I am in the midst of another volume by the great Murray Rothbard, this one being "Irrepressible Rothbard", a collection of his journalism from the last few years of his life. It is very enlightening to read recent history, not only does it show how we got to where we are, but also the underlying currents that drag us ever onwards to doom ... or redemption.
Here is a excerpt from an article entitled "Gang-stabbing the president", in which he comments on how, close to the 1992 presidential election, the neo-con media people and various other factions turned on Bush and started endorsing Slick Willy.
In addition to short-run venality, there are long-lived and crucially important interest groups who have great influence and power in American culture and American politics. These interest groups may have long-term ideologies, which while not “principles” in any conservative or libertarian sense, are based upon sophisticated views on how to further the long-term interests of themselves and their allies. The most important such interest group in American politics is, and has been for a half-century, the “Rockefeller World Empire,” that is, the corporate and financial Eastern Establishment headed, since World War II, by the Rockefeller interests and their allies. What the Rockefellers want should be no great surprise, embodied in the Rockefeller family member who almost became president of the United States: Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. What the Rockefellers want is a world economic and therefore political government, run by themselves and their allies, a State-cartelized capitalism that will subsidize and privilege them, shored up by Keynesian inflationary programs of expanding consumer “purchasing power,” and particularly massive foreign aid to subsidize Rockefeller-oriented exports, as well as friendly bankers who bankroll both these export firms and the Third World governments who purchase their products. In addition, of course, an American foreign policy must fight for oil – for oil resources and investments, and regulate oil prices in accordance with Rockefeller guidelines. A particular dream is a “New World Order” run by the United States, in accordance with Rockefeller desires, as well as a World Reserve Bank that will inflate the world economy in a manner controlled by Rockefeller expertise. Domestically, the Rockefeller interests want an expanded welfare state, mobilized to be allied to their overall purposes.
All this is now called “enlightened” or “moderate” internationalism and devotion to the welfare state – all beloved by the intelligentsia, who are bought out by the largess of tax-exempt Rockefeller-allied foundations and organizations. What is less well-known is that this Big Business – Big Finance – Big Labor – Big Intellectuals and Media alliance has been going on for a long time: certainly since the New Deal. It is little known, for example, that such crucial New Deal statist “reforms” as the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act of the mid-1930s were put into place by a powerful and malevolent alliance of left-technocratic New Deal ideologues, and powerful Big Business leaders: notably John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s Industrial Relations Counselors and its successors, and W. Averill Harriman’s Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce.
So the premier clue to American politics, especially since World War II, is to look to the Eastern Establishment headed by the Rockefellers. It is well known that since the Rockefeller-run Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) (peacefully taken over from Morgan control after World War II) had gotten too large and unwieldy, it was supplemented in 1973 by David Rockefeller’s new, small, elite, and tightly controlled Trilateral Commission. When Rockefeller Republican Gerry Ford came into danger from Ronald Reagan in 1976, however, the Rockefeller forces were ready with Trilat Jimmy Carter, an unknown when he announced his candidacy toward the end of 1975, and who was vaulted to the nomination by hosannahs from the Trilat-controlled Respectable Media, ignited by the much-sought-after cover of Time magazine, edited by founding Trilat member Hedley W. Donovan.
The Carter administration was a remarkable phenomenon: for the entire Cabinet and sub-Cabinet, 26 members in all, from Carter and Vice President Mondale on down, were all Trilat members. It was an incredible takeover, especially when we consider that there were only 117 American members of the Trilateral Commission all told.
Americans have been conditioned by the glitz and circus and by corrupt Establishment political scientists to believe in the vital importance of political parties, and to analyze politics and governance on that basis. The loss of importance of political parties nowadays is generally conceded, but what Americans don’t realize is that parties have not been important in determining ideologies or issues since the nineteenth century.
We can rest assured that the power elite, the crucial special interest groups we have been analyzing, have no sentimental attachment to party labels. Republican? Democrat? Who cares, so long as they are under control by the “right” people. “What’s good for the ______ is the overriding consideration, and you can fill in the blank with any one of these power elite groups. (The most glaring example was the 1924 presidential election, when both President Calvin Coolidge and Democrat candidate John W. Davis, Jr. were personal friends, close buddies, and associates of J.P. Morgan, Jr., head of the powerful “House of Morgan.” Morgan, who, in this embarrassment of riches chose Coolidge, was delighted but not embarrassed by the situation.)
