By CHRISTOPHER MANION
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.” — O’Brien to Winston, in the Torture Chamber of the Ministry of Love (George Orwell, 1984)
Over fifty years ago, Dan Smoot wrote a book called The Invisible Government. It described a number of powerful interest groups — domestic and foreign, totally undemocratic, and largely invisible to the naked eye — that sought to influence American foreign and domestic policy. In the main, he wrote, they had been largely successful.
Smoot practiced the pre-Internet art known as pamphleteering — a salutary pursuit embraced by countless patriots and scalawags since the days of Patrick Henry. He and many other conservatives of the era identified the silent manipulators that moved beneath the surface to influence “world events.” Since many of the criticisms were on target, the targets often fired back, mocking the “conspiracy theorists” who “saw a Commie under every bed.”
Not anymore. As M. Stanton Evans has documented beyond any doubt, Senator Joe McCarthy was right. Communist agent Alger Hiss had commandeered FDR and virtually wrote the script for the U.S. abdication to Stalin at Yalta. And the same forces that vied secretly to undermine our republic persisted through the 60s and continue to our own day.
For Some, It’s All
About Money
Now, much of what was once hidden is in plain view. Even we Deplorabes could see it, and we cheered when Donald Trump declared war against “The Swamp,” a cesspool of bipartisan corruption that even from a distance reeked with arrogance and contempt. Again and again, blizzards of bailouts and boondoggles and wars benefited the insiders and stuck the Deplorables with the bill.
And the bill was sizable. In 1980 the national debt was under one trillion dollars. Today it has risen to twenty trillion, and rising fast. That’s a factor of twenty — but the money spent by special interests on lobbying has risen even more, growing an astounding 5000% between 1986 and 2016. And the beneficiaries are not just nefarious leftist saboteurs. Tim Carney, who learned investigative reporting from his mentor Bob Novak, reports that “since 1977, the only two former Senate floor leaders [out of over a dozen] not to have become lobbyists were financier Bill Frist and Democrat Robert Byrd, who died while still in the Senate.”
Was the “People’s House” any better? Not likely. “You have to go back to Jim Wright — the Democratic speaker who resigned amid scandal in 1989 — to find a top party leader in the House who didn’t become a lobbyist upon leaving the House,” Carney reports. And every one of them, Republican and Democrat, made millions a year.
Let that sink in. The money poured into Washington by special interests has increased by a factor of fifty in thirty years. And that’s just what has to be reported by law. Meanwhile, the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate has risen to over twenty million dollars in 2016, compared to three million in 1986.
Many of those lobbying clients are after cash. What Eisenhower called the “Military-Industrial Complex” just wants more federal billions sent its way. And the lobbyists who are so highly paid are expected to pay in return, especially in the form of campaign contributions to assure their continued access to and influence with the members who keep the party going.
Yes, money talks. But as Augustine points out on the first page of the City of God, it is the libido dominandi — the love of power — that motivates the City of Man, whose leader is Satan.
Washington’s money trough is a permanent scandal, but it is visible. Five out the nation’s six richest counties now surround the District of Columbia. But there’s a lot more than money at stake. What Smoot described, with remarkable insight given the limited means available in his day, was a nefarious network of anonymous but powerful manipulators behind the curtain, whose power is both hidden and untouchable.
Donald Trump was elected as the outsider, so independent that he would be able and willing to unplug Washington’s bipartisan hot tub and return power to the sovereign people. He restated that goal before the United Nations General Assembly this past Tuesday. But it’s no secret that, eight months into his presidency, he confronts a resistance that is powerful and resolute. Dan Smoot called it the “invisible government.” Today it’s known as the Deep State.
Control – From the Bottom Up
“Does Big Brother exist?” “Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party. . . . We control life, Winston, at all its levels.” — O’Brien to Winston in the Ministry of Love (George Orwell, 1984).
The Deep State works from the top all the way to the bottom, often informal and, just as often, lethal. But it extends to what most Americans consider normal daily life, far from politics. Here are just three examples.
A young and enterprising computer engineer rises in his profession. He finds a challenging and rewarding position in a nonprofit devoted to pro-life, pro-family issues. Once he brings the organization’s technical operations to peak efficiency, he is ready for a greater challenge at a larger enterprise.
But suddenly he finds that a left-wing “fact-checking” outfit has labeled his employer a “hate group,” a charge recklessly resonated by the Washington Post, the source of the daily scripture readings of the Deep State. His credentials are impeccable, but his resume gets a red flag from Human Resources wherever he applies. The Deep State’s ground-level tyranny has blackballed him.
But that door swings both ways. Consider the Widget Corporation, where an employee quietly approaches Human Resources and coaxes the clerk there to include his HIV-positive partner on their very generous health plan. She relents, and the word quickly spreads: “They’re hiring.” Soon dozens of homosexual activists are scattered throughout the company. And within weeks, they file complaints objecting to the “offensive” crosses, pictures, and even conversations that abound in the workplace. Suddenly Christians — the vast majority of employees — realize that their jobs are in jeopardy if they utter a single discouraging word. While they are not organized ideologically, the sons of Sodom are. And they take their sensitive feelings very seriously.
What happens next? Those who persist are the enemy. So the Christians lay low, intimidated into silence.
And It Works
From The Top Too
“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?” Winston thought. “By making him suffer,” he said.
“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough.” — O’Brien and Winston in the Ministry of Love (George Orwell, 1984).
Then there’s the case of Kurt Smith. Smith was a senior lawyer in Indianapolis with the prominent Taft law firm. In March 2015, he appeared in a news photo with Mike Pence, then Governor of Indiana, who was signing the Religious Freedom Act. This was nothing unusual: law firms have lawyers who represent every range of political and legal opinion — that’s their job.
But that’s not how the gay-friendly folks at Cummins Engine saw it. That company is one of the biggest clients of the Taft Law Firm — and Cummins Engine apparently demanded that Kurt Smith be fired, or they would find another law firm.
Now isn’t this exactly the kind of flagrant discrimination on the basis of religion that the act was designed to prevent?
Maybe so — but the Taft law firm succumbed. Kurt Smith was out.
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