Saturday, November 30, 2002 10:50:12 AM
The Grand Deception - Part One
A Second Look at the War on Terrorism
© 2002 by G. Edward Griffin
http://www.freedom-force.org/granddeception.htm
Ladies and Gentlemen, the title of my presentation today is The Grand Deception - A Second Look at the War on Terrorism.
I was flattered to hear in my introduction that I have a reputation for taking complex subjects and making them easy to understand. I hope I can live up to that expectation, but I couldn’t help wondering if I can really do that with this topic: The War on Terrorism. How can you make that easy to understand? It’s such a huge and confusing topic. I feel like the proverbial mosquito in a nudist camp. I know what I have to do. I just don’t know where to begin.
There is a formula I often follow when I don’t know where to begin, and that is to start with history. If you discover the history, you should be able to figure it out as you go along. It was Will Durant who said, "Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it."
Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of history in the war on terrorism? If we continue to follow the path we are now taking, I’m afraid that we are. But to find out whether we are repeating the mistakes of history, we need to go back in time. So, I invite you to join me in my time machine. We are going to splash around in history for a while and look at some great events and huge mistakes to see if there are parallels, any lessons to be learned for today. I must warn you that it will seem we are lost in time. We are going to go here and there, and then jump back further, and then forward in time, and we will be examining issues that may make you wonder "What on earth has this to do with today." But I can assure you, when we reach the end of our journey, you will see that everything we cover has a direct relevance to today and, in particular, to the war on terrorism.
THE HIDDEN AGENDA OF TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS
Lets start our time machine. We turn the dial to the year 1954 and, suddenly, we find ourselves in the plush offices of the Ford Foundation in New York. We see two men seated at a large, Mahogany desk, and they are talking. They cannot see or hear us. These men are Roland Gaither, who was the President of the Ford Foundation at that time, and Mr. Norman Dodd. Mr. Dodd was the newly appointed chief investigator of what was called the Congressional Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations. The Ford Foundation was one of them, so he was there as part of his Congressional responsibilities.
It was about 1972 that I happened to meet Mr. Dodd in Virginia. I had a television crew with me, because we were producing a documentary film and had some open time. I called Mr. Dodd and asked if he would be willing to make a statement before our cameras, and he said, "Of course." I’m glad we obtained the interview, because he was advanced in years, and it wasn’t long afterward that he passed away. We were very fortunate to capture his story in his own words. (For those who are interested in viewing his complete testimony on video, it is available from The Reality Zone, www.realityzone,com. It’s called "The Hidden Agenda" and is available in both video and audio formats. The printed transcript can be downloaded free of charge at www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html.)
So, back to our time machine. The year is 1954, and we hear Mr. Gaither say to Mr. Dodd, "Would you be interested in knowing what we do here at the Ford Foundation?" And, of course, Mr. Dodd says, "Yes! That’s exactly why I’m here. I would be very interested, sir." Then, without any prodding at all, Gaither says, "Mr. Dodd, we operate in response to directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."
Dodd almost falls off of his chair when he hears that. Then he says to Gaither, "Well, sir, you can do anything you please with your grant making powers, but don’t you think you have an obligation to make a disclosure to the American people? You enjoy tax exemption, which is an indirect way of saying you are subsidized by the taxpayer, so, why don’t you tell the Congress and the American people what you just told me?" And Gaither replies, "We would never dream of doing such a thing."
A STRATEGY TO CONTROL THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
There is much more to be learned from this conversation, but our time is limited, so let’s move on. The question that logically arises is, "How would it be possible for people in these prestigious organizations to even dream that they could alter life in the United States so it could be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union?" What an absurd thought that would be! The answer, however, is not absurd at all. To bring this about, all that needs to be done is to alter the attitude of the American people to accept such a move. How could that be done?
The answer to this second question was provided by another powerful and prestigious tax-exempt foundation, the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace. When Dodd visited the President of that organization and began asking about their activities, the President said, "Mr. Dodd, you have a lot of questions. It would be very tedious and time consuming for us to answer those questions, so I have a counter proposal. Why don’t you send a member of your staff to our facilities, and we will open our minute books from the very first meeting of the Carnegie Fund, and your staff can go through them and copy whatever you find there. Then you will know everything we are doing."
Again, Mr. Dodd was totally amazed. He observed that the President was a young man at the Carnegie Fund and assumed he had never actually read the minutes himself. So he accepted without hesitation and sent a member of his staff to the Carnegie Endowment facilities. Her name was Mrs. Catherine Casey who was, by the way, hostile to the activity of the Congressional Committee. She was placed on the staff by political opponents of the Committee to be a watchdog and a damper on the operation. Her attitude was: "What could possibly be wrong with tax-exempt foundations? They do so much good." So that was the view of Mrs. Casey when she went to the boardroom of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. She took her Dictaphone machine (they used magnetic belts in those days) and recorded, word for word, many of the key passages from the minutes of this organization starting with the very first meeting. What she found in those minutes was so shocking, Mr. Dodd said she almost lost her mind, and she became very ineffective in her work after that.
Basically, this is what those minutes revealed: From the very beginning, the members of the board discussed how to alter life in the United States, how to change the attitudes of Americans to give up their cherished principles and concepts of government and be more receptive to what we will call the collectivist model of society. I will talk more about what the word collectivist means in a moment, but they used that word quite often. And they discussed this in a very scholarly fashion. After many months of deliberation, they came to the conclusion that, out all of the options available for altering the attitudes of people in the United States, there was only one that was really dependable. That option was war. In times of war, they reasoned, only then would people be willing to give up things they cherish in return for the desperate need and desire for security against a deadly enemy. And so the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace declared in its minutes that it must do whatever it can to manipulate the United States into war.
They also said there were other things needed, and these were their words: "We must control education in the United States." They realized that was a pretty big order, so they teamed up with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation to pool their financial resources to control education in America - in particular, to control the teaching of history. They assigned those areas of responsibility that involved issues relating to domestic affairs to the Rockefeller Foundation, and those issues related to international affairs were taken on as the responsibility of the Carnegie Endowment. Their first goal was to rewrite the history books, and they discussed how to do that at great length. They approached some of the more prominent historians of the time and presented to them the proposition that they rewrite history to favor the concept of collectivism, but they were turned down flat. Then they decided - and these are their own words, "We must create our own stable of historians."
They selected twenty candidates at the university level who were seeking doctorates in American History. Then they went to the Guggenheim Foundation and said, "If we provide the money, would you grant fellowships to candidates selected by us, who are of the right frame of mind, those who see the value of collectivism as we do? Would you grant them doctorates so we can then propel them into positions of prominence and leadership in the academic world and in professional historical associations?" And the answer was "Yes."
So they gathered a list of young men who were seeking their doctorate degrees. They interviewed them, analyzed their thinking processes, and chose the twenty they thought were best suited for their purpose. They sent them to London for a briefing. (In a moment I will explain why London is so significant.) At this meeting, they were told what would be expected if and when they win the doctorates they were seeking. They were told they would have to view history, write history, and teach history from the perspective that collectivism was a positive force in the world and was the wave of the future.
Now lets go back to the words of Mr. Dodd, himself. He said: "This group of twenty historians eventually formed the nucleus of the American Historical Association. Then toward the end of the 1920’s the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association $400,000 [a huge amount of money in those days] for a study of history in a manner that points to what this country can look forward to in the future. That culminates in a seven-volume study, the last volume of which is a summary of the contents of the other six. And the essence of the last volume is, the future of this country belongs to collectivism, administered with characteristic American efficiency."
COLLECTIVISM VS INDIVIDUALISM
Now we must turn off our time machine for a moment and deal with this word collectivism. You are going to hear it a lot. Especially if you delve into the historical papers of the individuals and groups we are discussing, you will find them using the word over and over. Although most people have only a vague concept of what collectivism is, the advocates of collectivism have a very definite understanding of it, so let’s deal with that now.
In order to appreciate the essence of collectivism, we need to step backward and look at the larger picture encompassing the political ideologies that divide people in this age. You find those who claim they are conservatives, and they will debate wildly with those who think of themselves as liberals. Left wingers disagree with right wingers. You find people who say they are Socialists or Communists or Fascists or whatever words they choose to identify their point of view. But, when you ask them to explain what those words mean, very few can agree. For the most part, they are merely labels without clear or precise definitions.
Let’s put some meaning to them. I think that all of the great political issues, the ideological issues at least, can be divided into two viewpoints. All of the rest is fluff. Basically, a person is either a collectivist or an individualist. We are talking about collectivism vs. individualism. What do these words mean?
First of all I should tell you that, from my observation, collectivists and individualist, for the most part, are all good people. They want the best life possible for their families, for their countrymen, and for the world - for mankind. They all want peace, prosperity, and justice. They want freedom. Sometime they disagree over what the tradeoff should be for freedom; but, still, they all want the good things for their fellow man. Where they disagree is how to bring those things about.
THE DANGER OF GROUP SUPREMACY
The collectivist believes the group is the most important element of society; that all solutions to problems are better solved at the group level than at the individual level; and that, the larger the problem is, the larger the group should be to solve the problem. And so they believe in collective action. They believe in organizing group activities to provide for all of the advantages they want people to have. They want to protect people. They want to make sure they don’t suffer, that they are well clothed and fed, and that they are treated justly. The solution to all of these problems is a collective solution. "We shall do it through group action." The more complex the problem, the larger the group should be, until finally the most complex problems of all can be solved only by the largest groups of all.
The collectivist sees government as the solution, because government is the ultimate group, and so the collectivist mind can be easily recognized. It always has an affinity to government as the solver of problems. The individualist, by the way, is more skeptical. He tends to look at government as the creator of problems. But that’s another issue. We will get to the individualist in a moment. The collectivist sees government as the solver of problems; and, of course, the larger the unit of government, the better. Collectivist solutions gravitate from local government to state government to national government and finally to world government. If there is a really big problem, such as the environmental issue involving the whole planet, the collectivist is convinced that it cannot be solved except through the action of world government.
The collectivist believes that the group is more important than the individual and, if necessary, the individual must be sacrificed for the group. Sometimes that is expressed in terms of "the greater good for the greater number." It’s a very appealing concept.
The individualist on the other hand says, "Wait a minute. Group? What is group? That’s just a word. You cannot touch a group. You cannot see a group. All you can touch and see are individuals. They make up the group. But the real substance of the group is the individual within it. It’s like a forest. Forest doesn’t exist. It’s a word concept. There are only trees." So the individualist sees that, if you sacrifice the individual for the group, you have made a huge mistake. The individual is the essence of the group. He is the core of the group. The group has no claim to sacrifice its own essence.
Collectivists are often critics of religious and family values, because collectivism demands unquestioning obedience to the state. Since loyalty to family or religious codes often conflict with the concept of group supremacy, they cannot be tolerated in a collectivist system.
THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Collectivists and individualists both agree that human rights are important, but they differ drastically over what is the origin of those rights. There are only two possibilities in this debate. Either man’s rights are intrinsic to his being, or they are extrinsic; either he possesses them at birth or they are given to him afterward. In other words, they are either hardware or software. Individualists believe they are hardware. Collectivists believe they are software.
The view of individualism was expressed clearly in the United States Declaration of Independence, which said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men." Nothing could be more clear than that. "Unalienable Rights" means they are the natural possession of each of us upon birth, not granted by the state. The purpose of government is, not to grant rights, but to secure them and protect them.
By contrast, all collectivist political systems embrace the view that rights are granted by the state. That includes the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. It is also a tenet of the United Nations. Article Four of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says: "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State … the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law."
The reason this is important is that, if we agree that the state has the power to grant rights, then we must also agree it has the power to take them away. You cannot have one without the other. Notice the wording of the UN Covenant. After proclaiming that rights are provided by the state, it then says that those rights may be subject to limitations "as are determined by law." In other words, the collectivists at the UN presume to grant us our rights and, when they are ready to take them away, all they have to do is pass a law authorizing it.
Compare that with the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. It says Congress shall pass no law restricting the rights of freedom of speech, or religion, peaceful assembly, the right to bear arms, and so forth - not except as determined by law, but no law. What a difference there is between individualism and collectivism.
REPUBLICS VS DEMOCRACIES
We are dealing here with one of the reasons people make a distinction between Republics and Democracies. We have been taught to believe that a Democracy is the ideal form of government. Supposedly, that is what was created by the American Constitution. However, if you read the documents of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, you find that they spoke very poorly of Democracy. They said in plain English that a Democracy was one of the worst possible forms of government. And so they created what they called a Republic. The bottom line is that the difference between a Democracy and a Republic is the difference between collectivism and individualism.
In a pure Democracy, the concept is that the majority shall rule. That’s the end of the discussion. You might say, "What’s wrong with that?" Well, there could be plenty wrong with that. What about a lynch mob? There is only one person with a dissenting vote, and he is the guy at the end of the rope.
Ah, wait a minute, you say. Maybe the majority should not always rule. How can we protect the individual from the group? Maybe the group could become dangerous. Perhaps we should put limits upon Democracy.
That is precisely what a Republic accomplishes. A Republic is simply a limited Democracy - a Democracy with limits on what the group can do, with limits on what the majority can do. Republics are characterized by written constitutions that say the government - even though it represents the majority - shall not do this; the government shall not do that; and it shall be prevented from doing that, also. We have individual liberties and rights that stand higher and are more important than the group. And so we begin to get a handle on the debate here, the issue, the cleavage between these two concepts: collectivism on the one hand, individualism on the other.
COERCION VS FREEDOM
We come now to the next element of this debate, which is how to bring about desirable group action. The collectivist says you have to force people. That’s why he has an affinity to government. Government is the embodiment of legalized force. You can always spot a collectivist because, when he confronts a problem, his first reaction is to say, "There ought to be a law." His attitude is that we must force people to do what we think they should do, because they are not as smart as we are - we collectivists. We’ve been to school. We’ve read books. We participate in discussion groups. We are smarter than most of those people out there. If we leave it up to them, they are going to make terrible mistakes. So, it is up to us. We are the privileged, fortunate ones. We are the ones who shall decide on behalf of society and we shall enforce our decisions by law so that no one has any choice. That we should rule in this fashion is our obligation to mankind.
By contrast, individualists say, "We also think we are right and others are wrong, but we don’t believe in forcing anyone to comply with our will because, if we grant that principle, then others, representing larger groups than our own, can compel us to act as they decree, and we will have lost our freedom.
The collectivist will say, "I think everyone should wear seatbelts. That just makes a lot of sense. People can be hurt if they don’t wear seatbelts. So, let’s pass a law and require everyone to wear them. If they don’t, we’ll put them in jail." The individualist says, "I think everyone should wear seatbelts. People can be hurt in automobile accidents if they don’t wear seat belts, but I don’t believe in forcing everyone to do so. I believe in convincing them with logic and persuasion, if I can, but I also believe in freedom-of-choice."
As an individualist, I am not opposed to collective action. Just because I believe in freedom of choice does not mean I have to move my piano alone. It just means that I renounce the right to compel someone to help me. Individualists seek cooperation based on voluntary action, not compulsion.
And so here we have a second distinction between the collectivist and the individualist. The collectivist believes in coercion. The individualist believes in freedom.
THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM
There is one more issue to cover before restarting out time machine, and it has to do with the political spectrum. We often hear about right-wingers versus left-wingers, but what do these terms really mean? For example, we are told that Communists and Socialists are at the extreme Left, and the Nazis and Fascists are on the extreme Right. Here we have two powerful ideological forces pitted against each other, and the impression is that, somehow, they are opposites. But, what is the difference? They are not opposites at all. They are the same. The insignias may be different, but when you analyze Communism and Nazism, they both embody the principles of Socialism. Communists make no bones about Socialism being their ideal, and the Nazi movement in Germany was actually called the National Socialist Party. Communists believe in international Socialism, whereas Nazis advocate national Socialism. Communists promote class hatred and class conflict to motivate the loyalty and blind obedience of their followers, whereas the Nazis use race conflict and race hatred to accomplish the same objective. Other than that, there is absolutely no difference between Communism and Nazism. They are both the epitome of collectivism, and yet we are told they are, supposedly, at opposite ends of the spectrum!
There’s only one thing that makes sense in constructing a political spectrum and that is to put zero government at one end of the line and 100% at the other. Now we have something we can comprehend. Those who believe in zero government are the anarchists, and those who believe in total government are the totalitarians. With that definition, we find that Communism and Nazism are together at the same end. They are both totalitarian concepts. Why? Because they are both based on the model of collectivism. Communism, Nazism, Fascism and Socialism all gravitate toward bigger and bigger government, because that is the logical extension of their common ideology. They cannot help becoming what they are. More government is needed to solve bigger problems, and bigger problems require more government. Once you get on the slippery slope of collectivism, once you accept that ideology, there is no place to stop until you reach all the way to the end of the scale, which is 100% government. Regardless of what name you give it, regardless of how you re-label it to make it seem new or different, collectivism is totalitarianism.
In truth, the straight-line concept of a political spectrum is somewhat misleading. It is really a circle. You can take that straight line with 100% government at one end and zero at the other, bend it around, and touch the ends at the top. Now it’s a circle because, under anarchy, where there is no government, you have absolute rule by those with the biggest fists and the most powerful weapons. So, you jump from zero government to totalitarianism in a flash. They meet at the top. We are really dealing with a circle, and the only logical place for us to be is somewhere in the middle. We need government, of course, but, the concept of what kind of government must be built on individualism, an ideology that pushes always toward that part of the spectrum that involves the least government necessary to make things work instead of collectivism, which always pushes toward the other end of the spectrum for the most amount of government to make things work.
JOHN RUSKIN PROMOTES COLLECTIVISM AT OXFORD
We are finally ready to reactivate out time machine. From the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we recall the curious words: "We must control education in America." Who is this "we? " Who are the people who are going to control education in America? To answer that question we must set the co-ordinates on our machine once again, and we are now moving further back in time to the year 1870. We find ourselves suddenly in England in an elegant classroom of Oxford University, and we are listing to a lecture by a brilliant intellectual, John Ruskin.
Ruskin was a Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. He was a genius. At first I was prepared not to like him, because he was a total collectivist. I didn’t think I would like anything about him. But, when I got his books and started to read the notes from his lectures, I had to acknowledge his great talent. First of all he was an accomplished artist. He was an architect. He was a philosopher. About his only flaw was that he believed in collectivism. He preached it eloquently, and his students, coming from the wealthy class - the elite and the privileged from the finest areas of London - were very receptive to his message. He taught that those who had inherited the rich culture and the traditions of the British Empire had an obligation to rule the world and make sure that all the less fortunate and stupid people had proper direction. That was basically his message, but it was delivered in a very convincing and appealing manner.
Ruskin was not the originator of collectivism. He was merely riding the crest of an ideological tidal wave that was sweeping through the whole Western World at that time. It was appealing to the sons and daughters of the super wealthy who were growing up with guilt complexes because they had so much wealth and privilege in stark contrast to the world’s poor and starving masses.
In this milieu there were two powerful ideological movements coming to birth. One of them was Marxism, which offered the promise of defending and elevating these downtrodden masses. Wealthy young people felt in their hearts that this promise was worthy and noble. They wanted to do something to help these people, but they didn’t want to give up their own privileges. I will say this about John Ruskin, he actually did give of his own wealth to help the poor, but he was one of the rare ones. Most collectivists are hesitant about giving their own money. They prefer to have government be the solver of problems and to use tax revenues - other people’s money - to fund their projects. Collectivists recognize that someone has to run this governmental machine, and it might as well be them, especially since they are so well educated and wise. In this way, they can retain both their privilege and their wealth. They can now be in control of society without guilt. They can talk about what they are doing to lift up the downtrodden masses using the collectivist model. It was for these reasons that many of the wealthy idealists became Marxists and sought positions of influence in government.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY
Some of the more erudite of those from the wealthy, intellectual classes of England came together and decided they would form an organization to perpetuate the concept of collectivism. It was called the Fabian Society. It is now 1884, and we find ourselves observing a group of these people, including Sydney and Beatrice Web (founders of the London School of Economics), George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Toynbee, H.G. Wells, and people of that high caliber. The Fabian Society exists today, and a lot of very prominent, influential, and powerful people are members. Tony Blair, for example, England’s Prime Minister, is a member.
H.G. Wells wrote a book to serve as a guide for Fabians and their friends showing how collectivism can be embedded into society without arousing alarm or serious opposition. It was called The Open Conspiracy, and the entire plan is spelled out in detail. He even said that the old religions of the world should give way to the new religion of collectivism. The new religion should be the state, he said, and the state should take charge of all human activity with, of course, elitists such as himself in control.
As mentioned previously, there were two powerful ideological movements coming to birth in this same period of history, and they had much in common. One of them was Marxism, which eventually was physically planted onto Russian soil and manifested itself as Communism. The other was Fabianism. Please note that Communism and Fabianism are merely variants of collecivism. Their similarities are much greater than their differences. That is why their participants often move from one group to the other with ease - or may even be members of both groups at the same time. Communists and Fabians are usually friendly with each other. They may disagree intensely over procedural issues, but never over goals, because their mutual goal is collectivism.
Fabians say, "Let us come to power quietly so as not to alarm anyone. Let us penetrate and capture control of the organs of society: the educational institutions, the media, the labor unions, agencies of government. Let us penetrate into the power centers of society and quietly guide it in the direction of collectivism. No one will realize what is happening, and there will be very little opposition or bloodshed." Fabians consider themselves to be humane. To emphasize this strategy of patient gradualism, they adopted the tortoise as their symbol, and the emblem on their shield is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Communists, on the other hand, are less genteel. They are adept at using all the same tactics of deception and quiet penetration into power centers as used by the Fabians, but they are more inclined to rely on violence and terror to accelerate their progress. They raise the clenched fist and say, "Let us come to power through revolution. Let us put masses into the streets and overthrow the target government by force and violence. Let the land be drenched with the blood of our enemies." Communists are in a hurry.
That is the debate. The only difference between Communists and Fabians is a question of tactics. They may compete over which of them will dominant the coming New World Order, over who will hold the highest positions in the pyramid of collectivist power; they may even send opposing armies into battle to establish territorial pre-eminence over portions of the globe, but they never quarrel over goals. Through it all, they are blood brothers under the skin, and they will always unite against their common enemy, which is any opposition to collectivism.
The Fabian tortoise and the wolf in sheep’s clothing are emblazoned on a stained glass window that used to be in the Web house. The Webs donated their home to the Fabian Society, and it is now the headquarters of that organization in Surrey, England. The window was recently removed, but there are many photographs of it showing the symbols in great detail. Perhaps the most significant part is written across the bottom. It is that famous line from Omar Khayyam: "Dear love, couldst thou and I with fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, would we not shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the hearts desire?" Please allow me to repeat that line. This is the key to modern history, and it is the key to the war on terrorism: "Dear love, couldst thou and I with fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, would we not shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the hearts desire?"
Elsewhere in the stained glass window there is a depiction of Sydney Webb and George Bernard Shaw striking the earth with hammers. The earth is on an anvil, and they are standing there striking the earth with hammers. "Shatter it to bits," That’s what they were saying at the Carnegie Endowment Fund. That’s what they were saying at the Ford Foundation. "War is the best way to remold society. War! Shatter society to bits. Break it apart. Then we can remold it nearer to the heart’s desire. And what is our heart’s desire? Collectivism."
THE SECRET SOCIETY CREATED BY CECIL RHODES
As we sit here in the classroom listening to the impassioned lecture by John Ruskin, we notice that one of the students is taking copious notes. His name is Cecil Rhodes. It will be revealed in later years that this young man was so impressed by Ruskin’s message that he often referred to those lecture notes over the next thirty years of his life. Rhodes became a dedicated collectivist and wanted to fulfill the dream and the promise of John Ruskin: to bring the British Empire into control over the entire world and to create world government based on the model of collectivism. Most people are aware that Rhodes made one of the world’s greatest fortunes in South African diamonds and gold. What is not widely known, however, is that he spent most of that fortune to promote the theories of John Ruskin.
One of the best authorities on the Fabian Society is Carroll Quigley, who wrote the book, Tragedy and Hope. Quigley was a highly respected professor at Georgetown University. You may recall that, shortly after President Clinton was elected, during a press conference he gave honorable mention to Quigley, his former professor. What Quigley was teaching was probably similar to what John Ruskin was teaching, and Clinton, as a student, took his lectures very seriously, even to the point of mentioning to the world how much he owed to his professor.
In his book Tragedy and Hope, Quigley says this: "The Rhodes scholarship established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes’ seventh will are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes, in five previous wills, left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. This secret society continues to exist to this day."
The structure of the secret society was formed along classical, conspiratorial lines. If you study any of the better-known conspiracies of history, you find that they often are structured as rings within rings. Generally there’s a leader or a small group of two or three people at the center. They form a ring of supporters around them of perhaps eight or ten or twelve, and those people think they are the total organization. They are not aware that two or three of them are in control. And then the twelve are instructed to create a larger ring around them of perhaps one- or two-hundred people who all think they are the total organization, not realizing there are twelve who are really directing it. These rings extend outward until, finally, they reach into the mainstream community where they enlist the services of innocent people who perform various tasks of the secret society without realizing who is creating the agenda or why.
The Rhodes organization was set up exactly along those lines. Quigley tells us this: "In the secret society, Rhodes was to be leader. Stead, Brett, and Milner were to form an executive committee. Arthur Balfour, Sir Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a Circle of Initiates, while there was to be an outer circle known as the Association of Helpers."
After the death of Cecil Rhodes, the organization fell under the control of Lord Alfred Milner, who was Governor General and High Commissioner of South Africa, also a very powerful person in British banking and politics. He recruited young men from the upper class of society to become part of the Association of Helpers. Unofficially, they were known as "Milner’s Kindergarten." They were chosen because of their class origin, their intelligence, and especially because of their dedication to collectivism. They were quickly placed into important positions in government and other power centers to promote the hidden agenda of the secret society. Eventually, this Association of Helpers became the inner rings of much larger groups, which expanded throughout the British Empire and into the United States.
This is what Quigley says: "Through Lord Milner’s influence, these men were able to win influential posts in government, in international finance, and become the dominant influence in British imperial affairs and foreign affairs up to 1939. In 1909 through 1913, they organized semi-secret groups known as known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States. Once again the task was given to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing, submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J.P. Morgan and Company."
Finally, we begin to understand the significance of an obscure organization that plays a decisive roll in contemporary American political life, The Council on Foreign Relations. Now we see where it came from, who controls it, and how its rings within rings fit into the global strategy for collectivism.
THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Who are the members of the Council of Foreign Relations? I’m going to take more time than I really want to spare in order to read these names to you but, otherwise, you may think this organization and its members are not important.
Let’s start with the Presidents of the United States. Members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) include: Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford. James Carter, George Bush Senior, and William Clinton. John F. Kennedy claimed he was a member, but his name does not appear on former membership lists. So there is confusion on that one, but he said he was a member. I might add that Kennedy was a graduate of the London School of Economics, which was founded by Sydney and Beatrice Webb to promote the ruling-class and collectivist concepts of the Fabians.
Secretaries of State who were CFR members include: Dean Rusk, Robert Lansing, Frank Kellogg, Henry Stimpson, Cordell Hull, E.R. Stittinius, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Christian Herter, Dean Rusk, William Rogers, Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Edmund Muskie, Alexander Haig, George Schultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagelberger, Warren Christopher, William Richardson, Madeleine Albright, and Colin Powell.
Secretaries of Defense who were members of the CFR include James Forrestal, George Marshall, Charles Wilson, Neil McElroy, Robert McNamara, Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, Harold Brown, Casper Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Richard Cheney, Les Aspin, William Perry, William Cohen, and Donald Rumsfield. It is interesting that Rumsfield has asked that his name be removed from the current list of CFR members. However, you will find his name on previous lists.
CIA Directors who were members of the CFR include Walter Smith, William Colby, Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, John McCone, James Schlesinger, George Bush, Sr., Stansfield Turner, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch, William Studeman, and George Tenet.
In the Media there are past or present members of the CFR holding key management or control positions - not just working down the line - but in top management and control positions of The Army Times, Associated Press, Association of American Publishers, Boston Globe, Business Week, Christian-Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, Times Mirror, Random House, W.W. Norton & Co., Warner Books, American Spectator, Atlantic, Harper’s, Farm Journal, Financial World, Insight, Washington Times, Medical Tribune, National Geographic, National Review, New Republic, New Yorker, Newsday, News Max, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Time-Warner, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, PBS, RCA, and the Walt Disney Company. Are you beginning to understand why we have a problem with our news and our media?
CFR media personalities include David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, William Buckley, Peter Jennings, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters.
In the universities, the number of past or present CFR members who are professors, department chairman, presidents, or members of the board of directors is 563.
In financial institutions, such as banks, the Federal Reserve System, the stock exchanges, and brokerage houses the total number of CFR members in controlling positions is 284.
In tax exempt foundations and think tanks, the number of CFR members in controlling positions is 443. Some of the better known names are: The Sloan and Kettering Foundations, Aspen Institute, Atlantic Council, Bilderberg Group, Brookings Institute, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Hudson Institute, John & Catherine MacArther Foundation, Mellon Foundation, RAND Corp., Rhodes Scholarship Selection Commission, Rockefeller Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Trilateral Commission, and the UN Association.
Some of the better known corporations controlled by past or present members of the CFR include The Atlantic Richfield Oil Co., AT&T, Avon Products, Bechtel (construction) Group, Boeing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron., Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, Consolidated Edison of New York, EXXON, Dow Chemical, du Pont Chemical, Eastman Kodak, Enron, Estee Lauder, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Foods, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Aircraft, IBM, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co., Lockheed Aerospace, Lucent Technologies, Mobil Oil, Monsanto, Northrop, Pacific Gas & Electric, Phillips Petroleum, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Shell Oil, Smith Kline Beecham (pharmaceuticals), Sprint Corp., Texaco, Santa Fe Southern-Pacific Railroad, Teledyne, TRW, Southern California Edison, Unocal, United Technologies, Warner-Lambert, Weyerhauser, and Xerox.
And finally, the labor unions that are dominated by past or present members of the CFR include the AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers of America, United Auto Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Bricklayers and Allied Craft, Communications Workers of America, Union of Needletrades, and Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers.
Please understand that this is just a sampling of the list. The total membership is about four thousand people. There are many churches in your community that have that many members or more. What would you think if it were discovered that members of just one church in your community held controlling positions in 80% of the power centers of America? Wouldn’t you be curious?
First of all you would have to find out about it, which would not be easy if those same people controlled the avenues of information you rely on to learn of such things.
I should emphasize that most of these people are not part of a secret society. The CFR calls itself a semi -secret organization, which, indeed, it is. It is not the secret society. It is at least two rings out from that. Most members are not aware that they are controlled by an inner Round Table Group. For the most part, they are merely opportunists who view this organization as a high level employment agency. They know that, if they are invited to join, their names will appear on a prestigious list, and collectivists seeking to consolidate global control will draw upon that list for important jobs. However, even though they may not be conscious agents of the secret society, they have all been carefully screened for suitability. Only collectivists are invited, and so they have the necessary mindset to be functionaries within the New World Order.
REVIEW
Let's review. The power centers of the United States are controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations. This, in turn, is controlled by a submerged Round Table Group, which is associated with other Round Tables in other countries. These are extensions of a secret society founded by Cecil Rhodes and still in operation today. I call it the Fabian Network, not because these people are members of the Fabian Society, for most of them are not. It is the Fabian Network, because they share the Fabian ideology of collectivism and the Fabian strategy of patient gradualism.
Is this for real? If I were in your position, hearing this for the first time, I probably would think, "Oh come on! This can’t be for real!" Well, before you dismiss it as theater of the absurd, I’d like to refer you one more time to Professor Quigley. He said this: "I know of the operation of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years during the 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. In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown."
Yes! Ladies and Gentlemen, this is for real!
Disclaimer
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A Second Look at the War on Terrorism
© 2002 by G. Edward Griffin
http://www.freedom-force.org/granddeception.htm
Ladies and Gentlemen, the title of my presentation today is The Grand Deception - A Second Look at the War on Terrorism.
I was flattered to hear in my introduction that I have a reputation for taking complex subjects and making them easy to understand. I hope I can live up to that expectation, but I couldn’t help wondering if I can really do that with this topic: The War on Terrorism. How can you make that easy to understand? It’s such a huge and confusing topic. I feel like the proverbial mosquito in a nudist camp. I know what I have to do. I just don’t know where to begin.
There is a formula I often follow when I don’t know where to begin, and that is to start with history. If you discover the history, you should be able to figure it out as you go along. It was Will Durant who said, "Those who know nothing about history are doomed forever to repeat it."
Are we doomed to repeat the mistakes of history in the war on terrorism? If we continue to follow the path we are now taking, I’m afraid that we are. But to find out whether we are repeating the mistakes of history, we need to go back in time. So, I invite you to join me in my time machine. We are going to splash around in history for a while and look at some great events and huge mistakes to see if there are parallels, any lessons to be learned for today. I must warn you that it will seem we are lost in time. We are going to go here and there, and then jump back further, and then forward in time, and we will be examining issues that may make you wonder "What on earth has this to do with today." But I can assure you, when we reach the end of our journey, you will see that everything we cover has a direct relevance to today and, in particular, to the war on terrorism.
THE HIDDEN AGENDA OF TAX-EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS
Lets start our time machine. We turn the dial to the year 1954 and, suddenly, we find ourselves in the plush offices of the Ford Foundation in New York. We see two men seated at a large, Mahogany desk, and they are talking. They cannot see or hear us. These men are Roland Gaither, who was the President of the Ford Foundation at that time, and Mr. Norman Dodd. Mr. Dodd was the newly appointed chief investigator of what was called the Congressional Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations. The Ford Foundation was one of them, so he was there as part of his Congressional responsibilities.
It was about 1972 that I happened to meet Mr. Dodd in Virginia. I had a television crew with me, because we were producing a documentary film and had some open time. I called Mr. Dodd and asked if he would be willing to make a statement before our cameras, and he said, "Of course." I’m glad we obtained the interview, because he was advanced in years, and it wasn’t long afterward that he passed away. We were very fortunate to capture his story in his own words. (For those who are interested in viewing his complete testimony on video, it is available from The Reality Zone, www.realityzone,com. It’s called "The Hidden Agenda" and is available in both video and audio formats. The printed transcript can be downloaded free of charge at www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html.)
So, back to our time machine. The year is 1954, and we hear Mr. Gaither say to Mr. Dodd, "Would you be interested in knowing what we do here at the Ford Foundation?" And, of course, Mr. Dodd says, "Yes! That’s exactly why I’m here. I would be very interested, sir." Then, without any prodding at all, Gaither says, "Mr. Dodd, we operate in response to directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States so that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union."
Dodd almost falls off of his chair when he hears that. Then he says to Gaither, "Well, sir, you can do anything you please with your grant making powers, but don’t you think you have an obligation to make a disclosure to the American people? You enjoy tax exemption, which is an indirect way of saying you are subsidized by the taxpayer, so, why don’t you tell the Congress and the American people what you just told me?" And Gaither replies, "We would never dream of doing such a thing."
A STRATEGY TO CONTROL THE TEACHING OF HISTORY
There is much more to be learned from this conversation, but our time is limited, so let’s move on. The question that logically arises is, "How would it be possible for people in these prestigious organizations to even dream that they could alter life in the United States so it could be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union?" What an absurd thought that would be! The answer, however, is not absurd at all. To bring this about, all that needs to be done is to alter the attitude of the American people to accept such a move. How could that be done?
The answer to this second question was provided by another powerful and prestigious tax-exempt foundation, the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace. When Dodd visited the President of that organization and began asking about their activities, the President said, "Mr. Dodd, you have a lot of questions. It would be very tedious and time consuming for us to answer those questions, so I have a counter proposal. Why don’t you send a member of your staff to our facilities, and we will open our minute books from the very first meeting of the Carnegie Fund, and your staff can go through them and copy whatever you find there. Then you will know everything we are doing."
Again, Mr. Dodd was totally amazed. He observed that the President was a young man at the Carnegie Fund and assumed he had never actually read the minutes himself. So he accepted without hesitation and sent a member of his staff to the Carnegie Endowment facilities. Her name was Mrs. Catherine Casey who was, by the way, hostile to the activity of the Congressional Committee. She was placed on the staff by political opponents of the Committee to be a watchdog and a damper on the operation. Her attitude was: "What could possibly be wrong with tax-exempt foundations? They do so much good." So that was the view of Mrs. Casey when she went to the boardroom of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. She took her Dictaphone machine (they used magnetic belts in those days) and recorded, word for word, many of the key passages from the minutes of this organization starting with the very first meeting. What she found in those minutes was so shocking, Mr. Dodd said she almost lost her mind, and she became very ineffective in her work after that.
Basically, this is what those minutes revealed: From the very beginning, the members of the board discussed how to alter life in the United States, how to change the attitudes of Americans to give up their cherished principles and concepts of government and be more receptive to what we will call the collectivist model of society. I will talk more about what the word collectivist means in a moment, but they used that word quite often. And they discussed this in a very scholarly fashion. After many months of deliberation, they came to the conclusion that, out all of the options available for altering the attitudes of people in the United States, there was only one that was really dependable. That option was war. In times of war, they reasoned, only then would people be willing to give up things they cherish in return for the desperate need and desire for security against a deadly enemy. And so the Carnegie Endowment Fund for International Peace declared in its minutes that it must do whatever it can to manipulate the United States into war.
They also said there were other things needed, and these were their words: "We must control education in the United States." They realized that was a pretty big order, so they teamed up with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation to pool their financial resources to control education in America - in particular, to control the teaching of history. They assigned those areas of responsibility that involved issues relating to domestic affairs to the Rockefeller Foundation, and those issues related to international affairs were taken on as the responsibility of the Carnegie Endowment. Their first goal was to rewrite the history books, and they discussed how to do that at great length. They approached some of the more prominent historians of the time and presented to them the proposition that they rewrite history to favor the concept of collectivism, but they were turned down flat. Then they decided - and these are their own words, "We must create our own stable of historians."
They selected twenty candidates at the university level who were seeking doctorates in American History. Then they went to the Guggenheim Foundation and said, "If we provide the money, would you grant fellowships to candidates selected by us, who are of the right frame of mind, those who see the value of collectivism as we do? Would you grant them doctorates so we can then propel them into positions of prominence and leadership in the academic world and in professional historical associations?" And the answer was "Yes."
So they gathered a list of young men who were seeking their doctorate degrees. They interviewed them, analyzed their thinking processes, and chose the twenty they thought were best suited for their purpose. They sent them to London for a briefing. (In a moment I will explain why London is so significant.) At this meeting, they were told what would be expected if and when they win the doctorates they were seeking. They were told they would have to view history, write history, and teach history from the perspective that collectivism was a positive force in the world and was the wave of the future.
Now lets go back to the words of Mr. Dodd, himself. He said: "This group of twenty historians eventually formed the nucleus of the American Historical Association. Then toward the end of the 1920’s the Endowment grants to the American Historical Association $400,000 [a huge amount of money in those days] for a study of history in a manner that points to what this country can look forward to in the future. That culminates in a seven-volume study, the last volume of which is a summary of the contents of the other six. And the essence of the last volume is, the future of this country belongs to collectivism, administered with characteristic American efficiency."
COLLECTIVISM VS INDIVIDUALISM
Now we must turn off our time machine for a moment and deal with this word collectivism. You are going to hear it a lot. Especially if you delve into the historical papers of the individuals and groups we are discussing, you will find them using the word over and over. Although most people have only a vague concept of what collectivism is, the advocates of collectivism have a very definite understanding of it, so let’s deal with that now.
In order to appreciate the essence of collectivism, we need to step backward and look at the larger picture encompassing the political ideologies that divide people in this age. You find those who claim they are conservatives, and they will debate wildly with those who think of themselves as liberals. Left wingers disagree with right wingers. You find people who say they are Socialists or Communists or Fascists or whatever words they choose to identify their point of view. But, when you ask them to explain what those words mean, very few can agree. For the most part, they are merely labels without clear or precise definitions.
Let’s put some meaning to them. I think that all of the great political issues, the ideological issues at least, can be divided into two viewpoints. All of the rest is fluff. Basically, a person is either a collectivist or an individualist. We are talking about collectivism vs. individualism. What do these words mean?
First of all I should tell you that, from my observation, collectivists and individualist, for the most part, are all good people. They want the best life possible for their families, for their countrymen, and for the world - for mankind. They all want peace, prosperity, and justice. They want freedom. Sometime they disagree over what the tradeoff should be for freedom; but, still, they all want the good things for their fellow man. Where they disagree is how to bring those things about.
THE DANGER OF GROUP SUPREMACY
The collectivist believes the group is the most important element of society; that all solutions to problems are better solved at the group level than at the individual level; and that, the larger the problem is, the larger the group should be to solve the problem. And so they believe in collective action. They believe in organizing group activities to provide for all of the advantages they want people to have. They want to protect people. They want to make sure they don’t suffer, that they are well clothed and fed, and that they are treated justly. The solution to all of these problems is a collective solution. "We shall do it through group action." The more complex the problem, the larger the group should be, until finally the most complex problems of all can be solved only by the largest groups of all.
The collectivist sees government as the solution, because government is the ultimate group, and so the collectivist mind can be easily recognized. It always has an affinity to government as the solver of problems. The individualist, by the way, is more skeptical. He tends to look at government as the creator of problems. But that’s another issue. We will get to the individualist in a moment. The collectivist sees government as the solver of problems; and, of course, the larger the unit of government, the better. Collectivist solutions gravitate from local government to state government to national government and finally to world government. If there is a really big problem, such as the environmental issue involving the whole planet, the collectivist is convinced that it cannot be solved except through the action of world government.
The collectivist believes that the group is more important than the individual and, if necessary, the individual must be sacrificed for the group. Sometimes that is expressed in terms of "the greater good for the greater number." It’s a very appealing concept.
The individualist on the other hand says, "Wait a minute. Group? What is group? That’s just a word. You cannot touch a group. You cannot see a group. All you can touch and see are individuals. They make up the group. But the real substance of the group is the individual within it. It’s like a forest. Forest doesn’t exist. It’s a word concept. There are only trees." So the individualist sees that, if you sacrifice the individual for the group, you have made a huge mistake. The individual is the essence of the group. He is the core of the group. The group has no claim to sacrifice its own essence.
Collectivists are often critics of religious and family values, because collectivism demands unquestioning obedience to the state. Since loyalty to family or religious codes often conflict with the concept of group supremacy, they cannot be tolerated in a collectivist system.
THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Collectivists and individualists both agree that human rights are important, but they differ drastically over what is the origin of those rights. There are only two possibilities in this debate. Either man’s rights are intrinsic to his being, or they are extrinsic; either he possesses them at birth or they are given to him afterward. In other words, they are either hardware or software. Individualists believe they are hardware. Collectivists believe they are software.
The view of individualism was expressed clearly in the United States Declaration of Independence, which said: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men." Nothing could be more clear than that. "Unalienable Rights" means they are the natural possession of each of us upon birth, not granted by the state. The purpose of government is, not to grant rights, but to secure them and protect them.
By contrast, all collectivist political systems embrace the view that rights are granted by the state. That includes the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. It is also a tenet of the United Nations. Article Four of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says: "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State … the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law."
The reason this is important is that, if we agree that the state has the power to grant rights, then we must also agree it has the power to take them away. You cannot have one without the other. Notice the wording of the UN Covenant. After proclaiming that rights are provided by the state, it then says that those rights may be subject to limitations "as are determined by law." In other words, the collectivists at the UN presume to grant us our rights and, when they are ready to take them away, all they have to do is pass a law authorizing it.
Compare that with the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. It says Congress shall pass no law restricting the rights of freedom of speech, or religion, peaceful assembly, the right to bear arms, and so forth - not except as determined by law, but no law. What a difference there is between individualism and collectivism.
REPUBLICS VS DEMOCRACIES
We are dealing here with one of the reasons people make a distinction between Republics and Democracies. We have been taught to believe that a Democracy is the ideal form of government. Supposedly, that is what was created by the American Constitution. However, if you read the documents of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, you find that they spoke very poorly of Democracy. They said in plain English that a Democracy was one of the worst possible forms of government. And so they created what they called a Republic. The bottom line is that the difference between a Democracy and a Republic is the difference between collectivism and individualism.
In a pure Democracy, the concept is that the majority shall rule. That’s the end of the discussion. You might say, "What’s wrong with that?" Well, there could be plenty wrong with that. What about a lynch mob? There is only one person with a dissenting vote, and he is the guy at the end of the rope.
Ah, wait a minute, you say. Maybe the majority should not always rule. How can we protect the individual from the group? Maybe the group could become dangerous. Perhaps we should put limits upon Democracy.
That is precisely what a Republic accomplishes. A Republic is simply a limited Democracy - a Democracy with limits on what the group can do, with limits on what the majority can do. Republics are characterized by written constitutions that say the government - even though it represents the majority - shall not do this; the government shall not do that; and it shall be prevented from doing that, also. We have individual liberties and rights that stand higher and are more important than the group. And so we begin to get a handle on the debate here, the issue, the cleavage between these two concepts: collectivism on the one hand, individualism on the other.
COERCION VS FREEDOM
We come now to the next element of this debate, which is how to bring about desirable group action. The collectivist says you have to force people. That’s why he has an affinity to government. Government is the embodiment of legalized force. You can always spot a collectivist because, when he confronts a problem, his first reaction is to say, "There ought to be a law." His attitude is that we must force people to do what we think they should do, because they are not as smart as we are - we collectivists. We’ve been to school. We’ve read books. We participate in discussion groups. We are smarter than most of those people out there. If we leave it up to them, they are going to make terrible mistakes. So, it is up to us. We are the privileged, fortunate ones. We are the ones who shall decide on behalf of society and we shall enforce our decisions by law so that no one has any choice. That we should rule in this fashion is our obligation to mankind.
By contrast, individualists say, "We also think we are right and others are wrong, but we don’t believe in forcing anyone to comply with our will because, if we grant that principle, then others, representing larger groups than our own, can compel us to act as they decree, and we will have lost our freedom.
The collectivist will say, "I think everyone should wear seatbelts. That just makes a lot of sense. People can be hurt if they don’t wear seatbelts. So, let’s pass a law and require everyone to wear them. If they don’t, we’ll put them in jail." The individualist says, "I think everyone should wear seatbelts. People can be hurt in automobile accidents if they don’t wear seat belts, but I don’t believe in forcing everyone to do so. I believe in convincing them with logic and persuasion, if I can, but I also believe in freedom-of-choice."
As an individualist, I am not opposed to collective action. Just because I believe in freedom of choice does not mean I have to move my piano alone. It just means that I renounce the right to compel someone to help me. Individualists seek cooperation based on voluntary action, not compulsion.
And so here we have a second distinction between the collectivist and the individualist. The collectivist believes in coercion. The individualist believes in freedom.
THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM
There is one more issue to cover before restarting out time machine, and it has to do with the political spectrum. We often hear about right-wingers versus left-wingers, but what do these terms really mean? For example, we are told that Communists and Socialists are at the extreme Left, and the Nazis and Fascists are on the extreme Right. Here we have two powerful ideological forces pitted against each other, and the impression is that, somehow, they are opposites. But, what is the difference? They are not opposites at all. They are the same. The insignias may be different, but when you analyze Communism and Nazism, they both embody the principles of Socialism. Communists make no bones about Socialism being their ideal, and the Nazi movement in Germany was actually called the National Socialist Party. Communists believe in international Socialism, whereas Nazis advocate national Socialism. Communists promote class hatred and class conflict to motivate the loyalty and blind obedience of their followers, whereas the Nazis use race conflict and race hatred to accomplish the same objective. Other than that, there is absolutely no difference between Communism and Nazism. They are both the epitome of collectivism, and yet we are told they are, supposedly, at opposite ends of the spectrum!
There’s only one thing that makes sense in constructing a political spectrum and that is to put zero government at one end of the line and 100% at the other. Now we have something we can comprehend. Those who believe in zero government are the anarchists, and those who believe in total government are the totalitarians. With that definition, we find that Communism and Nazism are together at the same end. They are both totalitarian concepts. Why? Because they are both based on the model of collectivism. Communism, Nazism, Fascism and Socialism all gravitate toward bigger and bigger government, because that is the logical extension of their common ideology. They cannot help becoming what they are. More government is needed to solve bigger problems, and bigger problems require more government. Once you get on the slippery slope of collectivism, once you accept that ideology, there is no place to stop until you reach all the way to the end of the scale, which is 100% government. Regardless of what name you give it, regardless of how you re-label it to make it seem new or different, collectivism is totalitarianism.
In truth, the straight-line concept of a political spectrum is somewhat misleading. It is really a circle. You can take that straight line with 100% government at one end and zero at the other, bend it around, and touch the ends at the top. Now it’s a circle because, under anarchy, where there is no government, you have absolute rule by those with the biggest fists and the most powerful weapons. So, you jump from zero government to totalitarianism in a flash. They meet at the top. We are really dealing with a circle, and the only logical place for us to be is somewhere in the middle. We need government, of course, but, the concept of what kind of government must be built on individualism, an ideology that pushes always toward that part of the spectrum that involves the least government necessary to make things work instead of collectivism, which always pushes toward the other end of the spectrum for the most amount of government to make things work.
JOHN RUSKIN PROMOTES COLLECTIVISM AT OXFORD
We are finally ready to reactivate out time machine. From the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, we recall the curious words: "We must control education in America." Who is this "we? " Who are the people who are going to control education in America? To answer that question we must set the co-ordinates on our machine once again, and we are now moving further back in time to the year 1870. We find ourselves suddenly in England in an elegant classroom of Oxford University, and we are listing to a lecture by a brilliant intellectual, John Ruskin.
Ruskin was a Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. He was a genius. At first I was prepared not to like him, because he was a total collectivist. I didn’t think I would like anything about him. But, when I got his books and started to read the notes from his lectures, I had to acknowledge his great talent. First of all he was an accomplished artist. He was an architect. He was a philosopher. About his only flaw was that he believed in collectivism. He preached it eloquently, and his students, coming from the wealthy class - the elite and the privileged from the finest areas of London - were very receptive to his message. He taught that those who had inherited the rich culture and the traditions of the British Empire had an obligation to rule the world and make sure that all the less fortunate and stupid people had proper direction. That was basically his message, but it was delivered in a very convincing and appealing manner.
Ruskin was not the originator of collectivism. He was merely riding the crest of an ideological tidal wave that was sweeping through the whole Western World at that time. It was appealing to the sons and daughters of the super wealthy who were growing up with guilt complexes because they had so much wealth and privilege in stark contrast to the world’s poor and starving masses.
In this milieu there were two powerful ideological movements coming to birth. One of them was Marxism, which offered the promise of defending and elevating these downtrodden masses. Wealthy young people felt in their hearts that this promise was worthy and noble. They wanted to do something to help these people, but they didn’t want to give up their own privileges. I will say this about John Ruskin, he actually did give of his own wealth to help the poor, but he was one of the rare ones. Most collectivists are hesitant about giving their own money. They prefer to have government be the solver of problems and to use tax revenues - other people’s money - to fund their projects. Collectivists recognize that someone has to run this governmental machine, and it might as well be them, especially since they are so well educated and wise. In this way, they can retain both their privilege and their wealth. They can now be in control of society without guilt. They can talk about what they are doing to lift up the downtrodden masses using the collectivist model. It was for these reasons that many of the wealthy idealists became Marxists and sought positions of influence in government.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY
Some of the more erudite of those from the wealthy, intellectual classes of England came together and decided they would form an organization to perpetuate the concept of collectivism. It was called the Fabian Society. It is now 1884, and we find ourselves observing a group of these people, including Sydney and Beatrice Web (founders of the London School of Economics), George Bernard Shaw, Arnold Toynbee, H.G. Wells, and people of that high caliber. The Fabian Society exists today, and a lot of very prominent, influential, and powerful people are members. Tony Blair, for example, England’s Prime Minister, is a member.
H.G. Wells wrote a book to serve as a guide for Fabians and their friends showing how collectivism can be embedded into society without arousing alarm or serious opposition. It was called The Open Conspiracy, and the entire plan is spelled out in detail. He even said that the old religions of the world should give way to the new religion of collectivism. The new religion should be the state, he said, and the state should take charge of all human activity with, of course, elitists such as himself in control.
As mentioned previously, there were two powerful ideological movements coming to birth in this same period of history, and they had much in common. One of them was Marxism, which eventually was physically planted onto Russian soil and manifested itself as Communism. The other was Fabianism. Please note that Communism and Fabianism are merely variants of collecivism. Their similarities are much greater than their differences. That is why their participants often move from one group to the other with ease - or may even be members of both groups at the same time. Communists and Fabians are usually friendly with each other. They may disagree intensely over procedural issues, but never over goals, because their mutual goal is collectivism.
Fabians say, "Let us come to power quietly so as not to alarm anyone. Let us penetrate and capture control of the organs of society: the educational institutions, the media, the labor unions, agencies of government. Let us penetrate into the power centers of society and quietly guide it in the direction of collectivism. No one will realize what is happening, and there will be very little opposition or bloodshed." Fabians consider themselves to be humane. To emphasize this strategy of patient gradualism, they adopted the tortoise as their symbol, and the emblem on their shield is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Communists, on the other hand, are less genteel. They are adept at using all the same tactics of deception and quiet penetration into power centers as used by the Fabians, but they are more inclined to rely on violence and terror to accelerate their progress. They raise the clenched fist and say, "Let us come to power through revolution. Let us put masses into the streets and overthrow the target government by force and violence. Let the land be drenched with the blood of our enemies." Communists are in a hurry.
That is the debate. The only difference between Communists and Fabians is a question of tactics. They may compete over which of them will dominant the coming New World Order, over who will hold the highest positions in the pyramid of collectivist power; they may even send opposing armies into battle to establish territorial pre-eminence over portions of the globe, but they never quarrel over goals. Through it all, they are blood brothers under the skin, and they will always unite against their common enemy, which is any opposition to collectivism.
The Fabian tortoise and the wolf in sheep’s clothing are emblazoned on a stained glass window that used to be in the Web house. The Webs donated their home to the Fabian Society, and it is now the headquarters of that organization in Surrey, England. The window was recently removed, but there are many photographs of it showing the symbols in great detail. Perhaps the most significant part is written across the bottom. It is that famous line from Omar Khayyam: "Dear love, couldst thou and I with fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, would we not shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the hearts desire?" Please allow me to repeat that line. This is the key to modern history, and it is the key to the war on terrorism: "Dear love, couldst thou and I with fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, would we not shatter it to bits and then remould it nearer to the hearts desire?"
Elsewhere in the stained glass window there is a depiction of Sydney Webb and George Bernard Shaw striking the earth with hammers. The earth is on an anvil, and they are standing there striking the earth with hammers. "Shatter it to bits," That’s what they were saying at the Carnegie Endowment Fund. That’s what they were saying at the Ford Foundation. "War is the best way to remold society. War! Shatter society to bits. Break it apart. Then we can remold it nearer to the heart’s desire. And what is our heart’s desire? Collectivism."
THE SECRET SOCIETY CREATED BY CECIL RHODES
As we sit here in the classroom listening to the impassioned lecture by John Ruskin, we notice that one of the students is taking copious notes. His name is Cecil Rhodes. It will be revealed in later years that this young man was so impressed by Ruskin’s message that he often referred to those lecture notes over the next thirty years of his life. Rhodes became a dedicated collectivist and wanted to fulfill the dream and the promise of John Ruskin: to bring the British Empire into control over the entire world and to create world government based on the model of collectivism. Most people are aware that Rhodes made one of the world’s greatest fortunes in South African diamonds and gold. What is not widely known, however, is that he spent most of that fortune to promote the theories of John Ruskin.
One of the best authorities on the Fabian Society is Carroll Quigley, who wrote the book, Tragedy and Hope. Quigley was a highly respected professor at Georgetown University. You may recall that, shortly after President Clinton was elected, during a press conference he gave honorable mention to Quigley, his former professor. What Quigley was teaching was probably similar to what John Ruskin was teaching, and Clinton, as a student, took his lectures very seriously, even to the point of mentioning to the world how much he owed to his professor.
In his book Tragedy and Hope, Quigley says this: "The Rhodes scholarship established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes’ seventh will are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes, in five previous wills, left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. This secret society continues to exist to this day."
The structure of the secret society was formed along classical, conspiratorial lines. If you study any of the better-known conspiracies of history, you find that they often are structured as rings within rings. Generally there’s a leader or a small group of two or three people at the center. They form a ring of supporters around them of perhaps eight or ten or twelve, and those people think they are the total organization. They are not aware that two or three of them are in control. And then the twelve are instructed to create a larger ring around them of perhaps one- or two-hundred people who all think they are the total organization, not realizing there are twelve who are really directing it. These rings extend outward until, finally, they reach into the mainstream community where they enlist the services of innocent people who perform various tasks of the secret society without realizing who is creating the agenda or why.
The Rhodes organization was set up exactly along those lines. Quigley tells us this: "In the secret society, Rhodes was to be leader. Stead, Brett, and Milner were to form an executive committee. Arthur Balfour, Sir Harry Johnston, Lord Rothschild, Albert Grey, and others were listed as potential members of a Circle of Initiates, while there was to be an outer circle known as the Association of Helpers."
After the death of Cecil Rhodes, the organization fell under the control of Lord Alfred Milner, who was Governor General and High Commissioner of South Africa, also a very powerful person in British banking and politics. He recruited young men from the upper class of society to become part of the Association of Helpers. Unofficially, they were known as "Milner’s Kindergarten." They were chosen because of their class origin, their intelligence, and especially because of their dedication to collectivism. They were quickly placed into important positions in government and other power centers to promote the hidden agenda of the secret society. Eventually, this Association of Helpers became the inner rings of much larger groups, which expanded throughout the British Empire and into the United States.
This is what Quigley says: "Through Lord Milner’s influence, these men were able to win influential posts in government, in international finance, and become the dominant influence in British imperial affairs and foreign affairs up to 1939. In 1909 through 1913, they organized semi-secret groups known as known as Round Table Groups, in the chief British dependencies and the United States. Once again the task was given to Lionel Curtis who established, in England and each dominion, a front organization to the existing local Round Table Group. This front organization, called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, had as its nucleus in each area the existing, submerged Round Table Group. In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a front for J.P. Morgan and Company."
Finally, we begin to understand the significance of an obscure organization that plays a decisive roll in contemporary American political life, The Council on Foreign Relations. Now we see where it came from, who controls it, and how its rings within rings fit into the global strategy for collectivism.
THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Who are the members of the Council of Foreign Relations? I’m going to take more time than I really want to spare in order to read these names to you but, otherwise, you may think this organization and its members are not important.
Let’s start with the Presidents of the United States. Members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) include: Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford. James Carter, George Bush Senior, and William Clinton. John F. Kennedy claimed he was a member, but his name does not appear on former membership lists. So there is confusion on that one, but he said he was a member. I might add that Kennedy was a graduate of the London School of Economics, which was founded by Sydney and Beatrice Webb to promote the ruling-class and collectivist concepts of the Fabians.
Secretaries of State who were CFR members include: Dean Rusk, Robert Lansing, Frank Kellogg, Henry Stimpson, Cordell Hull, E.R. Stittinius, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Christian Herter, Dean Rusk, William Rogers, Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Edmund Muskie, Alexander Haig, George Schultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagelberger, Warren Christopher, William Richardson, Madeleine Albright, and Colin Powell.
Secretaries of Defense who were members of the CFR include James Forrestal, George Marshall, Charles Wilson, Neil McElroy, Robert McNamara, Melvin Laird, Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, Harold Brown, Casper Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Richard Cheney, Les Aspin, William Perry, William Cohen, and Donald Rumsfield. It is interesting that Rumsfield has asked that his name be removed from the current list of CFR members. However, you will find his name on previous lists.
CIA Directors who were members of the CFR include Walter Smith, William Colby, Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, John McCone, James Schlesinger, George Bush, Sr., Stansfield Turner, William Casey, William Webster, Robert Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch, William Studeman, and George Tenet.
In the Media there are past or present members of the CFR holding key management or control positions - not just working down the line - but in top management and control positions of The Army Times, Associated Press, Association of American Publishers, Boston Globe, Business Week, Christian-Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, San Diego Union-Tribune, Times Mirror, Random House, W.W. Norton & Co., Warner Books, American Spectator, Atlantic, Harper’s, Farm Journal, Financial World, Insight, Washington Times, Medical Tribune, National Geographic, National Review, New Republic, New Yorker, Newsday, News Max, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Time-Warner, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, PBS, RCA, and the Walt Disney Company. Are you beginning to understand why we have a problem with our news and our media?
CFR media personalities include David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, William Buckley, Peter Jennings, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters.
In the universities, the number of past or present CFR members who are professors, department chairman, presidents, or members of the board of directors is 563.
In financial institutions, such as banks, the Federal Reserve System, the stock exchanges, and brokerage houses the total number of CFR members in controlling positions is 284.
In tax exempt foundations and think tanks, the number of CFR members in controlling positions is 443. Some of the better known names are: The Sloan and Kettering Foundations, Aspen Institute, Atlantic Council, Bilderberg Group, Brookings Institute, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Hudson Institute, John & Catherine MacArther Foundation, Mellon Foundation, RAND Corp., Rhodes Scholarship Selection Commission, Rockefeller Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Trilateral Commission, and the UN Association.
Some of the better known corporations controlled by past or present members of the CFR include The Atlantic Richfield Oil Co., AT&T, Avon Products, Bechtel (construction) Group, Boeing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chevron., Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, Consolidated Edison of New York, EXXON, Dow Chemical, du Pont Chemical, Eastman Kodak, Enron, Estee Lauder, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Foods, Hewlett-Packard, Hughes Aircraft, IBM, International Paper, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co., Lockheed Aerospace, Lucent Technologies, Mobil Oil, Monsanto, Northrop, Pacific Gas & Electric, Phillips Petroleum, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Shell Oil, Smith Kline Beecham (pharmaceuticals), Sprint Corp., Texaco, Santa Fe Southern-Pacific Railroad, Teledyne, TRW, Southern California Edison, Unocal, United Technologies, Warner-Lambert, Weyerhauser, and Xerox.
And finally, the labor unions that are dominated by past or present members of the CFR include the AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers of America, United Auto Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Bricklayers and Allied Craft, Communications Workers of America, Union of Needletrades, and Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers.
Please understand that this is just a sampling of the list. The total membership is about four thousand people. There are many churches in your community that have that many members or more. What would you think if it were discovered that members of just one church in your community held controlling positions in 80% of the power centers of America? Wouldn’t you be curious?
First of all you would have to find out about it, which would not be easy if those same people controlled the avenues of information you rely on to learn of such things.
I should emphasize that most of these people are not part of a secret society. The CFR calls itself a semi -secret organization, which, indeed, it is. It is not the secret society. It is at least two rings out from that. Most members are not aware that they are controlled by an inner Round Table Group. For the most part, they are merely opportunists who view this organization as a high level employment agency. They know that, if they are invited to join, their names will appear on a prestigious list, and collectivists seeking to consolidate global control will draw upon that list for important jobs. However, even though they may not be conscious agents of the secret society, they have all been carefully screened for suitability. Only collectivists are invited, and so they have the necessary mindset to be functionaries within the New World Order.
REVIEW
Let's review. The power centers of the United States are controlled by the Council on Foreign Relations. This, in turn, is controlled by a submerged Round Table Group, which is associated with other Round Tables in other countries. These are extensions of a secret society founded by Cecil Rhodes and still in operation today. I call it the Fabian Network, not because these people are members of the Fabian Society, for most of them are not. It is the Fabian Network, because they share the Fabian ideology of collectivism and the Fabian strategy of patient gradualism.
Is this for real? If I were in your position, hearing this for the first time, I probably would think, "Oh come on! This can’t be for real!" Well, before you dismiss it as theater of the absurd, I’d like to refer you one more time to Professor Quigley. He said this: "I know of the operation of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years during the 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. In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown."
Yes! Ladies and Gentlemen, this is for real!
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