it is good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council so this will mean that I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.” More recently she has addressed the CFR in New York City on January 19, 2015, and November 19, 2015.
Hillary is the only Democrat presidential candidate presently supported by the establishment. She has membership with other establishment organizations, in particular, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers. Indeed, there exists no person more establishment than she, yet when asked recently if she was a part of the establishment she answered; “I don’t know what the establishment means.” There exists no evidence that her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, is a part of the establishment.
Like Hillary, Jeb Bush was the crowned Republican candidate years before. We were to get the same two establishment approved presidential candidates as offered in every election for most of 100 years. Both political parties belong to the establishment. We were to elect one of their guys as before and believe that this was our choice. All other choices were to gradually be eliminated. The establishment press covers no other political party, of which there always exist at least 20 in every presidential election. It was as simple as that except that the Democrats do not want Hillary Clinton and the Republicans do not want another Bush. Over $100 million dollars was used up to entice us to him, to no avail. Jeb appeared to the CFR again January 19, 2016 but could not get additional traction.
The establishment left Bush in early November favoring a new candidate Marco Rubio now pouring millions into his coffers. Rubio had spoken at CFR headquarters May 13, 2015. This explains why two previous friends turned on each other so viciously in December. Bush did not like being replaced as “heir apparent” and Marco had to attempt to destroy his former friend to take his place. Still, Marco Rubio was not rising fast enough to stop the two candidates most hated by the establishment, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Governors Chris Christy and John Kasich also know that the first election in this country is always the establishments. They each made their bid to, “the mother ship” as Hillary called it, Christy November 24, 2015 and Kasich December 9, 2015. I might add that no one speaks at CFR meetings unless favored and invited. When asked if he were a part of the establishment, John Kasich answered, “I can get along with the establishment but I am not part of it.”
For the Republican presidential candidates still in the race only Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump are establishment clean. Ben Carson they can ease out by giving minimal coverage. Ted Cruz is by far the most hated. He recently called the CFR “a pit of vipers” and a “pernicious nest of snakes.” Long time CFR member Rudy Giuliani probably best expressed how the establishment feels about both. Ted Cruz is “Too ridged, too right wing, not tarred by the long connection with the Republican Party.” His favorites in order were Christy, Bush and Rubio. But “Donald’s been a friend for 25 years.”
Therein lies the situation. If no establishment candidate can get traction they could hold their nose and settle on Trump because he is not “too ridged,” meaning constitutional, “he has been a friend,” and he could be expected to negotiate with them. But there is no way that they are going to let Cruz near “THEIR” White House. Yet this is the best chance in my lifetime, perhaps ever, to remove the “pit of vipers” and return truly free elections to this country.
As Presidents Day and presidential primaries are upon us one might ponder whom would President George Washington support in the 2016 presidential election? The answer is found in his famous Farewell Address given Sept. 19, 1796, just prior to his leaving the presidency. In his usual stately manner as the father of this great nation he warned posterity of possible pitfalls that could undermine or destroy this great experiment in liberty. His warnings may well be timelier 218 years later as we near his birthday February 22.
In strong terms he asked that we avoid debt. He said: “As a very important source of strength and security cherish public credit… use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasion of expense… [Use the] time of peace, to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
Today our national debt exceeds $19 trillion—the highest in our history–$9 trillion of which from the Obama Administration alone in seven years. Debt resolvement is the most serious issue of our country today, akin to national survival. Obviously neither party has taken Washington’s advice. Presently the debt per taxpayer is $158,902. We are spending our way into oblivion (See USDebtClock.org). This issue has not been vented in any of the presidential debates thus far. Rand Paul (now withdrawn from the race) sponsored a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, a necessary step in curbing runaway debt. Ted Cruz cosponsored it. Basically Democrats do not consider this a problem and most Republican candidates give but lip service to it.
Washington plead with the nation to keep religion and morality strong. He said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” The Founding Fathers never supported the notion of separation of religion and government—only the separation of an organization of religion from government. Basically both parties work for removal of religion from government but Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee (now withdrawn from the race) and Marco Rubio did work for the evangelical vote in Iowa.
Our first president also had advice with respect to how we should deal with foreign nations. He advised that our commercial policy “should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences…diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing.” This is a far cry from the bullying tactics we’ve too often employed the last 118 years. Today we have troops in over 32 nations deployed in over 900 bases.
But the warning about foreign aid was especially good. Washington basically told us that gift giving in foreign affairs is a good way to be universally hated. He said it placed us “in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more.” Today there is hardly a nation in the world that does not have its hand out and when, after once giving, the amount is reduce or terminated we are hated all the more for it. Paul would fade it.
Washington warned against the origin of “combinations and associations” whose intent was to suppress the desires of the majority in favor of the minority. He called them artificial power factions. We call them special interest groups. What would he say upon learning that a third of the cabinet of every president since Herbert Hoover belonged to the semi-secret Council on Foreign Relations as does either the President or Vice President of every administration including Barack Obama’s? No candidate dares speak out against this organization by name, Ted Cruz gets closest, “the Washington Cartel.”
Such factions, he said, “May answer popular ends and become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government….” The antidote for this, Washington explained, was “to resist with care the spirit of innovation” upon basic constitutional principles or premises no matter how flowery, appealing or “specious the pretext.” President Barack Obama is the best example that we have had of “specious the pretext” and Donald Trump the second.
Washington worried about posterity not holding their elected officials strictly to the limits imposed by the Constitution. He knew many would seek to undermine that document by twisting it to give power they could not acquire without the distortion. Sound familiar? He said: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” Today much of what the federal government does is not even mentioned in the Constitution. Ted Cruz is the “Washington Cartel’s” most hated presidential candidate because he is constitutionally based.
But freedom fighters are not likely to be popular, Washington continues: “Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.” One need not look far for the tools and dupes, they seem to characterize most of the presidential candidates from both parties. Are you voting for one of them or for a real constitutionalist.
Americans feel deceived and betrayed by the establishment in virtually every election. Thus far the establishment is toxic in the 2016 presidential election. In the Iowa Caucus non-establishment Republican candidates garnered a total of 68% (Caucus victor Ted Cruz 28%, Donald Trump 24%, and Ben Carson 9%, Rand Paul 5% and Carli Fiorina 2%). Democrats are flocking to Bernie Sanders 50% from long-term establishment candidate Hillary Clinton with whom he shared a tie in Iowa.
The more secret establishment is the moneyed elite capable of bringing to candidates the millions of dollars that are needed to win. They are in both political parties and they own the major media outlets. Thus their influence over presidential candidates for over a hundred years is never really covered, but all candidates know of their influence and power. No candidate for president gets to office without their approval.
All presidents from Herbert Hoover on have either been members of, or had a close relationship with, the Council on Foreign Relations (hereafter referred to as CFR) in New York City. This is the semi-secret establishment. When a president is not a member himself, his vice president is. Today Barack Obama, although supported by the CFR isn’t on their published membership list, but Joe Biden is. Since the late 1920’s virtually all of our secretaries of state, United Nations ambassadors, and ambassadors to Russia and China have been members of this Wall Street special interest group. Moreover, CFR members largely fill the majority of presidential cabinets.
No special interest group has had more impact than the CFR over foreign policy the last 100 years, leading many to question if we have but one political party in the United States with two arms. Indeed, until the last couple of years many saw no significant difference in foreign policy between George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Nor was there between George Bush and Bill Clinton. CFR supported Barack Obama, probably the most anti-war candidate in a couple of decades, and so condemnatory of his predecessor in this area, as president not only continued the Bush wars but added Libya and central Africa to the list while sponsoring drone killings (acts of war) in Pakistan, Syria, and Somali. Outside his obvious fondness for the Islamic religion and failure to protect America from radical Islamic terrorism—even refusing to call it the enemy—history will view him as having been primarily pro-war.
This is why there is so little difference in foreign policy between Democrat and Republican presidents. They get their advisers from the same Wall Street special interest group. They all support extensive foreign aid, policing the world with over 900 military bases in other lands, and continual wars without declaration or pre-established end. They all support international trade agreements that enhance the power of the United Nations and export jobs formerly held by Americans. On domestic policy they all supported the bank bailouts and their management of the money supply through the bankers private Federal Reserve Bank. None talk about returning a third of the United States (sometimes called government land) to the states from which it was taken. None problem solve with the Constitution as first consideration. Nor do they talk about limited government. They all support problem solving on the federal or international level rather than the state level.
Notable political scientist Lester Milbraith observed in his work Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, p. 247, that “the influence of the CFR throughout government is so pervasive that it is difficult to distinguish the CFR from government programs.” Prominent political scientist Thomas R. Dye in his textbook Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration, p. 188, wrote, “The history of CFR policy accomplishments is dazzling” then traced in detail their dominating role in foreign policy accomplishment from the 1920’s through the George Bush Administration from their own boasts of success in Council on Foreign Relations Annual Reports.
What is wrong with this mostly “secret society?” In 1954, The Reece Congressional Committee noted that its productions “are not objective but are directed overwhelmingly at promoting the globalism concept.” How powerful was it by the time Congress first discovered its influence? It had come, they wrote, “to be in essence an agency of the United States government, no doubt carrying its internationalist bias with it” (Pp. 176-177).
Politics appears to be divided between two warring ideologies liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, but because of the same-shared source of direction and pool of advisers, it is hard to believe that at the top we are really divided at all. Presidents have far more commonality and bipartisanship than has been portrayed in the establishment’s own media.
Again, the principle organization of the moneyed establishment, the CFR, is deeply embedded in both political parties and they own the major media outlets, which denies coverage to competing political parties and elevates “their” sympathetic candidates through the nominating process of each party. Americans then get to choose which of their two approved candidates they prefer. It may be the greatest show in America. We call it a free election but the options they manage. For a hundred years no candidate for president obtained office without CFR approval. For the moment their power seems to be rejected—for the moment.
There exists some confusion as to what is the establishment, more so in the 2016 election than at any time before. Republican presidential contenders are divided into two groups, those who are said to be a part of the establishment and those who are not. For the general Republican population the distinction is simple. They keep electing more Republicans to undo the blunders of primarily the Barack Obama administration but nothing changes. They had a long list of things that should have been corrected as Republicans retook, first the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate, but weren’t.
The Republican base felt betrayed and career politicians, justly blamed, became toxic to voters. This is why Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee, all past or present governors, have not been able to get traction despite vastly outspending those not considered the establishment. They are viewed as the problem.
Immediately outsiders, those said not to be the establishment, skyrocketed in the polls, notably Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, each a Tea Party sponsored first term U.S. Senator, did not escape the blame game. Only one of these, Ted Cruz, was able to survive and rise because the establishment hated him even more than Trump and he was seen by the Republican base as having stayed loyal to his campaign promises. Rubio was seen as having sold his soul to the establishment and Democrats on immigration as a member of the so-called “gang of eight” and thereafter could not be trusted. Polls soon showed Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, collectively holding almost 60% of the expected voters, as they were seen as the most believable and likely to make the changes demanded by the Republican base. Carson and Carly Fiorina (also an outsider) began to fade.
But longevity in public office is not the real definition of the establishment and scholars, and those well connected politically, understand this very well. The establishment is content to let the definition as described above remain in place as it deflects the angry population from them as being most responsible for selecting our presidents.
The real establishment is the moneyed elite capable of bringing to candidates the millions of dollars that are needed to win. They are in both political parties and they own the major media outlets. This is where the term “establishment media” originates. They only cover two of the more than 20 political parties in existence in any presidential election, many of which offer presidential candidates. Informed voters must get the names of other party candidates from the Federal Election Commission directly. In every presidential election I provide this list to my students and will do so this November for my column readers. The establishment picks winners and losers long before public exposure and guide them through the election process to victory by the money and exposure they allocate.
They have been the most powerful force in elections since Mark Hanna financed William McKinley for president 120 years ago. Payback for them is their ability to guide the nation as they see the need, immunity from any negative influences on their financial empires, and market favoritism should they need it. Benefits include being well connected and the largely secret power that they hold over the government and their crowned candidate.
The crowned Democratic candidate is Hillary Clinton and has been since 2008. For the Republicans it has been Jeb Bush for the last three years. Millions went into his coffers. Both the establishment and Bush were shocked when Trump entered the race and Bush could not ignite a movement for the reasons cited above. He spent millions to change this. Nobody in recent presidential elections has spent the kind of money this early as he. Nobody is more establishment than Bush and Clinton.
By early November the moneyed establishment abandoned Bush and coroneted Marco Rubio. He too flooded the airways with millions in attack ads to raise his poll numbers and has, thus far, placed himself in third position. Still, Trump dwarfs his numbers and the establishment knew that they had to destroy Trump. Virtually everything was tried and failed. They conceded that, barring a major misstep by Trump, one of two men Trump or Cruz (neither owned by them), was going to be the next president.
The establishment hates Trump but they despise Cruz. But there is a big difference Trump, although formerly not a team player for them, and a bit of a rogue, could be counted on to make deals to get things done, Cruz could not. For the first time in a century they would have to work with someone not fully in their camp. But Trump is of the wealthy class so some of their goals he could be counted on to support.
By mid January 2016, Trump was publicly noting that the establishment was beginning to like him. They had to have loved his unmerciful attacks on Cruz prior to the Iowa primary. The former friendship between the two collapsed overnight. Cruz noticed the new alliance and began speaking of it as well.
I suppose that either definition of the establishment has its place but the general one will be short termed. Unless more voters pay attention to the moneyed establishment, and it is curbed in its power to control elections, it will be doing so again within eight years.
