The condition of modern American society

If these issues that I have outlined are the real root causes of the war with Iraq, and if they are also the real catalyst behind the American economy, then why aren't these issues addressed openly in American society and how did we get to a state where so few people understand the roots of the global economy?

Before going further it is important to recognize that American society, and also the structure of the American government, are extremely complex. The complexity and vastness of the American government and its checks and balances have done a lot to prevent any type of takeover of the American government by a small minority. The fact that so many departments and branches are separate and not under unified control has resulted in a situation where many elements of the government have not been cooperating with each other on many issues, in fact they have been working against each other in some cases. It is this process, and the fact that the government is a vast and complex organization, that has enabled it to keep from being easily controlled by any small group of people. This is something that the Bush administration is currently working to change with the Homeland Security Act, which brings many branches of the government under the direct control of one department.

The events of World War II changed the entire world profoundly, including America. Not just the war itself, but what was done by leaders after the war is the real thing that profoundly changed the world.

World War II was the culmination of an ideological battle that was being waged around the world between socialism, capitalism, internationalism, and nationalism. What World War II was really about was global social revolution.

The socialist revolution was sweeping Europe and was also gaining momentum in America and Asia and South America during the early part of the 20th century. What resulted was a conflict between private ownership and the drive to redistribute wealth and power into the hands of the common man.

This conflict was present in societies all around the world, but mostly in Europe. There are several different ways in which Marxist economic ideas were implemented in the early part of the 20^th century. Many elements of Marxist economic theory became incorporated into traditional capitalist system because they obviously had merit. Things such as unions, the 8 hour work day, estate taxes, a progressive tax system, and public transportation are all elements of Marxist ideology that were implemented in America by economically progressive leaders such as Woodrow Wilson. There were, however, opponents to these policies of course. Wilson was not a supporter of Marxism or the Bolshevik Revolution, in fact he committed American forces to the civil war in Russia on the side of the Czars to try to help overthrow the Bolshevik republic. Marx had been publishing articles around the world, including America, during the 1800s and many of his ideas had worked their way into society and become adopted by many people who were not supporters of a socialist revolution.

Between 1919 and 1920, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, hysterical anti-communist sentiment hit America in what was known at "The Red Scare".

He Would Turn the Clock Back 1,000 Years: (1919)

Beat It!: (1920) The flag reads: "Red Rule. Capture all Products. Murder Those Who Enforce the Law. Blow Up Barracks. Liberate Prisoners. Burn Public Records of Indebtedness. "

During the Red Scare over ten thousand people were arrested and imprisoned because of their political beliefs, over 800 of which were deported. Virtually all of the people arrested were members of the Socialist Party. Most of the people who were deported were foreigners, mostly from Russia.

The Socialist Party was subsequently outlawed and barred from elections in America.

Many Americans who were not associated with communism in any way were also organizing unions and strikes to combat the abuses of private industry, such as coal miners who were striking for higher pay and were working 12 hour shifts while not being paid enough to afford food and housing. The press and corporate-supported community leaders labeled these people as part of the Bolshevik Revolution, which greatly decreased public support for the actions of the unionizers.

After the Red Scare socialism and communism generally lost support and attention in America until the depression of the 1930s.

During the 1930s the Communist Party regained strength in America, though it was still small, and eventually supported FDR's New Deal as part of the "Popular Front" movement. The Communist Party in America was less radical and not the same as the Communists of Russia. The Communist Party in America mainly sought economic reforms and supported programs such as Social Security and FDR's other public works projects. Communists began being elected to political office in America in small numbers in local elections, but there was strong opposition to them from many wealthy Americans.

American membership in the Communist Party was at its peak during the 1930s. Many Communists were responsible for the organization of labor unions and worked to increase minimum wages and provide care for the retired elderly, such as the Community Party of Washington state that

During this time strong consideration was given to deporting Albert Einstein because of his strong communist affiliations. Einstein was a devout Socialist and was involved in the international Communist movement. The FBI kept Einstein under strong surveillance though because of his Communist ties, as you can see in the Federal Freedom of Information Archives:

Einstein's views on communism have been greatly down played by American leadership and the media due to a fear that knowledge of Einstein's views on communism would lend support to the ideology.

While liberals like FDR had control of the American government many privately wealthy Americans were deeply opposed to his policies, which they perceived to be jeopardizing their fortunes. These people opposed "leftists" at home here in America, but they also went abroad to oppose progressive movements in Europe as well. Knowing that the Socialist revolution was a global revolution they sought to help stamp out socialism at it source, revolutionary Europe and Russia.

Kennedy was aware of this view because his father Joseph Kennedy was the American Ambassador to Britain and shared the British sentiment, along with many other British and Americans, who helped the fascists to power prior to the start of World War II.

In 1920 Winston Churchill wrote Zionism versus Bolshevism, which was an attack on international Socialism and its ties to the Jewish community. Out of these anti-socialist views and misconceptions about some of the objectives of social revolution anti-Semitism grew in the West and helped to support Hitler and the Nazis in their buildup of the Nazi Empire.

This is why so many wealthy Americans supported the fascist powers of Europe. The European fascists were being supported by wealthy Americans as a force that would fight against the Communists and Socialists in Europe and Russia while they opposed socialism in America and fought that battle here, not with war, but with union busting, propaganda, assassinations, and attempts to regain political control of the country. There were in fact two assassination plots against FDR, one of which was broken up by General Smedley D. Butler. It is still not certain if that attempt was genuine, but there were senate hearing on the attempt. The assassination plot against FDR was reportedly backed by Irenee du Pont and William Knudsen, the president of General Motors, and indirectly linked to Morgan Bank and Andrew Mellon.

Various fascist groups were present in America that were funded by wealthy Americans such as the Black Legion, the American Liberty League, and the American Legion. Some of these groups were more fascist and more overt then others. The American Legion was not so much a Nazi style group, but it was a group of American veterans who were led by anti-socialists and they engaged in union busting and anti-socialist demonstrations. The American Legion promoted "100% Americanism", and worked politically to promote the teaching of 100% pro-American views in schools. The American Legion also participated in having the Pledge of Allegiance changed from its original form which read:

To a form where "my Flag" was replaced with "the Flag of the United States of America".

There was also a strong element of anti-Semitism to the fascist movement in America as well. As I have already stated, Henry Ford was vehemently opposed to unions or anything remotely Socialist and was also a staunch anti-Semite. Jews were identified worldwide with the Communist Revolution, largely because Karl Marx was an ethnic Jew and many members of the Bolshevik Revolution were Jews, but there are many other reasons as well, most of which were outlined in Ford's The International Jew.

During FDR's last term there was a large change in Congress with many Republicans being elected. The Congressional Republicans were all very much opposed to FDR. The anti-socialists of America, in congress and the wealthy private citizens, were willing to sit on their hands and let Hitler and the fascist powers of Europe wage war because it was a war that they wanted. It was a war to destroy the Communist movement. The wealthy supporters of the fascists were aiding the Nazis and other fascist powers of Europe up to the time that Hitler declared war on America, and some even beyond that time. This is because many people around the world actually supported Hitler's ideas and they believed in the superiority of white Europeans and European culture, which included American, British, Australian, South African, culture, etc. Wealthy Christians from all of these countries helped Hitler to power because they believed that he would fight against socialism, atheism and Jews in preservation of Anglo-Christian capitalist culture.

This is why FDR had to take such drastic action as provoking Japan into attacking American forces in order to get America into World War II.

Once America entered World War II the country again united and focused on the war. It became apparent, even to the fascist supporters, that Hitler was going too far, and with Britain in jeopardy many of those who had been supporting Hitler now realized that it was time to fight against him. Britain has always been seen by wealthy Americans as an ally in the maintenance of wealth and "Western values". Britain was after all one of the greatest and largest imperial forces in the history of the world, subjugating hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

During the war the membership in the Communist Party in America increased again, but it still was not as high as it was during the mid 1930s. The Communists in America helped to organize labor and actually became strike busters themselves. This is because America was allied with the Soviet Union in a war against fascism and the American Communists felt that with the conclusion of the war that fascism would be defeated and that socialism would emerge the global victor.

The Communist Party in America was still a minority party however, and many Americans, especially wealthy Americans, were still deeply opposed to communist ideology.

While Hitler became the enemy, the ideological battle in America was still being waged. This is why many wanted to invade Russia after we had defeated Germany. The entire reason that the American fascists supported Hitler in the first place was primarily for Hitler to invade the Soviet Union.

After the war was over, and after FDR died in 1945, the strength of leftists in America was greatly diminished. At that point the anti-socialists in America began to gain increasing political and private power. The war on Communism continued, because World War II failed in its primary objective to destroy the Communist Revolution. The war on Communism started in 1917 when the Bolsheviks took control in Russia and it has been waged ever since. World War II was just one element of the war on Communism. American was deeply divided on support for the fascists in their war against Communism, with many wealthy Americans supporting the fascists, while others did not.

After WWII was over, as the anti-Communists took power in America, the Cold War immediately began. America never really finished World War II, it kept on fighting to finish the work that Hitler had failed to do, destroy Socialism and eradicate Marxism.

The CIA was formed with Allen Dulles as its head. Dulles brought hundreds of former Nazis into the CIA. The CIA was established as an international anti-Communist organization. The Nazis were already well entrenched in the covert anti-Communist effort. The CIA helped "former" Nazis relocate around the world and even to evade capture and prosecution for war crimes. A large number of CIA Nazi operatives were relocated to South America through the Catholic "ratline", where they became employed agents of the CIA in their fight against revolutionary Socialism in South America, a fight that still goes on today.

In addition, many Nazi scientists were brought to America due to their advanced knowledge in the fields of rocketry and biological and chemical weapons.

When NASA was founded many of the initial and most important scientists were Germans, former Nazi scientists. The NASA program was again started as an anti-Communist program, and von Braun was a vocal promoter of American anti-Communist action.

Many former Nazis were also put to work in the American chemical and biological weapons programs.

Domestically the anti-socialist effort regained momentum, and in what many American leaders still considered a state of war, wartime propaganda continued to be a strong part of American culture. In addition, the anti-leftist movement resulted in both the Republican and Democratic Parties being purged of anyone who was even remotely a socialist sympathizer and the Democratic and Republican Parties drew closer together than ever before. Many of the wealthy Americans that had supported Hitler became involved in politics, some of them Democrats, and all of them strongly anti-Communist.

What followed is what has created the American society that we know today, which is this:

In an effort to keep the citizens focused on daily life and to prevent them from questioning the deeper implications of World War II, religion was heavily promoted in America. The highest rate of Christian church attendance in the history of America was during the 1950s and membership in religious organizations has grown ever since. American society promoted a simplistic dualistic worldview of good vs. evil. The Christian religion did a good job of promoting this worldview, which is also why Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime were promoters of the religion and a good vs. evil worldview. This black and white worldview simplifies the complex geopolitical situation and presents a simple right vs. wrong ideology in which American leadership always claims to be on the side of right, and always claims that anyone that does not agree with them is on the side of wrong, or evil.

In accordance with this worldview American leaders portrayed both Communist and Nazi society as atheists, which is in fact, not true. Its true that many Communists were atheists, but much more importantly is the fact that Nazi society was actually deeply rooted in religion.

Now, there is certainly debate about the religious views of the fascist leaders, and it is still questionable as to what Hitler's personal beliefs were, but the fact remains that Nazi society was highly religious and that in fact Hitler spoke often of service to God and Jesus and that many aspects of Nazi culture revolved around strong religious ties. There is ample evidence for this in many publications from before the war, as well as the documented speeches that Hitler gave and the testimony from Germans at the Nuremberg trials.

It is true that the Nazis developed a view of Christianity that was not traditional, but they did firmly base their propaganda and social engineering around religion. German society, and even many of the Nazi leaders, were Christian and their belief in God strengthened their trust in Adolph Hitler because Hitler identified himself with God and spoke religiously. After the Nazis had gained a strong control of society, especially after the war had started, they began changing the way that the Germans perceived Christianity more and more. Through cooperation of Church and State the state controlled the church.

These things have particular relevance today with George W. Bush in office and many Americans are saying this like this:

What is an even more important thing to understand, which is something that American leaders completely misrepresented to the American people, is that Hitler publicly opposed lack of religious belief, including the occult, atheism, and other such views. Atheists were in fact one of the major targets of oppression by the Nazis.

Yes, the Nazis did stamp out atheism, along with many other things including homosexuality, people from many different ethnic groups, and Communists. All of these types of people were sent to concentration camps, not just Jews.

The two primary sources that Hitler used to support his anti-Semitic views were Henry Ford's book, The International Jew and a book by Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Movement. Martin Luther, who was also German, wrote The Jews and Their Lies in 1543, which was a book that blamed just about everything on the Jews and called for the Catholic Church to throw the Jews out of Germany and out of Europe, virtually calling for wholesale war against the Jews. The Catholic Church's failure to comply with Martin Luther's views on the Jews is one of the reasons that Martin Luther split with the Catholic Church.

The ways in which Christianity was a part of the elements of Nazi society are well documented and can be seen in the pictures below.

The ways in which Hitler used religion to influence German civilization was that he brought prayer in school back, having schoolteachers lead students in prayer and religious teaching. He also implemented a "faith based initiative" type program that used government funding in support of Christian organizations who helped the needy, in fact state funding for the Catholic Church was tripled under the Nazi regime. Eventually book burning took place that burned all books that did not agree with Nazi Christian views, which the people happily engaged in because they believed that they were doing the work of God and saving Germany from evil.

The following quote comes from a 1937 Nazi article about the objectives of the school system in Germany.

Now, what is critical about all of this, like so many things, is not just that it happened, but that American leadership after World War II totally misrepresented this information to the American public. Today most of us in America have no idea that any of this took place, and in fact most people believe the opposite, because there has been a significant and persistent propaganda campaign in America since World War II to make Americans believe otherwise.

Why was all of this done? Because American leaders wanted to portray a simplistic worldview to the American public that in which everything fits neatly. In order to do that the truth had to be covered up because the truth does not fit neatly into a simplistic good vs. evil worldview.

There have also certainly been many influential American leaders, both public and private, that have shared a variety of Hitler's views, but the primary connection between the European fascists and American leaders was just the anti-Communist position.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”

“We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.”

As I have already stated, the main factor that led up to World War II was the conflict between socialism (public ownership of productive property) and capitalism, which is rooted in private ownership of productive property.

What Hitler and Mussolini favored and promoted was a system where the State and private corporations served each other's special interests, much like the situation in America today. They both stood for protecting private ownership from the social revolution, which sought to redistribute wealth and promote public ownership of the means of production.

After World War II was over Harry Truman established what was known as the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine presented a clear-cut, black and white, view of the geopolitical situation which formed the basis of the ideology that would become prominent in America since that day.

Truman stated that the world was divided into the two types of countries, those with a way of life based on "the will of the majority" and those with a way of life based on the "will of the minority". In his statement he said that nations based on the will of the majority are free nations and those on the will of the minority are oppressed nations.

Of course this goes against what Benjamin Franklin wrote about freedom and the tyranny of the majority and it also goes against the fact that the majority of Germans supported Hitler, but nonetheless that is what he stated and that is the ideology that formed the basis of America's post World War II worldview, at least publicly.

After World War II was over the wealthy elite, who had now gained stronger political influence in America, desired to continue to pursue an agenda that had several things in common with the fascist agenda so the Axis powers were simply demonized and called evil anti-Christians and the public was never really educated about the finer points of fascist culture and ideology so that parallels between the ideologies of American leaders and the fascists would not be clear to the public.

In order to fit with the false simplistic worldview that American leaders were promoting, both Nazis and Communists were portrayed as totally opposite of everything American leaders stood for. In addition, as was also outlined in the Truman doctrine, fascism and communism were said to be equals, despite the fact that fascism and communism are in fact total opposites ideologically. Fascism and communism represent opposite ends of the economic and political spectrum, one far right, the other far left. Furthermore, what was done was that Communist ideology was linked directly to the practices of Joseph Stalin, despite the fact that Joseph Stalin did not actually practice Communist ideology, which actually endorses democracy.

None of this mattered though, because what was important to American leaders was creating a simplistic good vs. evil worldview.

During the early 1950's, the infamous McCarthy Era, many changes were made in American society under a program of strict social engineering.

These changed included the adding of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and the adoption of "In God We Trust" as the national motto, which was also then printed on all money. The "In God We Trust" motto is also similar to the Nazi motto of "Gott Mit Uns", which translates to "God is With Us", and can be seen here on a Nazi belt buckles such as the ones that Nazi soldiers wore into battle.

Senator Joseph McCarthy promoted a second "Red Scare" in America and was the prominent leader of the domestic anti-communist movement. McCarthy reinforced the simplistic worldview that had been established by Truman and become apart of the social fabric of America. According to McCarthy, the world was divided into two groups, good freedom-loving God-fearing people and evil militant Communists. Many Americans identified with this worldview, which was reinforced in American foreign policy and well as Christian ideology. McCarthy worked for four years on a highly publicized program that told Americans that America was losing the Cold War to Russia because of domestic traitors. The program encouraged suspicion of friends and neighbors and of course was responsible for the famous McCarthy investigations. McCarthy investigated and attacked people of all walks of life that were associated with liberal policies, even Harry Truman, and people who had been supporters of FDR's New Deal. Many people lost their jobs due to the investigations and over 30,000 books were banned for being related to Communism.

As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee Richard Nixon prosecuted American State Department official Alger Hiss in a widely publicized trial in which Hiss was accused of being an undercover Communist spy working in the Truman administration.

Many members of HUAC, such as men like Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, were using charges against government officials as a political tool to try and discredit the political establishment and many members of the Democratic Party who were politically connected to the Roosevelt and Truman administrations in order to make way for conservative Republican politicians. Even though Truman had taken strong positions in opposition to Communism, he was still accused of being to soft and harboring Communists in his administration.

For more information on the large topic of the second Red Scare and McCarthyism see:

During the late 1940s and 1950s politicians identified any policy that they opposed as Communist, even things that had absolutely nothing to do with communism and were sometimes policies that had been put in place by their own political parties. Any social program that was being poorly managed or was found to be costly was labeled communist and some politicians went so far as to claim that the policies were part of a communist conspiracy to bankrupt the country.

Furthermore, in the fight against communism, Marxism was labeled as "evil" because of its ties to Communism, and Darwinian evolution was labeled as "evil" because of its ties to Marxism and because of its contradiction with the Christian religion.

However, Marxism and Darwinian evolutionary theory are really two of the most important intellectual advances of the modern era. In addition, college professors all became suspect and several were dismissed from their jobs if it was felt that the things they were teaching were "too liberal. "Teaching about Marxism, other than disparaging it, was certainly not acceptable. Often teaching anything that brought the actions of American leadership into question in any way was labeled Communist, even if the information in question had nothing to do with communism, it was said that it was part of a Communist plot to destroy America from within. The result has been a generations long attack on intellectualism in America resulting in a stagnation of philosophical advancement in America, which is partly why America remains the most religious industrialized country in the world today with an education system that is continuing to decay.

The propaganda went well beyond religion and education though; it was incorporated into every aspect of American life. Movies, books, and cartoons all reverted to a more simplistic message of good vs. evil. The typical good guys wears white and bad guys wear black motif become prominent in the 1950s, and has continued to be popular today. I call this the Disneyification of America. Through a combination of a dualistic religion, a government that promotes a dualistic view of the world, and popular media that relies on dualistic story telling were the bad guy is always evil to the core and looks sinister, the overriding American worldview is understandably dualistic. In addition to this, the American political system was greatly changed after the war as well, with the Democrats and Republicans becoming the only two political parties with any real significance, while other political parties that had enjoyed stronger support prior to the war faded from the scene. This has also contributed to America's dualistic perspective.

Our history has been revised to fit this good vs. evil view, and our history has also been revised to give an impression of destiny and "Providence".

The way that limited American history is presented to the public it is made to seem as though America has been on a well-charted course since its birth in 1776, that everything that has happened has been according to a great master plan. This view is meant to inspire the idea that conditions of today are the greatest possible outcome of the possibilities of the past. This view is somewhat easy to construct when such a limited view of history is taken, but with closer inspection it is reveled that this is far from true.

The view that America has been on a well-charted course leads credibility to the idea that there is a well-charted course ahead of us to take, which is what leaders like people to believe because then their task is simple, all they have to do then is convince people that they are the provisioners of this well charted course. As long as you pick the right leader then the path to take will reveal itself.

Many of these ideas were challenged during the 1960's when it became apparent because of American involvement in the Vietnam War that American leaders were not simply following a charted course of great destiny, and that the American dualistic worldview didn't correspond with real geopolitical conditions.

During the 1960's a new type of Leftist movement emerged. It was really the first time since World War II that "the Left" had become acceptable again, but the new Left was an establishment anti-socialist Left, it was truly a "liberal" movement, not a socialist movement. The new Left had no ties to Marxism. The liberal agenda that grew in American during the 1960s, and has been allowed to grow since, is a social liberalism not an economic or philosophical Leftist movement. The country has become increasingly Right wing in its economic policy, while the so-called "Left" has been relegated mostly to social issues. Ever since Dwight Eisenhower left office the economic policies of America have been shifted increasingly to the Right, with the largest leap to the Right taking place under Ronald Reagan. The economic policy of the 1950s and 1960s is still considered to be liberal Keynesian economic policy. During the 1940s and 1950s the implementation of the New Deal resulted in major government programs which were used to promote the development and growth of the middle class, such as the G. I. Bill, the Federal Highway program, the Tennessee Valley Authority, etc.

Much of the social liberalization that has occurred in America during the past 40 years has actually served corporate America quite well and has been economically beneficial and exploitable, which is why it has been allowed to take place.

Sex sells, more women working and immigrants mean lower wages and a larger market and increased need for services, blacks and gays both provide nice target markets. The wealthy establishment has been able to take advantage of many aspects of social liberalism and in fact by the 1970's corporate America had become a driving force behind social liberalization.

This puts the entire dualistic conservative vs. liberal view in question. At this point the Republican Party, who claims to be the socially conservative party, is actually the party that is more responsible for social liberalization. This condition has led to massive political confusion in America. Most Americans still hold to simplistic dualistic worldviews, that a group or a person or a policy is either good or bad, period. This makes actually understanding what is going on politically virtually impossible, and this has led to the increasing lack of interest and involvement in American politics by Americans. That in addition to the fact that many Americans know that American politicians are corrupt, which leaves us feeling powerless.

The reason that Republicans are really the driving force behind modern American liberalization is this:

Corporate America is the real driving force behind modern American society, and the Republican Party is who supports corporate America.

Many elements of what is termed a "liberal agenda" are actually backed and supported by corporate America. There are several aspects of social liberalization that corporate America has supported, such as:

Liberal immigration laws, which companies promote because immigrants typically provide a better source of cheaper labor than natural born citizens and also tend to work hard. Corporate America has repeatedly supported legislation that makes immigration easier and more profitable for employers.

The women's movement has been greatly supported by corporate America and by Republican economic policy. As has been previously stated, the economic polices of Ronald Reagan actually caused one of the greatest entries of women into the workforce, which happened in part due to the financial need for women to go to work to help support families. This of course also implicates Republican policy as being the root of the stress on family values. As more women have entered the workforce they also have less time to raise their own children, which can lead to children who have a less access to parental role models and a family unit. It also has caused more stress on marriages.

Likewise, corporate America has whole-heartedly gotten behind the women's movement through its marketing practices and product development in addition to the vast media outlets designed to appeal to women's sense of empowerment.

In terms of sex, corporate America has done more to promote the sexual revolution than any other aspect of American culture. The production of birth control is obviously one aspect that has forever changed sex. Not only that, but the media, especially advertisers, have exploited sex as a tool of advertising and in fact the corporate media has done more in the past 30 years to break down sexual boundaries by progressively being more risqué its it's depiction of sex and sexuality. All of this is driven by capitalism and the drive for increasing profits.

Multiculturalism is another place where corporate America is doing the real liberalization. Just watch any broadcast TV and it's easy to see many commercials that are designed to appeal to one racial group or another, or commercials that reinforce multiethnic views. Coca-Cola and McDonalds both heavily target market African Americans. That is the type of activity that that is bringing multi-ethnicity into every American's home, not people writing Affirmative Action laws.

In the end, many of the so-called "evils" that so many conservatives try to vote against when the go to the polls to vote Republican are actually the very things that their votes end up supporting.

The votes put Republicans in office, the Republicans support legislation that gives more power and freedom to private industry as well as legislation that makes our economy all-the-more competitive and less ethical. The more competitive our economy is the more corporations will work to benefit themselves in any way possible, which results in them supporting the very things that conservatives are against, which is quite ironic.

What has taken place in America over the past 40 years is a social liberalization in ways that have proven to be profitable to corporate America, and in many ways driven by corporate America. It also shows to what degree corporate America influences American society.

The leadership of America from Truman through Kennedy was largely supportive of middle class America, but with the entry of Richard Nixon into the presidential office the fascist agenda of the wealthy American elite, those who had been strongly opposed to FDR, got a significant boost. Nixon was a devout anti-socialist and a devout anti-Semite. Nixon's anti-socialist views were much more in line with those of the CIA and military top brass, and his rise to presidency signified the increasing power of the fascist wealthy elite and those who had supported the Nazi regime prior to World War II.

Some of Nixon's now infamous statements about Jews in the media were recorded in private conversations in the White House during a conversation that Nixon was having with Reverend Billy Graham after they had just returned from a morning prayer:

In other conversations Billy Graham told Nixon that he believed that the Bible says there are satanic Jews and that they are the real root of America's problems.

He went on to say that he believed that satanic Jews are who was putting out pornography.

Of course Nixon is infamous for his role in the Watergate scandal that shocked most Americans as it gave a glimpse into how American leadership really worked. It revealed that the American political system and its leaders were not operating in a happy dualistic world where American leaders are the good guys who always did everything above the boards. The view that had been crafted in America is that the good guys, by virtue of their goodness, always operated in an ethical and legal manner. The view was that only "bad people" ever did anything unethical or illegal. The view was also that being a national leader or being successful was evidence that a person was a "good person".

Here we had President Nixon, who was supposed to be one of the "good guys", doing something "bad". This did do serious damage to the worldview that had been cultivated in America by the American leadership, and American culture became more openly skeptical of leadership from that point on, but American leadership has worked hard to "restore America's faith in leadership". This means that leaders have worked hard to restore the dualistic lie, something that George Bush has done an excellent job at.

This leads to another major element of the American dualistic view, the view that a person's success is a measure of their goodness. This is one of the most critical elements of American culture because it colors how we as Americans view the rest of the world as well. This is also a major element of the propaganda of some of the most radical capitalist ideologues as well.

This view is what our society uses to validate our idea of American goodness. Because we as Americans view ourselves as the most successful society in the world, largely because of our economy, this is taken as proof that the American system is good. Since the American system is "good", the leaders, both government and corporate, that are viewed as having brought us that success must also have been good people; good people meaning kind hearted, nice, altruistic people.

This is really the heart of the great American lie and is based in the dualistic worldview that our leaders have intentionally fostered.

As the corporate scandals of today are revealing, and as much of our history reveals, success is not a product of goodness, it is a product of competition and the ability and willingness to do whatever it takes to outdo the competition; success is ultimately the product of aggression. There is no moral code in success. The idea that "all is fair in love and war" has really been extended in America to all is fair in love, war, and business.

Success has absolutely nothing to do with goodness. That is not to say that good people are not successful or cannot be successful, or that success proves that a person is not good, that is not true either. Many "good" people and good organizations are successful, but the reason for success is not goodness.

The reason for American success is not goodness, and the reason for the success of individuals is not goodness. People like to believe that success is a measure of how good someone is or how much that person has contributed to society, but it is no such thing, success does not measure anything other than the degree to which an entity has benefited from its interactions. That's it. There are as many variations to the ways in which people or groups become successful as there are stars in the sky. Some people or groups become successful through deceptive practices, through extortion, through developing schemes that unfairly benefit themselves and limit the ability of others to fairly compete, some cheat, lie and steal, and get away with it, and some develop success purely through being more skilled and working longer and harder to achieve goals. There are many paths to success, and to assume that because someone or something is successful is because they are "good" is absurd.

The wealthy want the public to believe that their success is a measure of goodness so that their wealth will not be challenged and the system won't be changed.

In most cases success is achieved through a combination of activities that people generally consider both good and bad. Success often comes through hard work and skill, along with deception and the development of methods that hinder the ability of others to fairly compete, but ultimately aggressiveness is the largest component of success. How aggressive someone or some group is at undertaking various activities is what determines the level of success.

This conflicts greatly with the American dualistic worldview and has led society to try and define methods that promote success as "good" simply because they promote success.

This was especially prominent during the Reagan years of the 1980s, when "greed is good" became a popular America motto.

It was obvious that greed, one of the "seven deadly sins", helped to drive people and promote success, therefore, society used the measure of success to redefine its morals because there was still an attempt to fit everything into a dualistic worldview. If a result is deemed good then the things that lead to that result also have to be defined as good or else dualism does not make sense.

Reagan, a long time Nixon supporter, promoted the rebirth of simplistic dualism in America. Reagan used religious talk and a good vs. evil approach when outlining his policies. He again relied heavily on the "Red Menace" in the support of his entire approach to leadership, promoting an us vs. them mentality.

Reagan brought us vs. them mentality into his economic policies as well, and he launched a strong campaign of class warfare. His agenda was designed to convince working-class Americans that the successful wealthy of America were the "good people", and the poor were the "bad people". By supporting programs that were designed to benefit the wealthy, Americans would be on the "good" side, which according to him, would ultimately pay off for everyone because after all it was policy that was on the side of good, and we all know that in a battle of good vs. evil good always wins and good is always good for everyone, otherwise it wouldn't be "good".

His presidency was critically important because it convinced a large number of Americans that wealthy Americans stand for everything that is good and right in the world, while poor people stand for the destruction of civilization. In Reagan's attempt to defeat the class struggle by getting everyone on the side of the wealthy all he really did was elevate class struggle.

The Reagan era reinforced the ideas of American dualism, which have pretty much gone unchanged through to today. The America of today is still stuck in the Reagan era of simplistic idealism, which is of course rooted in the worldview that was created in America following World War II. That worldview has been created and maintained intentionally by American leadership in order to protect the establishment of the wealthy elite. Numerous lies and deceptions have been used to create that worldview, some of which I outlined in the beginning of this paper.

What is happening today is that as cracks in this worldview become apparent American leaders try to go back and revise history in ways to continue to promote the idea that America is, and has always been, on a path of destiny guided by Providence because it is uniquely good and the embodiment of all of the best attributes of mankind. This is just ridiculous propaganda. Americans are human beings just like the rest of the people in the world.

In this process conservatives try to rewrite history and urge society to forget elements of the past that don't correspond with their false views of dualism and Providence.

When people refuse to forget, for example Black Americans who insist on continuing to educate us all on the realities of slavery in America, those people are demonized by conservatives, belittled, dismissed as irrelevant, or as trying to stir up trouble and being a negative influence on society.

Today President George Bush is not only relying on this dualistic worldview to promote his agenda, but he is also reinforcing it as well and seeking to make the dualistic worldview a much stronger element of the American establishment.

There is another critical element to the way that we Americans view politics and the American establishment.

It is the way that our political system works. This is not something that was designed to be deceptive but it has proven to be very deceptive nonetheless.

The real policy makers in the American government are not elected officials; they are appointed officials, committees, and private organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations. Some of the most influential members of the American government that have shaped both American foreign policy and domestic policy are the CIA and Pentagon, both groups highly secretive, and neither group containing elected officials. In many ways the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff have dictated or highly influenced the foreign policy approaches of many of our nation's presidents.

In addition, the members of the presidential staff are really the main policy makers, not the President himself. Elected officials in America serve primarily as policy approvers, not policy makers. Elected officials are certainly involved in the policy making process, some more than others, but ultimately their job is to simply vote for or against policy that has been put together, often by un-elected officials.

In and of itself this is not a problem, but what has happened in America is that elected officials, especially the President, have simply become figures who take the blame for policy while the people who are really behind the policy go without public scrutiny and continue to stay in Washington and create new policy.

In this way our presidential elections have given America a false sense of change, a sense of change that is really not taking place. All of the good and bad that Americans perceive about a political situation gets pinned on a president who simply comes and goes from office, while his policy makers are usually unaffected by public stigma.

It appears to Americans as though over the past 50 years we have been through a lot of political change and that there is no way that a consistent agenda could be maintained in Washington because there has been so much change in leadership. This is false.

Though presidents come and go many of the policy makers have stayed in place and many of the organizations that have a critical influence on American policy, such as the CIA, are organizations that mentor and recruit their own members enabling them to promote their own agenda with consistent long term plans.

A perfect example of this is the current Bush administration. Bush himself is obviously a member of the elite establishment; his grandfather was a Senator, his father a President and head of the CIA, but what is an even bigger issue to understand is that most of his staff are people who have been making or influencing policy in Washington for the past 30 years, and that all of those people served with, and were mentored by, people who had been making policy in Washington for the 30 years prior to that.

The supporters of the European fascists initially worked their way into the lower branches of the government in the late 1940s through the 1960s as congressmen and members of the CIA and military top brass during a time when other American leaders were strongly opposed to socialist ideology because of the perceived threat of the Soviet Union. When Nixon became president it signaled the rise to greater power of those who had supported the European fascists.

In the presence of all of these conditions an important change has taken place in the functioning of the American government. America was created as a Republic, not a Democracy. This is an important distinction, and one that the Founding Fathers also felt was extremely important as well.

I would like to return to Representative Ron Paul's speech one more time to discuss the idea of a Republic vs. the idea of a Democracy, and why American leadership has promoted Democracy in America over Republicanism.

These are the basic concepts of the tyranny of the majority. A constitutional Republic is designed to protect the rights of the minority and to provide a way in which law, which is decided upon by fully informed judges, can be used to govern society in a way that is just, fair, and equitable. The flaw of a pure democracy is that the masses are seldom properly informed enough to actually determine how a country should be run.

This is why all of the founders felt that education was the most important element of a Democratic Republic. Democracy is fully dependant on education and information and an open and honest society. If the majority of the people in society are not fully informed on the matters on which they are voting then the voting is useless.

Freedom is a responsibility, not a privilege. It is a responsibility to remain educated. What American leaders have done is withhold critical information from the population in such a way that its very difficult for the people to be well informed enough to be able to wield the power of a democracy and very few of us have taken on the responsibility of keeping ourselves educated in our modern world of so many convenient distractions.

While the American public is in many ways less informed about the issues affecting national policy today then ever before American leaders are taking advantage of that lack of understanding and moving the country into a further state of democracy where they are free from the restrictions of a Republic.

Mr. Paul then goes on to make many other statements, in true libertarian fashion, which I disagree with, such as:

I would disagree; I think that the marketplace has always been driven by the ideas of pure democracy, which is where the term "vote with your dollars" comes from. The marketplace is driven purely by the demand, and was always democratic.

What is important to understand is that a society's ability to participate in a democracy is dependant on how well informed the society is. American leaders have intentionally misrepresented American history, world history, their own policies, and how American policy actually affects other countries. In the poorly informed condition that society is in, American leaders have taken advantage of their ability to easily sway public opinion with lies, religion, and emotional propaganda.

The Bolshevik Revolution and the global Communist movement have actually greatly undermined the American Left. This is because conservative American leaders have used these events to associate all Leftist policy with the idea of a foreign threat in the eyes of the public. Ever since 1919 conservative American leaders have unfairly accused virtually every Leftist policy that they object to as being related to a foreign Communist threat or as part of a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the government. In so doing Leftism itself has been demonized and immobilized in America.

It is true that there have been cases of foreign Communist spies that were active in America, and that a few members of Communist groups in America have been working in cooperation with foreign groups. However, what conservative leaders have done is use these rare isolated incidents to stir fear about a broad range of policies that are totally unrelated to these situations. Our country's leaders are clearly not concerned with the advancement of humanity and looking for the best way to solve problems, they are interested in promoting a self-serving agenda and they use lies, propaganda, and deception to do this in what amounts to the subversion of the American public.

There is a great deal of political and ideological confusion in America today due to years of institutionalized deception and propaganda. There are a growing number of uninformed liberals who hold liberal ideas but are not actually educated on the history of the liberal movement in America, on liberal ideology, or on economics and history in general. There is also a growing number of people who consider themselves "fiscal conservatives", many of them forming part of the growing Libertarian movement. The economic ideology of this movement is rooted in socially institutionalize economic misconceptions and a general lack of accurate historical economic analysis, which has been caused by the way that American society has not been honest in it's teaching and portrayal of economics and the real reasons behind America's economic success. For example many Libertarians lament income and estate taxes and note that America did without these taxes for over 100 years, yet they fail to account for the fact that a large portion of the American population was in slavery during that time, that a majority of the population were self-sufficient farmers, that a large number of early Americans were recipients of giveaway programs such as land giveaways, and that the taxes were implemented in part precisely because an American aristocracy was developing with an untouchable level of wealth while poverty was increasing because of the Industrial Revolution. Political polarization is definitely taking place in America today making honest education all the more important, yet the exact opposite is happening, the level of deception and propagandizing is increasing, not the level of honest education.

The wealthy in America have created an inherently imbalanced system that is exploitable by the wealthy and they are working through the use of propaganda and misinformation to convince Americans that the system is just, or, if anything, unfairly biased toward the poor. If you look at the numbers, however, it is obvious that this is not the case because the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the middle class has been stagnate for 30 years and the level of corruption in the top levels of America's wealthy elite is reaching catastrophic proportions with a large number of America's business leaders now being implicated in a vast array of illegal and unethical activity, including the President and Vice-President of the United States.

The economic system that America has developed is dependant on the exploitation of foreign countries and the acquisition of foreign resources, which is why our country is perusing a strategy of global preeminence. It has to engage in this activity in order to sustain the economy, which has been created through this activity. In addition, the policies of the American Right have been developed through the exaggeration of foreign threat and in order to maintain conditions under which right-wing policy can continue to be supported and dissent can continue to be put down, the exaggeration of foreign threat and a state of war has to be maintained.

Overall, what has taken place in America over the past 50 years is that American leadership, both public and private, has become increasingly secretive. A framework of lies has been created in which American society functions, which is separate from the modern views of reality in which American leadership functions. American leaders continue to support this framework of lies and use this framework of lies as an arena within which to present ideas to us, the American people. Within this framework of lies the world appears to be a simplistic place of good and evil. The feeling of Americans that we are the most successful people on earth, and that America is the most successful country, is used to support the idea that America's policies are inherently altruistic because our culture tells us that success is the measure of goodness. What is actually the case, though, is that America is successful precisely because American policy is not altruistic.

Update 2/15/2005: For more on the effects of capitalism on American society see: