the biggest scam in america

[Guest guest]

this tells the details how the military,the weapons

industry and the CIA systematically fooled the

Christian fundamentalist into believing the republican

party was their representative.

 

 

Part one

 

 

From the outset, US fundamentalist and pentecostalist leaders would

openly identify their understanding of Christianity with American

imperial values and ideals and even interpret any attack or criticism

against these as a challenge to the Christian faith. Explicit in their

sermons is the notion that the US is a 'chosen nation' or one of the

twelve lost tribes of Israel with a destined mission to save and

evangelise the world. In identifying their version of Christianity with

US imperial values and claims, fundamentalist and pentecostalist

preachers would not only assert that the US have a special place in

God's 'divine plan', but also went to adopt some of the ruthlessly

efficient methods and ways employed in the harsh and exploitative world

of US business.

 

Pentecostalism: The historical roots of pentecostalism go as far back as

1901 when, following a Holy Spirit 'outpouring', pentecostalist

preachers spread out from the US southern Bible Belt into California and

from therein back to the newly industrialised midwest. As an organised

socio-religious movement, however, pentecostalism traces its historical

origin to a revival crusade that started off in 1906 in Los Angeles,

California in a small black church led by a black pastor. Essentially,

the revival was held as a spontaneous reaction to the alienation

engendered by a long hst of abuses and humiliation suffered at the hands

of the white liberal mainline churches which then still held the view

that they had a monopoly over God's grace and revelation. Looking at its

humble origins within a mainly black setting, it is perhaps more than

ironic that among the three most important founders of pentecostalism,

one was a black pastor, the other a Ku Klux Klan member and vet another,

a woman.

 

It did not take long before its leadership was taken over by white

pentecostal males, many of whom had a strong fundamentalist background.

Subsequently, the new pentecostalist leaders subjected it to both the

racist laws still operating in the southern states of America, and

ultimately agreed to divide the movement into two racially-segregated

parts and to the dictates of the fundamentalists. By the time it reached

South Africa and most of the former British colonies in Africa it was

already a white middle-class-led movement and therefore a politically

compromised version of pentecostalism.

 

A relatively new but not less ideologically dangerous strand within

pentecostalism are the neo-pentecostals or charismatics, so called

because the 'gifts of the Holy Spirit' are also known as 'charismata'.

In terms of basic theological positions and religious practice, these

are no different from the rest of the pentecostal movement. The only

major factor which differentiates them from other pentecostals is that

by and large, they are still to be found operating within their

respective religious faiths and denominations, be they Protestant,

Catholic, Anglican or Methodist. This is what has led some other

observers of the phenomena to conclude that charismatics are in fact

'lowkey, pentecostals'.

 

In third world countries, where they quite often promote the adoption of

an uncritical allegiance to reactionary and repressive regimes and

anti-communist phobia, pentecostals can vary from what one observer has

described as 'politically disinterested' in Chile (where they represent

80-90% of all Protestants) and 'very weak sociopolitical engagement'

amongst South African Indian pentecostals to 'increased engagement in

society by the Central American Pentecostals.

 

 

Reagan and the New Religious Right

 

 

In 1969 president Richard Nixon sent Nelson Rockefeller (later

Vice-President under Ford) on a fact-finding mission to Latin America.

The Rockefeller Commission found that 'the Catholic church has ceased to

be an ally in whom the US can have confidence' because of the spread of

liberation theology which was predominantly Catholic. To counter this,

the Commission recommended the promotion of 'an extensive campaign with

the aim of propagating Protestant churches and conservative sects in

Latin America'. For the first time, a clear-cut proposal to adopt the

promotion and infiltration of right-wing religious groups as official

policy was made. The promotion, infiltration and manipulation of various

US religious right-wing groups by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

in Latin America, South-East Asia and recently in Southern Africa would

seem to flow from these recommendations.

 

The paralysis engendered by the US defeat in Vietnam played a major role

in delaying the formal adoption and implementation of the Commission's

recommendation on a systematic and wide scale. It took ten years of

concerted pressure when, in April 1979, the Carter Administration formed

a body called the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence. It was

charged with the specific task of finding ways to boost the declining

fortunes of the CIA and restore its dubious reputation following Angola,

Iran, Grenada, and the Sandinista revolution. This included senior CIA

officers, leading academics and 'experts' on social sciences,

international law and politics. The Consortium's seven-volume report

recommended that during the 1980s, the US Government should promote the

emergence and expansion of CIA paramilitary operations in the form of

vigilante bands, death / assassination squads and right-wing religious

sects in areas of the world where American interests are threatened by

revolutionary and progressive movements. This was followed the next year

by the presentation and official adoption of the Santa Fe Document by

the Reagan Administration. The document recommended:

 

foreign policy is the instrument by which peoples seek to assure their

survival in a hostile world. War, not peace, is the norm in

international affairs. Survival demands a new foreign policy. The US

must seize the ideological initiative or perish. The war is for the

minds of mankind. Ideo-politics will prevail ... US foreign policy must

begin to counter (not react against) liberation theology as it is

utilized in Latin America by the liberation clergy. The role of the

church in Latin America is vital to the concept of political freedom.

... private property and productive capitalism.

 

A month after Reagan's inauguration, a little noticed article by Strobe

Talbot suggested that Congress should repeal or amend legislation that

limits the CIA to conduct clandestine operations abroad. Two months

later, CIA Director William Casey issued a secret directive called 'The

Draft Plan of Operations in Africa and the Near East', urging the CIA to

increase its acts of state terrorism against progressive governments and

liberation movements in closer collaboration with the dictatorship and

repressive regimes of such countries as South Africa, Israel, Taiwan,

South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Reagan subsequently signed an

executive order relieving the CIA of too much Congressional oversight,

increasing its budget and allowing it a freer hand in carrying out its

criminal covert actions with the exception of assassinating foreign

political leaders and conducting 'research on human subjects'. The CIA

was given the green light to engage in any covert activity under the sun

that was approved by the President. In relation to the latter

restriction, the CIA could, however, still engage in 'research on human

subjects' as long as it is 'in accordance with guide-lines issued by the

Department of Health and Human Services'!

 

The process of giving the CIA more leeway to engage in covert actions

during this period did not start under Reagan; during its last year in

office, the Carter Administration was already under heavy pressure from

the Pentagon and State Department to find ways and means on restoring

the CIA's dubious reputation. The Carter Administration found itself not

only succumbing to this pressure, but to some extent can be held

responsible for bequeathing the use of religious personnel in CIA

intelligence-gathering to the Reagan Administration. This sense of

betrayal among the Carter Administration led them to secretly issue a

document known as the Dissent Paper (1980) criticising the dangerous

direction foreign policy was taking. As expected, this lone protest

within America's establishment went unheeded. It once again reminds us

that regardless of who is in the White House, US foreign policy has now

come to be conducted more bY the CIA and Pentagon than the State

Department, whose major task has been reduced to the issuing of

statements for public consumption and direct liaison with foreign

governments.

 

These measures formed part of a big and apparently innocuous propaganda

effort by the Reagan Administration, misleadingly called Public

Diplomacy, to persuade public opinion and win global support for its

aggressive intentions aimed at maintaining American hegemony over large

sections of the world's population through its 'lowintensity conflict'

doctrine. This effort was a component part of Reagan's much bigger

propaganda programme, 'Project Democracy', introduced to the Congress

under the title of 'Management of Public Diplomacy Relative to National

Security" to 'strengthen the organization, planning and co-ordination of

the various aspects of public diplomacy of the US Government'.

 

To this end, a special inter-agency body, called the Special Planning

Group on Public Diplomacy (SPGPD) was established and chaired by Robert

McFarlane, then assistant-secretary to the NSC president and composed of

the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Directors of the Information

Agency (USIA), the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the

President's assistant for communications.

 

In early 1983 George Shultz, then Secretary of State, presented a $65

million budget to the Congress for Project Democracy. The actual funding

of most projects abroad was done through a quasi governmental body known

as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED was founded at

the instigation of a small group of right-wing activists which included

Robert Pickus, a former OSS officer, consultant to USIA, the State and

Defense Departments as well as a long-standing opponent of the anti

Vietnam war and peace movement through his so-called World Without War

Council (WWWC) and the 'Peace, Freedom and Security Studies' (PFSS)

projects. Pickus, whose PFSS programmes were aimed at establishing a

stronghold by imposing a right-wing perspective on national security

issues in churches, evangelical colleges and seminaries throughout the

US, was also a founding member of the Institute on Religion and

Democracy (IRD). The IRD is a neo-conservative body founded by a group

of political campaigners and evangelical leaders in April 1981 with a

56,500 grant in seed money from the Smith Richardson Foundation (North

Carolina). It was founded on the basis of a report entitled 'Preliminary

Inquiry Regarding Financial Contributions to Outside Political Groups by

Board and Agencies of the United Methodist Church 1977-1979' and

supposedly written by one David Jessup. Jessup, a former member of the

American Peace Corps in Latin America and then a full-time staff member

of the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education had just managed to

work his way into the Marvin Memorial United Methodist Church, Silver

Spring, Maryland. The ideological colouring of the IRD can be seen by

its assertion that 'the most fundamental of all human rights is the

freedom of religious faith and practice' and that the US is the 'primary

bearer of the democratic possibility in the world today':

 

We believe that the personal and institutional ownership and control of

property - always as stewards of God to whom the whole creation belongs

- contributes greatly to freedom. We note as a matter of historical fact

that democratic governance exists only where the free market plays a

large part in a society's economy . . . God has made no special covenant

with America as such. God's covenant is with His creation, with Israel,

and with His Church. However, because America is a large and influential

part of His creation, because America is the home of most of the heirs

of Israel of old, and because this is a land in which His Church is

vibrantly free to live and proclaim the Gospel to the world, we believe

that America has a peculiar place in God's promises and purposes!

 

As the Iran-Contra scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the NED had

links with Lt. Col. Oliver North's vast network of 'private' right-wing

companies and groups (including some from the US Religious Right)

involved in supporting the Nicaraguan contras, UNITA in Angola and the

MNR in Mozambique. In Costa Rica, it was disclosed that Lt. Col. Oliver

North's Project Democracy network had under its control material assets

worth over $4-5 million that included 'six aircraft, warehouses,

supplies, maintenance facilities, ships, boats, leased houses vehicles,

ordnance, munitions, communications equipment and a 6,520 foot runway'.

The lion's share of NED's funds went to the International Department of

the AFL-CIO, whose role in a joint CIA-AATUC (AfricanAmerican Trade

Union Center) abortive coup d'etat against the Ghanaian Government and

attempts to subvert the South African trade union movement were exposed

in 1983.

 

Under Reagan's Presidency, the US Government's mass media activities

became the second major growth industry after the arms industry. Though

a few billion dollars spent on this do not measure up to the military

budget's trillions, it should be noted that a substantial amount of the

Reagan Administration's military. expenditure between 1981 and 1987 went

to the development, production and installing of new telecommunication

systems. First used for global military and intelligence operations, it

would not take long before these found their way into the US

Government's public broadcasting system and eventually into private

media networks.

 

A dramatic indicator of the importance which the Reagan Administration

attached to its propaganda efforts within the LIC-doctrine is provided

by the 1980 report of the USIA's Advisory Commission on Public

Diplomacy, chaired by Edwin Feulner, President of the ultra-conservative

Heritage Foundation, which states that 'public diplomacy is

indispensable to our national security and warrants far more than

existing inadequate levels of support'. As one of its tasks, the

Commission is also charged with the evaluation of various USIA projects

such as the VOA, the anti-Cuban Radio Marti, Fulbright Scholarships and

the NED. Some four years later Steven Steiner, Director of NSC's

International Information and Communications was to reassert the USIA

Advisory Commission's opinion when he declared that 'it is impossible to

say which (military or propaganda) is more urgent because we're trying

to link all these things. I can't say it is more or less important

because public diplomacy is part of the defence effort'.

 

By 1983, the USLA set up a private advisory body called the Ethical

Values Committee 'composed of clergymen and leaders of diverse beliefs

who advise on the ethical implications of agency activities, such as VOA

broadcasting with religious content'. But on closer examination, of its

15 members, none are from the mainstream church bodies and most if not

all are either fundamentalist or pentecostal Christians. In fact, five

were were from the neo-conservative IRD. Despite this obvious bias in

its composition, Rev. John Boyles, chairman of the Committee, considers

his advisors body as being 'pretty middle of the road'. Thanks to its

input, VOA's religious programmes during the past few years have

experienced an unprecedented growth with just one programme, 'Religion

in our Life', expanded from a half-hour to 45 minutes and produced by

Rev. Potapov, chairman of the so-called Committee for the Defense of

Persecuted Christians. In addition, VOA religious programmes have

increasingly adopted a fundamentalist tone and consequently tended to

identify the 'American way of life' with God's image of Heaven itself.

Inside the US the fundamentalist cause was bolstered by the appointment

of William Bennet, a former chairman of the National Endowment for

Humanities and conservative evangelist, as the Department of Education's

Secretary during President Reagan's second term of office. Whilst he

railed against the appalling state and quality of the educational system

and content, whose problems, in a typically evangelical fashion, he

simply ascribed to moral degeneration, he was happily engaged in cutting

the US educational budget during his four years in office. This was in

line with the New Right's overall agenda of reducing government spending

on social, welfare and health matters whilst at the same time helping

corporate and individual private capital to maximise its profits mainly

through company tax reductions and the selling off of state assets

through privatisation.

 

Thus it becomes clear that from the period 1970-1981 (and especially

1981) seems to have been particularly crucial for the US religious

right's growth and expansion at home and abroad. While many of its

constituent bodies have been in existence long before, most were either

formed or reactivated in that period and have seen a phenomenal growth

and undoubtedly a marked increase in their influence since then. This is

particularly so outside the US, southern Africa included, where their

relatively large material resources, ready access to hi-tech mass media

equipment and techniques as well as logistical/financial back-up from

their mother bodies enable them to easily overwhelm any local opposition

to preaching their brand of Christianity. Another important factor which

seems to play in their favour is the relative social fragility and lack

of cohesion of the cultures which they choose to target with their

subversive propaganda war in favour of reactionary regimes and against

progressive/democratic governments. This vulnerability has long been

recognised by the CIA and was even acknowledged by Richard Bissell, one

of its former chiefs:

 

The underdeveloped world presents greater opportunities for covert

intelligence collection simply because governments are much less highly

orientated; there is less security consciousness: and there is apt to be

more actual or potential diffusion of power among parties, localities,

organizations and individuals outside the central governments.

 

 

The New Right

 

 

The term 'New Right' was coined by Kevin Phillips in 1975 and refers to

the amalgam of organisations and institutes spawned by Richard A.

Viguerie, Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips and John Terry Dolan with heavy

funding from such financial magnates as Joseph Coors, Nelson Bunker Hunt

and Richard Mellon Scaife. Kevin Phillips, an aide to former President

Richard Nixon coined the phrase in order to distinguish the New Right

leadership from what they perceived to be the polished but effete

conservative or Old Right leadership of the East Coast. The single most

important issue which led the New Right leadership to disillusionment

and frustration with the Old Right of conservative leadership was the

failure of Barry Goldwater to become President of the US it, 1964.

However, it should be noted that all four leading lights of the New

Right got their start and learnt the art of political organisation in

Old Right politics.

 

While they enjoy heavy funding from the new wealth of oil magnates,

industrialists, manufacturers and big farmers in the US south, midwest

and west coast, the New Right leadership itself is composed of small

businessmen, frustrated professionals, blue-collar workers, clergymen

and angry housewives. Unlike the Old Right, the New Right leadership has

learnt to put less emphasis on larger economic issues. At the same time

it has decided to stir emotions on those related to family personal and

social life to achieve the same objectives which its conservative

forebears failed to do. While it is evident from the above that the New

Right is not a monolithic group, the fact still remains that its wide

network of nearly 40 organisations does not work at cross-purposes. The

move towards institutionalisation of the New Right as a distinct

movement from the Old Right seems to be directly related to the failure

in 1971 of Joseph Coors, owner of the Golden, Colorado-based Coors

Breweries to gain control over three important conservative bodies: the

American Conservative Union (ACU) the Analysis Research Corporation and

finally the Robert M. Schuchman Foundation.

 

In 1973 Coors, with the help and advice of Paul Weyrich, a broadcast

journalist by profession and not the mere 'political mechanic' he

pretended to be, and Edwin Feulner, another Congressional aide, founded

the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation has now probably become

the most important centre for the dissemination of ideas the US. Of the

four major conservative 'think tanks' in the US, it has had the closest

ties with the Reagan Administration. However much has its influence been

in domestic politics, the real impact of its ideas has been in US

foreign policy towards 'third world' countries and the United Nations.

In 1984, US opposition to the call for a New International Information

Order (NIIO) and consequent withdrawal, followed by the United Kingdom,

from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organisation (UNESCO) can largely be attributed to the successful

lobbying done by the Foundation. Together with Howard Phillips, Paul

Weyrich went on to cooperate with the Rev. Jerry Falwell in the founding

of the Moral Majority in 1979.

 

Perhaps the most important constituent body of the New Right network

after the Heritage Foundation is the National Conservative Political

Action Committee (NCPAC), also founded in 1975 by John Terry Dolan, a

lawyer by profession, Charles Black and Roger Stone with the help of

Richard Viguerie. In fact, Charles Black, a former aide to the

ultra-conservative North Carolina Senator, Jesse Helms, former political

director of the Republican (Party) National Committee and member of

Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign, played the leading role in the

establishment of the NCPAC.

 

Once described by former President Ronald Reagan as 'our best bet to

keep the liberals from seizing total control of Congress', the NCPAC,

whose value to political incumbents lies in the provision of experts in

campaign management, press relations, TV advertising and voter surveys

is the most representative of both the New Right and the new Religious

Right insofar as the methods and tactics they employ against their

opponents are concerned. Dolan himself made the astonishing remark that

the methods which his organisation employs for mobilising supporters and

fund-raising are designed to 'make them angry'. 'We are trying to be

divisive' and 'stir up hostilities', he once admitted. As if this were

not enough, he went on to shamelessly admit 'that a group like ours

could lie through its teeth, and the candidate it helps stays clean';

and 'the shriller you are, the better it is to raise money', Dolan

concluded. The NCPAC has under its wings a variety of groups such as the

John Birch Society, the Committee to Save the Panama Canal, the Citizens

Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Committee to Defeat

the (Trade) Union Bosses, the National Right to Life Committee, the

National Pro-Life Political Action Committee, the Life Amendment

Political Action Committee and the American Life Lobby.

 

For instance, a whole combination of the big lie technique, smear

campaigns, dirty tricks and even actions bordering on illegality were

used by the NCPAC in its efforts to discredit and finally oust Frank

Church from the Senate. Despite the fact that Church admits to being a

conservative from a social moral point of view and would there fore fit

in more properly with the New Right and new Religious Right, he was

nevertheless selected as a target for ousting because of his strong

position against increased military expenditure and CIA intervention in

the internal political affairs of other countries. This has led many

observers to correctly conclude that for the New Right leadership,

socio-moral issues like prostitution, homosexuality, women's right to

have control over their productivity and to be a housewife or not merely

represent strong ammunition to be used against their political opponents

in such vital matters as economics, defence, labour laws and social

welfare because of their highly emotional attractiveness.

 

When one examines the political positions of those they target for

defeat, it becomes clear that a Congressman who, for example, is against

an increased military budget or too prolabour will be put on their hit

list if he also supports women's right to choose. But instead of being

taken to task on the labour or military budget issue, opposition against

him will be focused on his stand to abortion. However, if the candidate

they want to groom for office is in favour of increased defence

expenditure, social welfare cuts, against labour unions but at the same

time believes in women's right to choose, the latter will be ignored and

he will be supported. After making a thorough study of the US Federal

Election Commission, Greg Denier, a member of the International

Association of Machinists, reached the conclusion that the various New

Right anti-abortion groups have always opposed a pro-labour candidate

who is also in favour of women's right to choose but strange enough have

failed to do the same against ultra-conservative candidates who are

against labour unions, social welfare but nevertheless in favour of

women's right to choose. In the previously cited article Sheila D.

Collins, for example, reports that in 1981 the New Right spread a

damaging rumour that Ron Asta, a young leading activist in the

environmental and consumer protection movements who since 1972 was a

member of the Arizona State Board of Supervisors for Tucson, was

probably a homosexual because he lived in an apartment for single people

and allegedly wore a false beard. In the same vein, they claimed that Jo

Cauthorn, a state representative, probably does not raise her children

properly because she does not wear abra. Thanks to the use of this

typical method of gutter politics, Ron Asta was defeated.

 

Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, John T. Dolan and Howard Phillips - all

connected to Richard Viguerie as their main fund-raiser through his

directmail RAVCO - plus about 26 others constitute the real and highly

centralised leadership of the New Right, meeting regularly to plan

strategy and tactics, allocate funds and tasks as well as exchange

information. A further look at the directorships and funding sources of

both the New Right and its religious fundamentalist component would

reveal that what we are dealing with is a well coordinated and single

movement from a political-ideological point of view but a broad and

diverse one in terms of the issues it addresses itself to on the ground

and day-to-day level.

 

 

The New Right and the New Religious Right

 

 

The New Right's efforts to co-opt the fundamentalist and pentecostal

movements' leadership into its hidden political agenda can be traced

back to 1976. In that year, New Right pollsters identified 'born again'

Christians as the single largest bloc of unregistered voters and set

themselves the task of tapping this potential. That year. Richard

Viguerie is reported to have told a journalist from the Sojourners, a

Washington, DC-based progressive and moderate evangelical magazine that

he planned to link his huge direct-mail empire with fundamentalist /

pentecostal leaders who were ready to support conservative political

candidates. Shortly thereafter, Paul Weyrich and Rev. Robert Billings, a

fundamentalist preacher, former public school headmaster and

unsuccessful candidate for the Congress founded the National Christian

Action Coalition with Billings as its president. Weyrich's initial

success was followed by the recruitment of Eddie McAteer, a former

Colgate-Palmolive Corporation's sales manager and national field

director of the Christian Freedom Foundation, a fundamentalist religious

and educational body with a tax-exempt status.

 

McAteer then went on to arrange a secret meeting between Weyrich, Howard

Phillips, Jerry Falwell and Rev. Robert Billings. The latter had come

with an urgent proposal for the formation of a tax-exempt lobbying body

to bring about a change in law by applying pressure on legislators. In

order for it to attract attention and elicit some support, he coined the

eye catching but misleading term Moral Majority as its name. Rev.

Falwell, whose Old Time Gospel Hour Inc. (which included the Thomas Road

Baptist Church, Lynchburg Christian Academy, Liberty Baptist (a private

school), a summer youth camp and an alcoholic treatment centre and could

boast of 17,000 members but was in dire financial straits) could not

miss the big opportunity.

 

The inconsistency, if not hypocrisy, of the fundamentalist evangelical

stand is perhaps most starkly illustrated by Falwell himself. Prior to

1979, like most but not all evangelicals, he held the view that

Christians in general and priests and preachers in particular should not

involve themselves in organised politics. For example, during the height

of the American civil rights movement in 1965, he harshly criticised

Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and other black ministers for their

involvement. This came in the form of a sermon called 'Ministers and

Marches' and was delivered from the pulpit of his church. Some 15 years

later, however, FalweI1, a fundamentalist evangelical, recanted

'preaching the pure, saving gospel of Jesus Christ' and denounced his

old sermon as a 'false prophecy'. In recanting his old position in 1980,

Falwell further stated:

 

In recent months, God has been calling me to do more than just preach

-He has called me to take action. I have a divine mandate to go right

into the halls of Congress and fight for laws that will save America.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

 

 

PART 2

 

After playing the major role in its founding, Billings, who was then the

coordinator of church voters in Reagan's presidential campaign, resigned

his post as the first executive director of Moral Majority in mid-1980

to join the President's transition team. As a reward for his efforts

during the presidential campaign James A. Baker III, then the White

House Chief of staff and now Secretary of State, proposed him to the

post of assistant secretary in the Department of Education, with special

responsibility for education in private schools. But Billings'

appointment as assistant secretary for education was rejected and in the

face of this set-back, a new $50,000 a year post of director for the

Department of Education's ten regional offices was created for him.

Among his tasks was as a special 'Christian school liaison officer'.

However, no corresponding structure was set up for the other

denominations, let alone different religious faiths, all of whose

members are equal tax-payers to the treasury.

 

Ultimately, the name Moral Majority has come to be synonymous with the

whole new Religious Right movement. It has managed to transcend its

origin as a WASP organisation to become a coalition which includes

fundamentalist Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and people with no

religious affiliation except their opposition to women's right to

choose. In addition, it has evolved several separate structures so as to

adjust to US tax requirements. These are the Moral Majority Inc., a

non-tax-deductible lobbying body; Moral Majority Foundation, an

educational and voter registration body with tax-exempt status; Moral

Majority Legal Defense Foundation, structured along the lines of but

working in opposition to the efforts of the liberal American Civil

Liberties Union (ACLU) and a number of its own political action

committees.

 

In 1979, the Religious Roundtable, founded by Eddie McAteer as an

umbrella body which exclusively brought together Protestant

fundamentalist preachers, businessmen and military officers, was the

next important organisation to be established prior to Reagan's election

as President. Its two day inauguration meeting was attended by such

notables of the New Right as Weyrich, Phillips, Viguerie and a host of

other fundamentalist leaders. Initially, its board of directors included

Revs. Jerry Falwell, Marion 'Pat' Robertson and James Robison.

Apparently scared that Falwell, a fundamentalist with strong financial

support and Robison, a fiery speaker, would steal the show from him,

Robertson, a pentecostal, suddenly resigned from the Religious

Roundtable in 1980 when, together with Bill Bright, became co-chairman

of the 'Washington for Jesus' rally in which Jim Bakker, the disgraced

founder and president of the PTL ministry, Rev. Billy Graham, Stanley

Mooneyham, the former president of World Vision International (WVI) and

others played a prominent role. Robertson's political pretensions were

for the first time made clear on that occasion when he stated:

 

We have enough votes to run the country. And when people say, 'we've had

enough', we are going to take over.

 

The next year Robertson, a former Marine Lieutenant who once used his

father's influence as a Senator to evade US military service during the

Korean war, ex-executive of W.R. Grace and Company and Yale-educated

lawyer, founded the Christian Broadcasting Network/Corporation (CBN/CBC)

with heavy, funding from the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship

International (FGBMI), a pentecostal body of business and military

leaders set up in 1952. Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where

its CBN University is also located, CBN is a huge commercial empire

which in 1985 is estimated to have had an annual operational budget of

$230,000,000. In addition to the CBN University which offers degree

courses in Bible, business and public policy studies as well as

journalism and communications, it owns an up-to-date and

satellite-linked studio in Washington, DC and a series of local

television stations in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas and Portsmouth,

controlled by its subsidiary the Christian Broadcasting Corporation,

Inc. It also has about 65 offices/missions around the world, including

one in the supposedly independent South African territory of

Bophuthatswana. The major portion of its revenue is contributed by

'sympathetic corporations', including W.R. Grace and Company and leading

members of wealthy families directly or through their foundations rather

than its individual viewers. The latter includes the Coors Foundation,

which has Joseph Coors' wife, Holly Coors, sitting on the CBN

University's board and H.L. Hunt, who helped Robertson to launch a

religious radio broadcast service in Costa Rica with a donation of $10

million in 1970.

 

Ronald Reagan's election as President of the US marked an important

historic divide in the rise and development of the New Right and its

religious component. Once inside the White House, the President,

contrary to envisaged plans for its abolition, decided to retain the

post of special religious advisor. In the face of firm opposition from

the mainline denominations, he appointed Morton C. Blackwell, founder of

the ultra-conservative Committee for Responsible Youth Politics and

ex-editor of the RAVCO-owned New Right Report still with strong

political and financial ties to Viguerie, to the post. In addition,

he-promoted a host of other New Right and fundamentalist zealots to less

senior posts in his Administration.

 

In October 1986 the Freedom Council was forced to dose in the middle of

an audit investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The

investigation arose out of a strong suspicion that it had been abusing

its tax-exempt status to support Robertson's endeavour to enlist the

largely apathetic evangelical community in his political campaigns by

diverting donations to his direct-mail empire. This was followed in 1987

by another investigation into the tax-exempt status of the major TV

ministries by the Congress and chaired by Rep. Pickle. A submission to

the investigating committee concluded that the CBN has been violating

its tax-exempt status as a matter of routine for a long time and called

for a more serious IRS investigation; so far this evidence has been

ignored by both the press and IRS.

 

After Ronald Reagan's election as President, there was a plethora of New

Right and New Religious Right organisations and a marked increase in

their influence both within and outside the US. Of these, the CBN

itself, American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV), Western Goals

Foundation (WGF), Bible News Service, Restore A More Benevolent Order

(RAMBO), Liberty Federation and the International Freedom Foundation

(IFF) would seem to be the most prominent. The Institute on Religion and

Democracy (IRD), though strictly speaking not a New Right but a

neoconservative body, can also be included here because it benefits from

the same sources of funding and is closely linked to Rev. Falwell's

Moral Majority through Rev. Paul Morrel, pastor of a United Methodist

Church (UMC) congregation in Dallas and chairman of Evangelical Missions

for the Good News Movement. Rev. Mottel is also associated with the vast

network of US ultra-conservative organisations. This simple fact makes

the assertion once made by Edmund Robb, chairman of the IRD's Advisory

Board, the Ed Robb Evangelistic Association and a key member of the

so-called Good News movement within the UMC, that 'the Moral Majority

does not represent me' highly deceptive.

 

Despite the lingering suspicion and resentment which the New Right

harbours against the neo-conservatives largely because of their origin

from the northeastern establishment, Democratic Party and Social

Democrats, US structures, highly intellectual style and the prominent

role which Catholics play in it, the IRD has today become the

neoconservatives' religious arm and their most important link with the

New Religious Right. This uneasy relationship is not too difficult to

understand since like the New Right, the neoconservatives champion the

cause of virulent Cold War anti-communism, a militarily strong US and

CIA-support for Zionist Israel and mutual antipathy against third world

countries and their problems.

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

Despite Ronald Reagan's departure from the White House, the contra

scandal revelations, the financial and sex scandals that have brought

down leading figures of the US religious right such as Jimmy Swaggart

and Jim Bakker, the dissolution of Moral Majority by Jerry Falwell and

the negative publicity which has followed these events, the movement is

still set to expand and become a perennial problem for the foreseeable

future. Despite all these set-backs, the US religious right still has

large financial resources, the necessary personnel, the plans and will

to continue its programme of expansion outside the US. Its

infrastructure has largely been left intact and still continues to enjoy

the largesse of wealthy US families, the support and protection offered

by the Government and some of its specialised agencies.

 

Contrary to some expectations, President George Bush has not purged his

administration of the religious right who were employed under the Reagan

Administration. Instead, he has allowed them to entrench themselves in

various Government agencies while he continues to obscure public opinion

by keeping a distance between them and the White House. In some cases,

President Bush, while he deliberately avoids openly showing his support

for the US religious right by not using too much rhetoric in their

favour, has in fact gone further than Reagan in acknowledging their

importance to US foreign policy. For instance, one of his first acts in

support of the US religious right after his election was to appoint Dan

Quayle, a leading fundamentalist, as his Vice President. This was

followed in 1988 by the appointment of William Bennet, former Secretary

of Education during Reagan's second term in office and also a leading

fundamentalist, as his Drug Policy Director. True to his colours as a

fundamentalist more interested in reinforcing white Anglo-Saxon

Protestant (WASP) hegemony than fighting the drug problem, Bennet has

helped President Bush to transform the Reagan Administration's 'war on

drugs' policy into a crusade with a strong religious dent. The ultimate

effect has been to direct the hot brunt of police action against minor

offenders and the help less victims of drug addiction at street level

and allow serious offenders to be treated with leniency or even go scot

free. Ultimately, President Bush's 'war on drugs' policy would only

succeed in reinforcing the stereotype which sees drug addiction in the

US as a problem which simply has its origins outside its borders and

portrays blacks and Latinos as both the main culprits and victims.

 

As they continue their programme of expansion beyond US borders, the

leaders of the religious right are fully aware of the deep economic

crisis which faces most third world peoples and its consequent problems

of poverty, unemployment and ill-health. Faced with what they have been

led to perceive as an essentially evil and sinful world and their sense

of help lessness, many people tend to find the religious message of

fundamentalist/ pentecostalist groups with its promise of a better life

in the hereafter and solution to problems such as poverty, unemployment,

sickness quite appealing.

 

The attractiveness of the fundamentalist/pentecostalist groups'

religious message is also strengthened by the ability of the leadership

of the US religious right to skilfully manipulate these feelings of

predicament and the high level of ignorance and illiteracy in many third

world countries to their advantage

 

 

[Guest guest]

THE RIGHT DECLARES A CULTURE WAR

 

 

 

A well-financed network of conservative groups seeks to push the

intellectual mainstream farther and farther right

 

The backlash against political correctness and multiculturalism in

American education has a carefully crafted political agenda: to

annihilate the progressive gains achieved at American universities since

the 1960s--from feminist scholarship to peace studies to affirmative

action--while ensuring that conservative ideologies thrive. Right wing

organizations have led the assault, alleging that Marxist intellectuals

have "politicized the academy" and imposed ideological constraints on

free speech. Since an inflammatory September 1990 Washington Post op-ed

piece by conservative columnist George Will launched the recent attack

on PC in the national mainstream press, the arguments against political

correctness and multiculturalism have become more widespread (and the

motives for making them more diverse). But a small number of national

organizations, funded by a handful of rightist foundations, has been

laying the ideological and financial groundwork for years. Support for

the right-wing attack comes from the ultra-rightist Reverend Sun Myung

Moon, a variety of conservative publications and think tanks, numerous

New Right luminaries, and even the White House.

 

The familiar message of this network of conservative groups and

intellectuals--that the integrity of our universities (and, ultimately,

Western civilization) is being undermined from within by radical

intellectuals--has become widespread indeed. It has reached campuses

across the country, as well as the highest levels of government, thanks

to a national propaganda campaign financed by the right's well funded

think--tanks and backed by dozens of subsidized local organizations. The

most prominent of these groups are the National Association of Scholars

and the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, both of which baldly lay

out in their own literature the reactionary agenda which underlies the

anti PC movement.

 

 

The National Association of Scholars

 

 

The origin of the National Association of Scholars dates back to 1982,

when the Committee for the Free World, directed by Midge Decter (wife of

neo conservative Norman Podhoretz and board member of the influential

right wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation), helped found a group

called the Campus Coalition for Democracy. Both Decter's son in law, the

recently convicted contra booster Elliott Abrams, and contra leader

Arturo Cruz reportedly spoke at its first conference that year. The head

of the CCD board was Herbert I. London, dean of the Gallatin division at

New York University, and its president was Stephen Balch, a professor of

government at the City University of New York. Another CCD conference,

sponsored by London's Gallatin division at NYU, was held in 1985.

 

In spring 1986, Society magazine published a series of articles

presented at that conference. Introduced by Balch, the symposium

attacked "the politicization of scholarship" by the left. In October

1986, Decter's neoconservative journal Commentary published a similar

attack entitled "The Tenured Left," cowritten by Balch and London. These

articles laid the foundation for the budding anti PC campaign, arguing

that "the left" was well on its way to taking over the academy despite

previous efforts to check this leftist educational coup (such as Reed

Irvine's notoriously misnamed Accuracy in Academia). Balch, London et

al., called for a new, more effective campaign to kick the Marxists out

of academe.

 

In 1987, the same year that Allan Bloom published The Closing of the

American Mind, his bestselling attack on radicalism in the university,

London intensified his own assault against leftist intellectuals. In the

January issue of the World and I, he warned of "Marxism Thriving on

American Campuses." In the May/June issue of the Futurist, he prophesied

the "Death of the University."

 

The former article deserves attention less for its predictable content

than for where it was published. The World and I is a massive 700-page

glossy monthly published by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Washington

Times Company. London himself serves on its editorial advisory board,

along with former CIA official Ray Cline. London also wrote a regular

column for the now-defunct Moonie publication, the New York City

Tribune.

 

By late 1987, the Campus Coalition for Democracy had changed its name to

the National Association of Scholars, with London staying on as board

chair and Balch as president. The NAS published a new journal called

Academic Questions, specifically targeting university professors. The

editor was--here's a surprise--Herbert I. London, who drew the

battlelines in the very first issue: the good guys were Moonie supported

intellectuals such as London himself, and the bad-guys were "radicals

and the "liberal majority" that had surrendered the university to them.

 

The main targets of that first issue were feminist scholarship, literary

theory, and programs instituting student evaluation of teachers. Since

then, Academic Questions has carried articles attacking affirmative

action, peace studies, evolutionary theory, and leftist influence on

African, Latin American, and Asian studies. Both the journal and the NAS

newsletter have featured reports from the front lines of the crusade:

sometimes lamenting defeats, as at Stan ford University, where the

Western civilization course was broadened; and sometimes celebrating

victories, as at Michigan State University, where an anti-harassment

code was successfully challenged.

 

The NAS counts an impressive array of rightist scholars among its sup

porters; its advisory board includes Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, former U.S.

Ambassador to the United Nations; Irving Kristol, neoconservative editor

of the Public Interest; and John Silber, Boston University president and

failed arch-conservative candidate for governor of Massachusetts. From

1985 to 1989, Michael Levin, a CUNY professor who promotes eugenics like

theories of race based differences in intelligence, served on the NAS

board of directors. Levin has advocated the right of storekeepers to

refuse service to blacks and also thinks that blacks and whites should

have separate cars in the New York City subway system. Joe Horn, a

University of Texas at Austin psychology professor who currently sits on

the NAS board of directors, has written such articles as "Truth, Gender,

and the SAT," published in Academic Questions, in which he argues (using

virtually no documentation) that gender based differences in

standardized test scores indicate that men are smarter than women.

 

The NAS, itself well-endowed by major foundations, also provides funding

for its local affiliates. The Duke Chronicle reported:

 

The amount of funding given by the national organization to the local is

determined by the local members, [NAS President Stephen] Balch said. The

national association gives local chapters money if they ask for it....

The money from the national usually goes toward a general operating fund

that is used for purposes that fall within the national NAS agenda.

 

 

The Madison Center for Education Affairs

 

 

The Madison Center for Educational Affairs was formed in the fall of

1990 by a merger of the Madison Center and the Institute for Educational

Affairs.

 

The Madison Center was founded in 1988 by Allan Bloom and former

Education Secretary-turned-drug czar William Bennett, who worked for the

Heritage Foundation before joining the Reagan administration. The

Institute for Educational Affairs was founded in 1978 by Irving Kristol

(also on the advisory board of the NAS), and William Simon, a prominent

libertarian ideologue who was the former Secretary of the Treasury under

Richard Nixon and is currently president of the John M. Olin Foundation.

 

 

In 1980, IEA began funding five right-wing student newspapers. Today,

according to MGEA's first annual re port, it supports 64 student papers.

In 1990, the Madison Center spent $330,617 on its campus journalism pro

gram.

 

"Independent" right-wing college papers, according to an MCEA

representative interviewed last fall, typically receive semesterly

grants; the organization also provides "hotlines" for student editors to

call if they need technical ad vice on newspaper production. Les

Lenkowsky, MCEA board member and former president of IEA, wrote in a

1988 Academic Questions article that these papers rarely failed due to

lack of money. "Most of the papers with the ability to draft a grant

request were awarded funds," he noted approvingly. The MCEA also

operates an advertising consortium which sells advertising space--say,

to Doming Pizza or Coors beer--in MCEA funded student papers, which then

run the ads and collect the money. In addition, the MCEA funds seminars

in journalism skills, and MCEA representatives periodically in specs and

advise local papers in person.

 

One of the most important ways the MCEA promotes its student editors'

careers is through its intern program. The MCEA's 1990 annual report

states that "with the help of the Madison Center's editorial

internships, former Collegiate Network journalists are moving rapidly to

provide balance in the professional press" The MCEA funds both full-year

and summer internships at various publications, corporations, and

governmental agencies. In 1990, for example, it funded two full year

intern ships at the New Republic and two at Academic Questions. The MCEA

also placed summer interns at Policy Review, the theoretical journal of

the Heritage Foundation; Crisis magazine, a conservative Catholic

journal; NBC News; the Office of the Vice-President; the National

Endowment for the Humanities; Insight magazine (owned by the Moonies);

and the Department of Commerce.

 

These internships are lavishly fund ed. In 1989, the conservative Harry

Bradley Foundation alone spent $118, 000 to support "an internship

program for student journalists" through the MCEA; in 1990, it upped its

donation to $137,400. That money not only pro vices young journalists

with credentials, it provides conservative groups with extra de facto

paid staff members. At Academic Questions, for example, one MCEA editor,

Irfan Khawaja, served three full-year internships (1988-1990). Another

MCEA intern, Rich Hough, served two year-long stints (1989-1990). All

told, between 1987 and 1990, six different Collegiate Network

journalists worked at least two consecutive paid full-year internships

at the same publication, including Academic Questions, the New Republic,

the National Review, Chronicles (a publication of the conservative

Rockford Institute), and Orbis (a conservative foreign policy journal).

 

Another MCEA project fends off the "radicalization" and "politicization"

of college curriculums by targeting groups outside the university,

particularly parents. According to a letter received by an NAS member in

1990, before the Madison Center-IEA merger:

 

The NAS is now collaborating with two other organizations, the Madison

Center and the Institute for Educational Affairs, to produce what we

think will be a rather innovative guide to American undergraduate

education: one that seriously examines issues relating to curricular

structure, intellectual standards, the politicization of campus life,

safety on cam pus, etc. The objective will be to create a ready

reference tool for students and parents.

 

The guide is based on a 36 page questionnaire sent out in 1990 to NAS

members, asking questions like: "Are there any groups on campus critical

of the core curriculum? If so, which groups and why?" And: "Do

homosexuals comprise a vocal, active interest group on campus? What are

their objectives?" The questionnaire also asked whether there were any

"minority and/or women's studies centers on campus? If so, what is their

role?" Yet another question asks: "Are many courses used for

indoctrination?" Staffers at MCEA publications were paid to contribute

information to the guide--$25 for filling out the questionnaire, $100

for writing a longer "essay" This process serves the MCEA as a highly

effective tool for gathering information on the campus left.

 

As should be clear from the questions asked and the people chosen to

answer them, the MCEA had no intention of creating an apolitical

handbook for choosing universities. Instead, the MCEA will use this

"guide" as a means to pressure universities into capitulating to the

academic right's agenda by in yoking the fear of a parental backlash. In

1990, the Madison Center spent a whopping $120,930 on the guide--and

that was before the book was even printed.

 

In addition to the MCEA, a small network of organizations channels

promising undergraduates into professional journalism jobs. These groups

include Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute, which trains dozens of

conservative organizers and editors every year, and the Washington-based

National Journalism Center, headed by M. Stanton Evans. Blackwell, a

former Reagan administration appointee and New Right activist since the

1960s, believes that "success in the political process is very largely

determined by the number and effectiveness of the activists on the

respective sides." In the past, Blackwell has used former Dartmouth

Review editors to train students at other campuses. And the Heritage

Foundation's Benjamin Hart writes that Stanton Evans' National

Journalism Center is "placing dozens of . . . graduates every year in

important positions in the news media across the country."

 

 

Following the Money

 

 

During the 1980s, four large conservative philanthropic

organizations--the Harry Bradley, John M. Olin, Smith Richardson, and

Sarah Scaife foundations--funded literally hundreds of conservative

projects, especially in universities. The Olin Foundation donated

$85,000 to the NAS in 1988, according to its 990-F tax return; it upped

its donation to $125,000 in both 1989 and 1990. As noted earlier, the

Olin foundation president is William Simon, a co founder of the

Institute for Educational Affairs; in 1989, Olin gave $123,402 to the

IEA, including $89,782 "to support the Campus Journalism Program." The

1990 Olin annual report lists $153,000 in grants authorized to the IEA's

successor, the MCEA.

 

In his bestselling book A lime for Truth, Simon puts on his Ayn Rand

party dress and declares: "Business must cease the mindless subsidizing

of colleges and universities whose depart meets of economics,

government, poll tics, and history are hostile to capitalism" Although

Simon worries that "capitalism is no longer the dominant orthodoxy" in

universities today, he believes that pro capitalist philanthropy can

still save academia: "Business money must flow generously to those

colleges and universities which do offer their students an opportunity

to become well educated not only in collectivist theory but in

conservative and Libertarian principles as well"

 

The Bradley Foundation began as the local philanthropic arm of the Allen

Bradley Company; the national foundation was formed In 1985 when

Rockwell International Corporation acquired the parent organization.

According to the Bradley biennial report, in 1989 the foundation

conferred $500,000 in seed money to establish the pre-merger Madison

Center and granted another $93,000 in 1990. During the same period, the

IEA received $255,400. Bradley also authorized $177,178 for the NAS in

the same biennium--a total of over $1 million in support for these three

right wing activist groups over a two year period.

 

The Sarah Scaife Foundation lists as its president Richard Mellon

Scaife, heir to the Mellon fortune and perennial funder of the New

Right. According to a landmark July/August 1981 Columbia Journalism

Review article, Scaife teamed up with Joseph Coors in 1974 to provide

seed money for the Heritage Foundation. The president of the Heritage

Foundation since 1977, Edwin Feulner, sits on the board of trustees at

the Scaife Foundation. William Bennett joined the Scaife board in the

summer of 1991, according to Insight magazine, just be fore Scaife

funded his new position as "culture czar" at the Heritage Foundation.

Heritage received a whopping $800,000 from Scaife in 1990, according to

the Scaife Foundation annual report.

 

Richard Mellon Scaife owns numerous media outlets, including newspapers

in the northeast, and, during the late 1960s and 1970s, he operated

Forum World Features, a London-based news agency. According to the CJR

article:

 

Scaife shut down Forum in 1975 shortly before Time Out, a British

weekly, published a purported 1968 CIA memorandum, addressed to then

director Richard Helms, which described Forum as a CIA sponsored

operation providing "a significant means to counter Communist

propaganda" The Forum CIA tie, which lasted into the seventies, has been

con firmed by various British and American publications.

 

Scaife's foundation funds right wing organizations from Accuracy in

Media to Freedom House to the Committee on the Present Danger.

 

The Scaife Foundation apparently felt it was getting its money's worth

from both the National Association of Scholars and the pre MCEA

Institute for Educational Affairs. In 1988, Scaife gave the NAS $50,000;

a year later, the NAS received $300,000. In 1989, the IEA received

$60,000 from Scaife; in 1990, the figure was upped to $75,000.

 

R. Randolph Richardson, the president of the Smith-Richardson

Foundation, sits on the board of directors of the Madison Center;

however, no figures were available from Smith-Richardson at presstime.

Even so, since 1988, funding from just the Olin, Bradley, and Scaife

foundations came to at lease $2.1 million for the NAS, IEA, and Madison

Center combined.

 

That a national conservative crusade on college campuses should be

heavily backed by right wing foundations is not surprising; it merely

illustrates the political character of this enterprise. Running

throughout the lit erasure of the NAS and the MCEA is the theme of

Marxist academics "politicizing" the academy and the curriculum. But the

academic right's constant red baiting, as well as its sophisticated

organization and considerable funding sources, reveals a clear political

agenda of its own. Progressives can't afford to dismiss these highly

political attacks on the "politicization" of education.

 

 

The "Third Generation" Project

 

 

With the coming of the "Reagan revolution" in the 1980s, a new group of

young conservative intellectuals and activists flocked to Washington,

D.C., to staff the newly empowered right wing think tanks, as well as to

assume various bureaucratic positions within the Reagan administration.

Dubbed the "Third Generation," these young conservative ideologues

typically received their political baptism writing for right wing cam

pus newspapers funded by the MCEA, pimping candidates for the College

Republicans, or organizing patriotic demonstrations for Young Americans

for Freedom. Upon being credentialed by the rightist establishment, some

of these young activists gain access to the main stream media and

funding for book pub fishing, while others assume prominent positions on

congressional staffs. They all benefit from the padded resumes they

carry with them long after they leave.

 

The typical Third Generation conservative edited or wrote for a Madison

Center newspaper in college, spent two summers interning with a right

wing think tank or magazine in New York City or Washington, D.C., and

then became a professional intellectual or political operative, selling

his (or, less frequently, her) services to the Reagan administration,

conservative journals, or the ubiquitous research centers. This process

amounts to an alternative credentialing system for carefully selected

young conservatives--one that bypasses graduate school and doctoral

dissertations. "Our most significant achievement," said Morton

Blackwell, former Reagan aide and head of the Leadership Institute, "was

to have credentialed a whole generation of new conservatives."

Blackwell's statement is seconded by Benjamin Hart, Heritage Foundation

administrator (and son of National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart),

who observed that "Ronald Reagan has credentialed a generation of people

who held high positions for their age"

 

The term Third Generation comes from a program by that name sponsored by

the Heritage Foundation. Organized by Benjamin Hart, the Third

Generation project holds biweekly lecture forums designed to develop (in

Hart's words) "a young conservative network--both political and social

in nature--that is vast in terms of numbers of people involved" Every

other Wednesday night, in the Heritage building in Washington, young

rightists convene to drink Coors beer, exchange business cards, and

argue the technical details of conservative theory. According to Hart,

the forums also help the Heritage Foundation to "identify the emerging

leadership" on the right.

 

In his 1987 book The Third Generation: Young Conservative Leaders Look

to the Future, Hart delineates the various "generations" of conservative

leadership in America. For Hart, the First Generation consisted of the

"intellectual groundbreakers" of the 1940s and 1950s, like National

Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., or economist Fredrich Hayek,

godfather of the famous "Chicago school" of free market economics. In

1950, when liberal literary critic Lionel Trilling could declare that

"there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation,"

these intellectuals were already reacting against New Deal liberalism

and laying the intellectual groundwork for the conservative movement.

 

The Second Generation, according to Hart, shifted the focus from

abstract philosophy to practical politics. It "designed political

strategies, trained candidates, set up political action commit tees,

perfected direct-mail fund raising, brought together a coherent body of

politically powerful ideas, and estate fished think tanks to produce

books, studies, and reports on public policy" The think tanks in

particular "provided intellectual ammunition for the political battle,"

and the various rightist publications gave them "a structure that could

circumvent the liberal media" Second Generation activists include

televangelist Jerry Falwell, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley,

and Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner.

 

Third Generation activists, by contrast, are technocratic specialists.

Some focus exclusively on defense policy; some are Christian moralists

outraged at legal abortion; still others are libertarians who champion

private property and the rights of big business. Continuing in the

pragmatic footsteps of the Second Generation, the Third Generation is

"less inclined toward general philosophical speculation than toward

winning individual political and policy battles" Showcasing the

intellectual acumen of this generation, Hart cites in his introduction

an argument between a fundamentalist Christian activist and his

conservative libertarian counter part at a typical Third Generation shin

dig. Blasting the libertarian's arguments for drug legalization, the

Christian declares that the government must set the country's moral

standards, asking whether "people ought to be permitted to fornicate in

public parks if they want?" The libertarian retorts, "I, for one, am

appalled at the idea of public parks. The solution to your dilemma, of

course, is to get rid of publicly owned lands" Hart expresses the hope

that "these young conservatives will remain in Washington long after the

departure of Ronald Reagan, forming an administrative, intellectual, and

activist establishment"

 

[Guest guest]

THE CONSERVATIVE CABAL THAT'S TRANSFORMING AMERICAN LAW

 

 

 

ONE AFTERNOON IN NOVEMBER 1999, only a few weeks after leaving the

Office of the Independent Counsel, Kenneth Starr relaxes happily in the

lobby of Washingtons Mayflower Hotel. The hotel is hopping. Eight

hundred lawyers have converged from all over the country for a

convention--three days of celebrity gazing, brisk intellectual

discourse, and hard-headed networking. It is the annual lawyers' meeting

of the Federalist Society--a conservative legal fellowship to which

Starr belongs--and he is in his element. The former special prosecutor

is surrounded by a small group of gray-suited young "Feddies," who

introduce themselves, conduct short interviews, whisper words of homage,

or simply stare in awe. Starr beams--clearly enjoying this moment of

adulation.

 

On friendly turf now, Starr may also be projecting feelings of

gratitude. For as Joe Conason and Gene Lyons demonstrate in The Hunting

of the President (see excerpts on pages 17-18), Starr and the OIC

benefited enormously from the efforts of a network of well-placed

lawyers who, like Starr and other Republican luminaries, are members of,

or linked to, the Federalist Society. Most of the self-styled "elves"

who helped Linda Tripp's tapes find their way into Kenneth Starr's hands

had links to the Society. And without the elves' handiwork plus the

leaks, coaching, and sheer brainpower contributed by the extended

Federalist network, Starr's investigation might never have gotten out of

the blocks.

 

Tonight at the Mayflower you get a sense of just how powerful and

far-reaching the Society is. There are stars from every corner of the

Republican establishment in the room. From snippets of conversation, one

concludes that they are joined not only at the ideological hip but by a

collective hatred for President Clinton--perhaps more for standing in

the way of their Revolution than for any moral or legal lapses. Members

of Starr's old team like constitutional law advisor Ronald Rotunda (who

counseled Starr that he could indict a sitting president) rub shoulders

with old-timers from the Reagan administration--former Attorney General

Edwin Meese, Solicitor General Charles Fried, and Civil Rights

commissioner Linda Chavez--and with former Bush White House Counsel C.

Boyden Gray. The room bulges with partners from among the most powerful

law firms in the land: New York's venerable Sullivan & Cromwell;

Chicago's Kirkland & Ellis (Starr's outfit); Washingtons own Wilmer,

Cutler & Pickering (Gray's firm); and Los Angeles powerhouse Gibson,

Dunn & Crutcher (its Washington office is home to Theodore Olson--whose

contributions to Starr's efforts are colorfully documented in the

Conason and Lyons excerpts referred to above).

 

And then there are the judges. No fewer than eight federal judges, most

of whom are still active on the bench, will sit on panels or speak from

the podium during this three day affair. Their discussions range from

the technical to the deeply ideological. Former federal judge Robert

Bork comments on the "inertia" and "weariness" he has observed in

American liberalism--themes drawn from his recent book, "Slouching

Toward Gomorrah" And Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas attacks the

American Bar Association for being too socially conscious--advancing a

slate of liberal positions "that go beyond representing the interests of

lawyers as a profession."

 

The event has an intensely energetic feel. With the White House again

within reach, the Mayflower is wrapped in a bubble of great

expectations. And why not? The Society's mission is to advance a

conservative agenda by moving the country's legal establishment to the

right, and they are succeeding. Despite eight years of a Democratic

administration, the impact of the Reagan Revolution continues to

reverberate in the nation's courts. (See "The Gipper's Constitution,"

December 1999.) And now one of the legal theories the Federalists are

pushing could make regulation by federal agencies unconstitutional in

some cases and--if carried to its logical extreme--be the Federalists'

crowning achievement in their unspoken campaign to change the face of

law and politics in America.

 

 

Who are they?

 

 

With 25,000 members plus scores of close affiliates

nationwide--including Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia,

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, and University of

Chicago brainboxes Richard Epstein and Frank Easterbrook (also a federal

appellate judge)--the Federalist Society is quite simply the

best-organized, best-funded, and most effective legal network operating

in this country. Its rank-and-file include conservative lawyers, law

students, law professors, bureaucrats, activists, and judges. They meet

at law schools and function rooms across the country to discuss and

debate the finer points of legal theory and substance on panels that

often include liberals--providing friction, stimulus, and the illusion

of balance. What gets less attention, however, is that the Society is

accomplishing in the courts what Republicans can't achieve politically.

There is nothing like the Federalist Society on the left.

 

The Society's origins can be traced back to 1979--the year before Ronald

Reagan's victory--when a legal scholar named Michael Horowitz published

a tract on the public-interest law movement, exhorting conservatives to

overturn a half-century of liberal dominance of the legal establishment.

This could be done, he wrote, by indoctrinating or winning over

succeeding generations of law students, lawyers, and judges. By

definition, the campaign had to be rooted in the fertile ground of law

schools. To Horowitz's good fortune, Reagan was elected in 1980, and his

administration set to work filling the sails of the Federalist movement.

 

 

Horowitz's concept was taken up with relish by senior members of the new

Administration. They operated on two tracks--designed to insure that the

Reagan Revolution would well outlast the Reagan Presidency. The first,

to reclaim the Federal courts from liberals, swept an array of

conservative scholars and judges from law schools and state courts onto

the Federal bench: the likes of Robert Bork, Ralph Winter, Antonin

Scalia, Richard Posner, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy.

 

The second track was even more forward looking and involved the

apprenticing of a new generation of conservative

lawyer-intellectuals-under-30 to the Reagan apparat. This second track

required fresh meat, which is where the Federalist Society came in. The

founding chapters of the Society were established at Yale, where Bork

taught before Reagan nominated him to the bench, and at the University

of Chicago, where Scalia was faculty advisor and from whose ranks he

would later recruit former student-Federalists to prestigious Supreme

Court clerkships. Originally the chapters were little more than a

debating circle and comfort station for young conservatives who felt

themselves victimized by liberal persecution. The Society's executive

director Eugene Meyer recalls of his experience at Yale Law School that

"someone was writing 'fascist' on our posters, or taking them down. Then

cooler faculty heads [such as Bork] channeled our angers and

frustrations into organizational activity." Keen self-promoters, they

made a mascot of James Madison (on the debatable grounds that he favored

decentralized government in his later years) and took the name of

Madison's 18th-century Federalist Party as their own.

 

For the Reaganites running the federal government in the 1980s, the

Society was a godsend. Here was a group of hard-charging legal minds

committed to a set of principles that could not have been better suited

to the judicial implementation of a Republican agenda if Ed Meese had

drafted them himself. The Federalists were (and remain) "originalist" in

their approach to the Constitution--meaning that they favored strict

textual readings that tended to shear back constitutional principles

developed during the more liberal Warren Court era. In terms of

substantive law, they promoted the conservative mantra of states' rights

to leach power away from "big government" in Washington. At a deeper

intellectual level they tended to be either libertarians (meaning that

they opposed government regulation as an intrusion on individual

liberty) or devotees of the free-market cult of law and economics

(meaning that they opposed government regulation for interfering with

"market efficiencies").

 

Naturally, the new Washington establishment snapped up the founding

Federalists. The student cadre graduated and went to work in the Reagan

White House and Justice Department, and to clerk in the chambers of

newly appointed conservative judges. Edward Lazarus, whose recent book,

Closed Chambers, momentarily breached the sanctity of Supreme Court

manners and procedures, recalls the arrival of 10 young Federalists as

clerks in the October 1988 term ("the cabal," they called themselves),

who "created a critical mass of ideological conservatives" Lazarus, a

"dreaded Lib," clerked for moderate Justice Harry Blackmun, and records

how the Cabal ran its own email network. They "obsessively" worked as a

"collective mission" to influence conservative justices, notably on

death-penalty cases expediting executions, about which one emailed the

others: "We need to get our numbers up" Lazarus quoted another cabalist

who, venting his rage about the refusal of the Senate to confirm Robert

Bork for a seat on the high court, said: "Every time I draw blood, I'll

think of what they did to Bork."

 

The Federalist Society's student founders acquired conservative polish

from the leading politicos of the Reagan and Bush eras, and have gone on

to become political powers in their own right. Lee Liberman Otis and

David McIntosh, who founded the Society's University of Chicago chapter,

were trained at the Justice Department by Edwin Meese. Liberman then was

graduated to the position of assistant general counsel at the Bush White

House under C. Boyden Gray. Reporters quoted Otis and McIntosh in 1986

as saying that nearly half the 150-odd political appointees they

cleared, including five of the 10 assistant attorneys-general, were

active in Society programs. Otis is now a counsel and policy adviser to

Sen. Hatch on the Senate Judiciary Committee. As for McIntosh, he became

executive director of Vice-President Quayle's Council on Competitiveness

("making sure," according to Time Magazine, "that new environmental and

health laws are as beneficial to business as possible"). He subsequently

became a congressman from Indiana, and now is running for governor.

Another charter member, Spencer Abraham, Michigan Law '86, is running

for re-election to a second term as Republican senator from that state.

He sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Hatch. All three are

founder/directors of the Federalist Society, with Otis and McIntosh as

co-chairs.

 

As the Society grew in influence, it grew in wealth. A year after

founding the first student chapters in 1982 at Yale and University of

Chicago law schools, student leaders received $25,000 for their first

national symposium, the seed money coming from the Institute for

Educational Affairs, overseen by the influential neoconservatives

William Simon and Irving Kristol. By 1998, the annual contribution total

had soared a hundred-fold to $2,600,000--a third from core conservative

underwriters like the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife

Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Lilly

Endowment, whose sustained patronage has nurtured the tightly linked

constellation of think tanks and advocacy groups that form the spine of

the conservative movement. Under Simon's leadership, the Olin Foundation

is a principal patron of the Federalist speakers bureau. It has also

been active at the level of law school faculties: By providing grants to

fund visiting professorships in law and economics, it opens doors to

academics who are likely to be sympathetic to the Society's agenda. In

1999, Microsoft for the first time gave the Federalist Society $75,000.

"The Microsoft case: Legal and Political Implications" was a featured

panel topic in Federalist meetings.

 

As its wealth has increased, so have the Society's membership rolls. In

1983, there were 17 Federalist chapters based solely at law school

campuses. Today, there are lawyers' chapters in some 60 cities, and

student chapters on 140 out of 182 accredited law school campuses. Law

students constitute more than half the total membership. The Society has

opened a drive to recruit more professors. Young recruits are attracted

by ideology and ambition--the promise of joining alumni such as Otis,

McIntosh, and Abraham in the highest reaches of power politics. In 1997,

a full $560,000--one-quarter of the Society's budget--underwrote the

high-visibility programs organized by the Society's well- endowed

national speakers bureau, whose outreach reinforces recruiting efforts

on campus. Prominent campus ambassadors include Charles Murray, author

of The Bell Curve, Abigail Thernstrom, author of America in Black and

White, and Dinesh d'Souza of the American Enterprise Institute. Leaders

of right-wing activist organizations also travel the campus circuit, the

Federalist cover softening their right-fringe reputations (see

"Provocation 101").

 

But the Federalists are not just about recruiting young bodies. They are

also active in shaping the law.

 

Perhaps the network's most far-reaching victory in recent years was a

1999 decision by a Federal appellate panel of DC Circuit judges in a

case called American Trucking v. EPA, which stunned clean-air advocates

by rolling back EPA standards covering smog and soot. The decision was

based on the principle of "non-delegation," a rigid and archaic reading

of the Constitution, which holds that Congress retains all legislative

authority, but not the power to delegate regulatory power to executive

agencies. C. Boyden Gray, a member of the Federalist Society's Board of

Trustees, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in American Trucking. Gray

was also good enough to share his insights on non-delegation with the

Federalist convention in November when he moderated a panel discussion

entitled: "The Non-Delegation Doctrine Lives!"

 

One extraordinary thing about the American Trucking decision was just

how well it served private industry at the expense of the public

interest. A commentator writing in a Federalist Society newsletter

crowed that American Trucking will save industry "in the neighborhood of

$45 billion per year?' Perhaps that is true-and perhaps industry would

save even more money if the courts decide to eliminate, for example, the

Food and Drug Administration's jurisdiction over food and drugs. But the

social costs would be enormous.

 

 

The Practice Groups

 

 

The key mechanism for putting the Society's theories into practice is

the "practice groups" that it has organized in 15 areas ranging from

administrative law to civil rights to put its theories into practice.

These groups permit the Society to recruit pro bono legal brainpower for

conservative causes. Busy litigators for activist conservative

organizations double as leaders on the executive committees of the

practice groups. Here, strategies and theories for potential litigation

are introduced, debated, and circulated. The results are carried back to

the activist groups, which pick the causes and cases to be litigated,

file the suits, write the briefs, argue the cases, arrange publicity,

and change the law. You get an excellent fix on Federalist influence

from studying a who's who of Federalist practice group leaders. These

movers and shakers include:

 

* C. Boyden Gray--is chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a

conservative advocacy group. The Washington Post recently reported that

Gray's organization has accepted millions of dollars to champion

corporate causes, including payments from: affected sugar producers (to

work against efforts to restore the Florida Everglades); Exxon (to fight

against the campaign to reduce global warming); Philip Morris (to resist

higher cigarette taxes); Microsoft (to weaken antitrust enforcement);

and certain auto rental companies (to undermine Florida's tort laws).

The peripatetic Federalist board member is a subcommittee chairman of

the Society's Administrative Law and Regulation practice group.

* Manuel Klausner--is a litigator for the Individual Rights

Foundation and was a lead attorney for Californians Against

Discrimination and Preferences. Klausner successfully defended the

constitutionality of Proposition 209 (California's anti-affirmative

action statute) and has also worked to block benefits to illegal

immigrants in California. Klausner is chairman of the Society's Free

Speech and Elections practice group.

* Michael Rosner--is a litigator for the conservative Center for

Individual Rights. Rosner collaborated with Klausner on Proposition 209.

As defense attorney in a celebrated Virginia rape case, he recently used

states rights to argue before the Supreme Court against the

constitutionality of provisions of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act.

Rosner is a vice chairman of the Society's Civil Rights practice group.

* Michael Carvin--is a founder and board member of the Center for

Individual Rights. Carvin argued and won a recent Supreme Court voting

rights case limiting the federal government's ability to protect

minority voters in state and local elections. He has also worked on

numerous anti-affirmative action cases. Carvin is chairman elect of the

Society's Civil Rights practice group.

* James Bopp--is general counsel to the National Right to Life

Committee and legal counsel to the Christian Coalition. Bopp has led

campaigns against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill and

legalized abortion. Bopp chairs a subcommittee within the Free Speech

and Elections practice group.

* Roger Clegg--is chief counsel for the conservative Center for

Equal Opportunity. Clegg has labored to roll back affirmative action

statutes, as well as bilingual education and immigrant rights. Clegg is

a vice chairman of the Society's Civil Rights practice group.

 

A major factor in the Society's success has been the composition of the

federal bench. (There are still more sitting Republican than

Democrat-appointed federal judges.) One reason is that the gatekeeper to

the federal judiciary is Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch--who happens to

co-chair the Federalist Board of Trustees (with Robert Bork) at the same

time as he chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. As such, he is chief

blocking back for delay-oriented Senatorial Republicans on the

confirmation of President Clinton's judicial nominations. With as many

as four Supreme Court justices approaching retirement in the relative

near term, Hatch has the judicial implications of the 2000 elections

very much in mind. In the past, he has made so-called "judicial

activism" a litmus test for Democratic appointees. Applying that theme

to the upcoming elections, he has warned that placing nominations in the

hands of a "far-left" Gore or Bradley would bring about "a sea change in

the law to the detriment of every family, every religion, every person

of conscience?'

 

Retired federal judge Lawrence Walsh, who screened judicial nominees as

deputy attorney-general for the Eisenhower Administration, declares that

the Federalist subtext of Hatch's statements goes over the line: "By his

very statements, Hatch supports my concern that the attack on judicial

activism is a political attack; and an organization devoted to that [the

Federalist Society] is thereby a political organization," says Walsh.

"Our Constitutional and judicial processes will surmount almost

anything... but dogmatic views developed wholly outside the system."

 

Walsh is speaking of the federal courts here, but his caution applies

equally to developments in certain states. Consider what has happened in

Michigan, where Governor John Engler and five of the seven justices of

the state Supreme Court are Federalist members--including Steven

Markman, a Reagan official and former head of the D.C. Federalist

Society chapter. According to a recent survey, in 20 cases before that

court pitting private citizens against insurance companies and

corporations, the Michigan Supreme Court decided against individual

plaintiffs 19 times. During the previous year, when moderates held a 4-3

majority, individuals won 22 of 45 cases.

 

 

Law, politics, or both?

 

 

Funnily enough, despite all that its members and affiliates have done in

the service of the conservative cause, the Federalist Society is

decidedly reluctant about claiming credit for its impact out in the

political world.

 

"We do not touch partisan politics in any way shape or form," says the

Society's executive director Eugene Meyer. "We do not lobby. We are a

forum for ideas, discussion, and debate."

 

Meyer has financial reasons to say this: The Society's tax-exempt status

requires it to stay away from political activity. But to call the

society apolitical is a bit of a stretch, says Alfred Ross, whose

Institute for Democracy Studies tracks right-wing organizations and will

soon publish a report on the Federalist Society. Ross points out that

strategizing and working to change the law is an inherently political

act. The Society "pollinates, permeates, and shapes the rhetoric and the

debate about the law itself" says Ross. "To the extent that the judicial

system is how a democratic society is organized, of course the

Federalists are political?'

 

To see that he's right, one need only review changes that litigators

linked to the Federalists have wrought upon the law. They have weakened

or rolled back statutes on civil rights and affirmative action; voting

rights; women's rights and abortion rights; workers' rights; prisoners'

rights; and the rights of consumers, the handicapped, and the elderly.

Add to that the consequences of non-delegation if further extended.

Regulatory oversight by federal agencies would then be kicked back to

Congress and the states--like the power to preserve open pipelines in

telecommunications, to regulate transportation, the drugs we take, the

food we eat. Would we really want elected officials directly responsible

for regulating industries that are also major sources of their campaign

funds? That is very much a political question--one to which the

Federalist Society's answer is unfortunately all too clear.

 

 

Provocation 101

 

 

The campus chapter of the Federalist Society is far and away the most

conspicuous and active of the 34 student organizations at the University

of Illinois College of Law. Honoraria and traveling expenses for the

right wing presenters who find their way to Champaign Urbana are

underwritten by the national organization. The events attract attention,

potential recruits, and, occasionally, thunderbolts.

 

Thunder was definitely in the air last April when Lino Graglia came to

town. A law professor at the University of Texas, he is a well-traveled

Federalist attraction--and a racial provocateur. Graglia was to lecture

on originalism and the Constitution. But earlier pronouncements he had

made concerning the "cultural deficiencies" of affirmative action

recipients set the tone for his visit.

 

Minority groups organized, staged a sit-out, and leafleted attendees

with Graglia's most inflammatory rhetoric-including a declamation that

"Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with

whites in selective institutions" And then, as if to throw fuel on the

fire, Graglia stood in front of TV cameras and affirmed what he had said

before.

 

Campus liberals accused the Federalist Society of goading the law

school's minority students into raising hell, in part so the student

Feddies could appear paragons of reason by contrast. But the president

of the law school's Federalist chapter, Scott Hoffert, claimed he

couldn't understand why Graglia's visit touched off a ruckus: "We never

expected that response," he said. "Accusations that we invited him here

to deliberately insult minority students are absurd. We foster

discussion?

 

Former federal appellate judge Abner Mikva, an adjunct professor at the

law school, expressed "amazement" over the "incredible influence" of the

140 campus Federalist chapters: "Where so many of the nation's leaders

are groomed, the Federalists manipulate the landscape. It was once held

that liberals ran the law schools. The liberals had the name but the

Federalists own the game. For students on the go, there is no where else

to go"

 

~~~~~~~~

 

By Jerry M. Landay

 

JERRY M. LANDAY is Honors Assoc. Prof. Emeritus in Journalism at the

University of Illinois. He served as a correspondent in Washington and

New York for ABC News and CBS News.

 

 

[Guest guest]

http://crisispapers.igc.org/topics/fascism.htm