America's Ruling Class: An Early Phenomenon

Books like G. William Domhoff's Who Rules America? have documented the existence of an elite ruling class in America. The existence of a power elite does not represent a new phenomenon. From its inception, a discrete class has wielded enormous influence in governing this nation.

One of a series of anti-federalist newspaper articles warns that the Constitution establishes the machinery by which a self-seeking minority may gain control for power and profit. Many have credited Richard Henry Lee for the articles which appear in a collected form in the book Letters from a Federal Farmer. Lee warned against:

. . . an aristocratic faction; a junto of unprincipled men, often distinguished for their wealth or abilities who combine together and make their object their private interests and aggrandizement.; the existence of this description is merely accidental, but particularly to be guarded against. (p. 73)
He further observed:

Now, my opinion is, that the representation proposed is so small as that ordinarily . . .  the parade of words and forms the government must possess the soul of aristocracy, or something worse, the spiritof popular leaders. (ibid.)

America has evolved a hybrid of the two: political demagogues under the sway of an aristocratic elite.

A book published in 1830 reveals not only the existence of a class-based elite, but also that the youths of that class were being groomed for power. The title page of the book tells it all:

THE POLITICAL CLASS BOOK ; INTENDED TO INSTRUCT THE HIGHER CLASSES IN SCHOOLS IN THE ORIGIN, NATURE, AND USE OF POLITICAL POWER. 

"Government is instituted for the common good ; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people ; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.'" Mass. Bill of Rights. " Ignorantia legum neminem excusat ; omnes enim praesumuntur eas nosse, quibui cranes consentiunt."

 BY WILLIAM SULLIVAN, 

COUNSELLOR AT LAW. 

WITH AN UPON STUDIES FOR PRACTICAL MEN; 

WITH NOTICES OF BOOKS SUITED TO THEIR USE. 

BY GEORGE B. EMERSON.

Note the quote from the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, almost as an obligatory disclaimer. The book's text contains nothing of the conspiratorial about it, but rather introduces the student in catechetical fashion to the theory of government as well as a practical nuts-and-bolts guide to using government.

This, in itself, would give an advantage to the governing class over those who did not receive such practical instruction.

Foundations: Instruments of Establishment Control

The following video presents G. Edward Griffin's interview of Norman Dodd who served Congress as the chief researcher for the Reece Committee's investigation of the subversive influence of tax-exempt foundations.

Conspiracy in Philadelphia

Samuel Adams did not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia because he "smelt a rat". The American Covenanters identified the rat & boycotted the new Constitution.

One of them, the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie of Philadelphia, wrote Two Sons of Oil to chronicle the U.S. Constitution's offenses against Christ and His laws. It took more than a century for someone to detail the conspiratorial coup that produced the nation's foundational legal document.

In 2004, Gary North republished the last third of his Political Polytheism under the title Conspiracy in Philadelphia. Here is a brief excerpt giving the author's rationale:

This book is my attempt to explain this historical anomaly: a significant break in history that did not seem to be a break at the time. It still doesn’t. I explain it in a way that Dr. Dreisbach does not. He defends the traditional view of Protestant Christians in the United States. They have believed, from 1788 onward, that the United States has been a Christian nation under its Constitution. This is an odd belief on the face of it, since the United States Constitution’s sole reference to God is indirect: the words, “the year of our Lord,” referring to 1787. If this is the sole judicial basis of the Christian American national civil covenant, then the case for America as a Christian civil order rests on a very weak reed.

You download a free .pdf copy of the book by clicking on this link:
Conspiracy in Philadelphia

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery

A host of American Christians have violated the First Commandment by an idolatrous veneration of the U.S. military. Man's sinful condition renders defensive warfare necessary, but Americans have for generations justified their wars of convenience and conquest by self-righteously wrapping themselves and their "cause" in the flag (see Isaiah 64:6).

What they do not understand is that they are playing right into the hands of those who seek to enslave them. In an article found in Chalcedon Report, Samuel Blumenfeld quotes from Norman Dodd's Congressional report on tax exempt foundations:

In 1908 the trustees [of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace] had raised this question. "Is there any way known to man more effective than war, assuming that you wish to alter the life of an entire people?" They discussed this question academically and in a scholarly fashion for almost a year and came up with the conclusion that war is the most effective means known to man, assuming that you want to begin concentrating power in government and abandon the dispersion of authority contemplated by the Constitution. They then raised Question No. 2: "how do we involve the United States in such a war?" This was in 1909. . . . The trustees answered the question this way: "We must control the diplomatic machinery of the United States."

. . . . That tied in with prior information our committee had uncovered indicating that the hand of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had already become a powerful policy-making force inside th eState Department. ("WHO ARE "THEY"? THE SHADOWS BEHIND THE SCREEN, June 1994, pp. 26-27)

The idea that the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace settled on war as a means to its ends bears a chilling resemblance to the Orwellian "War is Peace".

Since World War I, the power elite have focused their major efforts to control the State Department through the Council on Foreign Relations, and after World War II, their militaristic interests coalesced into the Military Industrial Complex.

Altthough the institutional expressions were new, the elite understood the role of war from the beginning. The following excerpt from "A Covenant with Death" by William N. Grigg chronicles that fact:

As Bruce D. Porter explains in his valuable book War and the Rise of the State, each American military conflict, beginning with the War for Independence, has expanded the domestic power and redistributive reach of the government through what he calls "Titmussian linkages" between veterans and their dependents on the one hand, and the central government on the other. That somewhat inelegant phrase refers to the work of socialist British academic Richard Morris Titmuss, "A vigorous advocate of social welfare reforms" and, therefore, of the militarization of society in the interest of expanding the welfare state.


In fact, as Timuss noticed and Porter points out, the very "origins" of the welfare state are found in the military. Veterans and their dependents, who are guaranteed pensions and various disability, health, and housing benefits provided the first permanent clients of the redistributionist state. Both world wars abetted the breakdown of family norms, and offered valuable field experience for promoters of sexual emancipation and related social "reforms." And the WWII-era conscription of millions of men, and the recruitment of their wives into war-related industries, led to the enactment of the first federal child care legislation.


That the military would abet the growth of a huge and ever-expanding welfare state would not have surprised James Madison, who famously denounced war as "the parent of armies; and from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few."


What Madison lamented -- the centralizing effect of war, particularly in propagating debt -- the execrable Alexander Hamilton frankly celebrated. Porter points out that Hamilton was delighted by the lingering debts accumulated by the colonies (and later states) during the War for Independence; he pressed for Congress "to assume the full debts, believing this would turn the debts into a potential `cement' of the Union. This, in the American case, as in the Dutch case before it, war debts helped consolidate a fractious polity by binding creditors across the nation to the fate of the central state."


The Empire Hamilton Built is racing toward the unpleasant end that awaits all imperial projects: Incurable, undisguised insolvency, the ruin of the official currency, political collapse, and -- most likely -- internal schism. At some point the Power Elite will probably call most of the troops home from their far-flung garrisons, not because our rulers will have renounced aggression, but rather for the purpose of putting down internal resistance. This, too, was foretold by Madison in the Constitutional Convention, when he warned that "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense [against] foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."

"War is a Racket" -- Smedley Butler

The following is a quote from Brasscheck TV:

If you know your history, you know that in 1934 there was an attempted coup in the United States that was thwarted largely due to the efforts of U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler (ret.)

Look it up.

Among other things, Butler was only one of 19 people ever awarded the Medal of Honor twice and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

After it dawned on him how his heroism and the heroism of the troops under his command had been misused, he wrote a book called "War is a Racket" which I can virtually guarantee you never heard about in school.

I recommend that you go to this link and watch the video (a recreation of his "War is a Racket" speech.

The More Things Change . . . , 2

Remember how Candidate Obama was going to end the war in the Middle East? How he promised to start withdrawing troops immediately upon assuming office? How he was going to stop the unconstitutional arrest and detainment of suspected terrorists without benefit of counsel or trial?

Perhaps our presidents all come from the Bizarro world, where everything is opposite. Or . . . perhaps presidents from both parties take their agenda from the same ruling elite.

In any case, here is a refreshingly honest assessment of President Obama's speech on "Indefinite Detainment" as presented on MSNBC:

Thanks to RPC for sending me the link to this report.

The More Things Change . . .

The more things change, the more they stay the same. According to a commonly accepted urban legend, the Republicans are the party of big business and the Democrats are the party of the common man.

These observations made by Gary North in a recent issue of Reality Check demonstrate that both parties cater to the ruling elite.

Obama's free ride here is going to continue. The well-organized corporate interests that supply each President with his advisors want the taxpayer-funded subsidies. Goldman Sachs provided Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury (Rubin) and Bush's (Paulson). Kissinger & Associates gave Timothy Geithner his first job. He rose to become the second most powerful official in central banking: president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Nobody notices. Nobody complains. I mean nobody significant.

The Obama Deception

If you haven't seen this video yet, it presents a lot of material all in one place. I don't agree with all of Alex Jones' conclusions (e.g., that the present financial crisis was part of the conspiratorialists' plan), but I think this two-hour film is informative & shows the two-faced, I mean two-party system for what it is: a sham.

Ruling Class: A Biblical View

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. (Pro 22:7)

The problem is not that we have a ruling class. A ruling elite is present (and necessary) in every society. (Not a popular view among Christians who subscribe to a belief in "democratic" ideals)

The problem goes back to a time when Christians ceded rule to Enlightenment humanists. They [we] have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:17-20) clearly shows that the King intends for His people to exercise dominion over the nations for the purpose of subduing them to His reign. Significantly, the methods He taught His disciples in order to accomplish this are not primarily political.

Christians take dominion through a Redemptive Message and obedience to the Royal Law. I call this two-pronged approach Gospel words backed up by Gospel deeds.

About 1660, Christians began to lose sight of their mission's primary objective: to lead the nations into obedience to Christ. They began to interpret the faith in primarily personal terms: soul-saving and pietism. They forgot that evangelism and pious living are means to an end, not ends in themselves.

But when Christians began to think of their faith in strictly personal terms, dominion over society became an unnecessary -- even repugnant -- idea.


To be continued

The Network of Public Opinion

The network that shapes and influences public opinion includes the media and the school systems. Noam Chomsky recognizes that the tools of propaganda were developed by the liberal left. He seems to think that they are wielded by the conservative right.

What Prof. Chomsky does not seem to realize is that the ruling class uses the network to further its purposes. He sees the commercial media as essentially conservative, while conservatives see the media as liberal.

I see the media as the public face of the the Establishment. At any rate, I hope you find the following excerpt thought-provoking.

The Elite Ruling Class: Milieu for Conspiracy

A "social class" is a network of interacting and intermarrying families who perceive each other as equals and have distinctive lifestyles and attitudes which differentiate them from other classes. (G. William Domhoff, Who Really Rules? (1978 edition), p. 12)

There is, then a ruling social class in the United States, and this sociological fact should be the starting point for economic and political analysis at any level. This ruling class includes about .5 to 1 percent of the population, owns about 20-25 percent of all privately held wealth, receives a highly disproportionate share of the yearly national income, controls major banks and corporations, formulates economic and political programs through a series of policy networks, and dominates -- at the very least -- the federal government in Washington, D.C. and city government in New Haven, Connecticut. (Domhoff, op. cit., p. 175)

G. William Domhoff's sociological works reveal a truly empirical study that defines and traces the power inherent in America's upper class. He shows that they sit on boards of large banks and corporations and thus exercise control over even more wealth than they actually own.



You can find a summary of Domhoff's research here: Power in America

Other authors, like Stephen Birmingham, E. Digby Baltzell and the Konoliges have chronicled one aspect or another of the upper class. Domhoff has produced the empirical evidence that the upper class constitutes a true ruling class in the USA.

His book, The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling Class Domination in America exposes the processes and institutions that provide the upper class conduits of influence and power. Campaign contributions represent only one of those channels.

Academician Noam Chomsky also sees that an elite class rules America. While I do not agree with either Domhoff or Chomsky in their leftist/liberal perspectives, I do appreciate their observations of the present state of affairs.

Here is Chomsky's assessment: