Antony C. Sutton's America's Secret Establishment

Antony C. Sutton's America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. Waterville, Oregon: Trineday LLC, 1983, 1986, 2002.

How many books go into third editions?  This one, which Kris Millegan reprinted in 2002, is worth reading.  I attended a libertarian-oriented cocktail party in Manhattan this summer, and one of the attendees, a respected educator who, as a young man, met Ayn Rand and, as a grown-up, helped the Soviet Union transition to a freer economy, recommended Sutton's book to me.

I don't, as a rule, believe in conspiracy theories.   Apparent conspiracies arise from subjective paranoia,  prejudice, or mischaracterization of a pattern as a conspiracy.  This may not detract from the theory's value because insights about a pattern can be useful even if the pattern does not bear the C-word's weight.  For instance, James Perloff's Shadows of Power, which does not claim that the Council on Foreign Relations is a conspiracy (it is not), presents a useful narrative. In the case of America's Secret Establishment, Sutton, a respected historian who spent years with the Hoover Institution, claims that Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society, is one.

While Sutton shows that it does qualify, the broad trends that Sutton describes aren't attributable solely or even mostly to it;  he overstates its importance.  Nevertheless, Sutton's work is useful not only as a discussion of an idiosyncratic, secret, elite group that seems to have furthered the financial aims, sometimes illegal, of a subset of its members, but also, and more importantly, as a discussion of how America's elite became enamored of statism, has manipulated public opinion by creating the illusion of a two-party system with a fake liberal-conservative dichotomy, and has established a crony capitalist system based on economic regulation and control facilitated by the fake dichotomy.    Sutton's book, written in 1983, is prophetic as the American state becomes increasingly corrupt, dysfunctional, and totalitarian.

When Sutton wrote the first edition, George H.W. Bush was vice president. Since then, Bush and his son, both Skull and Bonesmen, have been presidents--to ill effect.  Written before the first Bush presidency, the book shows that Bush's use of the phrase "new world order" comes directly from Skull and Bones's history.

Many of the names in Sutton's narrative have aged, but they have been pivotal in the creation of the 21st century's deteriorating America. These include McGeorge Bundy, W. Averell Harriman,William F. Buckley, and Daniel Coit Gilman. It is not clear, though, that the old-line WASPs whose ancestors arrived here in the 1630s have the same panache that they had even twenty years ago.  Today, people like the Waltons, the Kochs, Buffett, Soros, and Bloomberg dominate the upper echelons of the Forbes 400; not all of them are as vulnerable to the kinds of manipulations that Sutton describes by which Skull and Bones insiders got control of key foundations and furthered the aims of progressive education via non-Skull-and-Bonesmen like John Dewey.

Moreover, the Order of Skull and Bones, to which Sutton refers simply as "the Order," seems to have increased its diversity by the 1980s, although names like Taft (including the Order's founder, Alphonso Taft, Grant's Secretary of War, and his descendent, William H. Taft,  president and US Supreme Court chief justice) continue to appear.  This presents a problem for Sutton's model because he asserts that the old, monied names that have dominated American foundations and the formation of its educational system view even the Rockefellers as upstarts.  If so, then what is the deeper meaning of an Order that has not only included six Bushes over a century, but in recent years also has included names like Shapiro, Nguyen, Moscoso, Meyer, Gottheim, Grossman, Ruiz, Jimenez, Mehta, and Sarnelli, according to Sutton's list of the Order's members at the end of the book?

What is valuable about the book is Sutton's philosophical probing of the Hegelian model behind progressive education, the support foundations have given to various soft totalitarian causes, and American support, via Order-related banks like Guaranty Trust and Harriman Brothers, for the nation's putative opposition--the Nazi and the communist movements, both of which received essential funding from the Order-related banks.

The concepts of  Hegelian state worship and managed conflict that Sutton explores and says have been characteristic of the Order also have been characteristic of the entire Progressive movement, including not only the Order but also a large swath of Americans including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson--as he transitioned into support for Progressivism. Progressives came from the University of Wisconsin, and virtually every other university, as well as Yale.

Sutton is wrong that Kant and Hegel are closely linked, especially with respect to state worship.  Kant's categorical imperative is liberal; it requires that humans be treated as ends in themselves. However, Kant in some ways represents a transition to statism, as does utilitarianism from Bentham on.  Von Mises is wrong that utilitarianism is necessarily individualist.  The 18th and 19th century versions mostly were, but in Mill there is a transition to a more socialistic utilitarianism which we also saw in recent years in the Chicago School's and Judge Posner's support for bailouts of incompetently run investment companies.

Intellectual histories of 19th and 20th century America, studies of the histories of American universities, and studies of the transformation of the American economy show that there was a widespread transition from individualism to Progressivism and collectivism  in the 1890s and that part of the reason was that Americans like Richard T. Ely were educated in Germany, where collectivist ideas, including Hegel and the related German historical school of economics, were taught.  It is not surprising, then, that the elite of the elite, Yale's handpicked members of the Order, have also advocated Hegelian, Progressive,  and soft totalitarian ideas.  In the case of Ely, Sutton neglects to mention that marginalist economists like John Bates Clark wrested control of the American Economics Association from Ely.  In the end, this point may not have mattered much because marginalism is consistent with conservative versions of Progressivism.

Sutton's book is valuable because it traces in incredible detail one sub-group within the Progressive movement, the Order's, criminal financing of both Bolsheviks and Nazis and because Sutton gives a valuable philosophical interpretation.  Progressivism and the Order adopted a Hegelian dialectical approach to political strategy whereby they support both sides (both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, communists and Nazis) in order to achieve a totalitarian synthesis that neither side, both of which are manipulated, anticipates.

The book is extraordinarily useful in showing that the claims of Progressivism about helping the poor and being democratic were always lies; from the beginning Progressivism had totalitarian aims.  Today's America is increasingly reflecting those aims.  As a recent Rasmussen poll showed, only 14% of Americans believe that their descendents' futures will be better than theirs.  Might they consider that they are responsible for voting the likes of Kennedy (McGeorge Bundy,  Harriman), Harriman, Roosevelt, and Obama into office--and that the decisions that the American Establishment has made, and for whom the average voter pulls a lever each election day, are the reasons  that things are going down hill?

Paradox inside an Enigma: Engage Mid-Hudson's Puzzling Kickoff

I submitted this piece to The Lincoln Eagle early this morning. 

Newburgh, NY, July 30--Lincoln Eagle exclusive.  About 200 people, mostly town-and-county-level politicians and bureaucrats, descended upon the Newburgh campus of Orange County Community College to participate in Engage Mid-Hudson's kickoff.  Engage Mid-Hudson is one of 10 regional sustainability groups that Governor Andrew Cuomo has funded through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The mid-Hudson region extends north from Westchester through Rockland, Putnam, and Orange, to Dutchess and Ulster Counties.  Co-chairs David Church, planning commissioner of Orange County, and Thomas Madden, commissioner of community development and sustainability for the Town of Greenburgh, led the meeting. 

Assemblyman Frank Skartados, representing the Newburgh (100th) Assembly District, offered a few opening remarks. He thought that Engage Mid-Hudson is out to streamline government.  A paradox became evident a few minutes later when Mr. Church divulged that Governor Andrew Cuomo had spent $100 million to fund the 10 regional sustainability groups (according to NYSERDA's website the booty was split evenly across the 10 regions).  I asked Mr. Church whether the aim of streamlining government is consistent with eight-digit slush funds.  Mr. Church's answer was that the endowment reflects the voters' will, even though the senior elected official present, Mr. Skartados, had just expressed a preference for streamlining government. Also, since the majority of New York residents in my lifetime have fled the state because of excessive costs and mismanagement, it is difficult to know whose preferences Mr. Cuomo has in mind: waste's victims or its progenitors. 

A second paradox followed.  Engage Mid-Hudson bills itself as open to public opinion, but a number of pro-freedom activists were present, and they called out questions during Mr. Church's talk.  Mr. Church handled the disagreement well, but several members in the audience began to berate the pro-freedom activists.  One, whom one of the freedom activists alleged is the owner of a green development firm that stands to profit from Engage Mid-Hudson, suggested to Mr. Church that the freedom activists be banned from future meetings.  It would seem that owners of businesses that stand to directly profit from Engage Mid-Hudson should be required to identify themselves at the beginning of meetings.  It seems as likely as not that Engage Mid-Hudson is just one more Democratic Party scam, like Maurice Hinchey's green development follies and Barack Obama's bailouts.   

A third paradox became evident when Mr. Church announced six working groups, including one for economic development.  Herb Oringel, an IBM retiree and chair of the economic development consortium, claimed that Engage Mid-Hudson could bring jobs to the region. Activist Glenda Rose McGee asked what kind of jobs could a tax-based bureaucracy like Engage Mid-Hudson create.  The question was a good one.  Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson explains why the broken window fallacy, an economic fallacy that has re-gained currency under the Bush and Obama administrations, is incorrect.  Government cannot make work by breaking windows.  The reason is that to pay for the broken window repair someone must be taxed.  The taxed money reduces private sector demand.  By advocating government spending and higher taxes, groups like Engage Mid-Hudson destroy legitimate jobs, jobs that satisfy legitimate market demand, and replace them with jobs that reflect the needs of politicians and special interests.  

Mr. Oringel's response to Ms. McGee was not reassuring. His chief example of jobs creation was the turning of Sing Sing Correctional Facility into a tourist attraction.  I would feel better if a private developer were to take the project because Mr. Oringel's IBM experience has not prepared him to assess market risk of this kind. For example, might Steve Wynn be willing to take gambling up the river? Engage Mid-Hudson and Governor Cuomo don't know. Since they are not going to invest their own money, they don't care in the same way that Steve Wynn would. There is little difference between Mr. Oringel's project and window breaking. 

In a question-and-answer period Ms. McGee raised a further point: regional sustainability plans are likely a pretext for more intensive intervention and regulation. In particular, the Towns of Woodstock, Olive and Saugerties have seen proposals for the construction of unneeded planned housing projects tightly linked to sustainability plans.   

I raised a question as to Engage Mid-Hudson's identity.  I asked whether it is a government organization or a non-government organization.  Mr. Church said that it is neither. This was a fourth paradox because if Engage Mid-Hudson is neither a government nor a non-government organization, then it does not exist and it cannot cash NYSERDA's $10 million check. Tsk, tsk--a Zen-like conundrum any green business crony can ponder.

Rife with paradox the meeting was unpersuasive.  What is the purpose of Engage Mid-Hudson beyond providing funding for crooked, green businesses?  In Canada and elsewhere NGOs have been used to subvert republican governmental structures and regulatory authority. In the tradition of New York's honest graft, are we to expect just one more deal in the Plunkitt tradition or a more serious incursion on republicanism?

Psychiatric Tyranny

Be Libertarian with Me

 Check out Gary Johnson's new video.