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While the previous page (2) dealt with Clarkson's and Yurica's exposé of the religious leaders and followers of the so-called "Religious Right", this page deals with their exposé of the political gurus and followers of the "Political Right", the other wing of that same movement.
And all of the source and copyright information at the top of page 2 applies to this page as well.
Most Americans have never heard of Machiavelli. But it is imperative that anybody who wants or needs to know what makes today's White House tick, find out what Machiavelli was all about because, despite what they profess in public, this political philosopher has had a much greater impact on the Neo-Conservatives in the White House than has Jesus Christ. Kevin Phillips tells us in his masterful book, American Dynasty that Karl Rove, political strategist for President George W. Bush, is a devotee of Machiavelli, just as Rove's predecessor, Lee Atwater had been for the elder Bush.
Machiavelli's books, The Prince and The Discourses are not abstract treatises. Christian Gauss, who wrote an important introduction to the Oxford edition, called them by their rightful name: they are in fact a "concise handbook for those who would acquire or increase their political power." Gauss tells us that a long line of kings and ministers and tyrants studied Machiavelli, including Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin.
Leo Strauss, promoter of Machiavelli,
and Father of Neo-Conservatism
Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. He was a Jewish scholar who fled Germany when Hitler gained power. He eventually found refuge in the United States where he taught political science at the University of Chicago.
Strauss is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. Strauss has been called the godfather of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America." More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name "Neo-Conservatism".
The father of neo-conservatism had many "spiritual" children at the University of Chicago, among them: Paul Wolfowitz and Abram Shulsky, who received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Harry V. Jaffa was a student of Strauss and has an important connection to Dominionists like Pat Robertson as we shall see below. However, Strauss's family of influence extended beyond his students to include faculty members in universities, and the people his students taught. Those prominent neo-conservatives who are most notable are: Justice Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Irving Kristol and his son William Kristol, Alan Keyes, William J. Bennett, J. Danforth Quayle, Allan Bloom, John Podhoretz, John T. Agresto, John Ashcroft, Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Michael Ledeen and scores of others, many of whom hold important positions in George W. Bush's White House and Defense Department.
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, University of Chicago Press, 1978, at page 9. The actual quote is: ". . . [O]ne ought not to say to someone whom one wants to kill, 'Give me your gun, I want to kill you with it,' but merely, 'Give me your gun,' for once you have the gun in your hand, you can satisfy your desire."
The same applies to "Give us power with your VOTES, which we can then use to disenfranchise you".
 "Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose the many, who have the majesty of the state on their side. . . In the actions of men, and especially of princes - from which there is no appeal - the end justifies the means. . . Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by every one, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances and the outcome of the event; and the world consists mostly of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince." (p. 94)
"Alexander VI (the pope whom Machiavelli offered as a model of the successful politician) did nothing else but deceive men, he thought of nothing else, and found the occasion for it. No man was ever more able to give assurances, or affirmed things with stronger oaths, and no man observed them less. However, he always succeeded in his deceptions, as he well understood this aspect of things."
Machiavelli also wrote how to govern dominions that previous to being occupied had enjoyed freedom.
"When those states which have been acquired are accustomed to live at liberty under their own laws, . . . [I]n truth there is no sure method of holding them except by despoiling them. And whoever becomes the ruler of a free city and does not destroy it, can expect to be destroyed by it, for it can always find a motive for rebellion in the name of liberty and of its ancient usages. . . " (p. 46)
(The above quotes are from The Prince, in the original Oxford University Press translation by Luigi Ricci, 1903; revised by E. R. P. Vincent, 1935)
To understand the Straussian infusion of power that transformed an all but dead conservative realm, think of Nietzsche's Overman come to life. Or better yet, think of the philosophy most unlike Christianity: Think of pure unmitigated evil. Strauss admits that Machiavelli is an evil man. But according to Strauss, his admission is a prerequisite to studying and reading Machiavelli: the acknowledgement is the safety net that keeps the reader from being corrupted. One is tempted to talk back to Strauss and point out an alternative: the admission could be the subterfuge that keeps a man from being ridiculed and rejected for espousing Machiavellian methods. (See MORE on Strauss below.)
Today's best apologist for Machiavelli is one of the most influential voices in Washington with direct connections into the oval office.
Michael A. Ledeen was a Senior Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a counselor to the National Security Council and special counselor to former Secretary of State, Alexander Haig in 1985. His relationship with Pat Robertson goes back at least to the early 1980's. Like Robertson, Ledeen was an advocate for military intervention in Nicaragua and for assistance to the Contras. (Ledeen was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair.)
Today, in 2004, Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute and according to William O. Beeman of the Pacific News Service, "Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neo-conservative movement and the military actions it has spawned."
Be aware that Ledeen is in complete accord with Machiavellian thinking. And so is Pat Robertson. Robertson agreed to virtually every nuance Ledeen presented. In fact, it's not clear which of the two first proposed invading Syria, Iran and Iraq back in the 1980's, a refrain that also echoed in the reports of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the major homes for neo-conservatives in 2000. Both Ledeen and Robertson targeted the same nations that PNAC lists as America's greatest enemies in its paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (published in September 2000.)
In 1999, Ledeen published his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. (Truman Talley Books, St. Martin's Griffin, N.Y. 1999.) Here is a sample of how Ledeen smoothes rough edges and presents a modern Machiavelli:
"In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still. . . " (p. 91)
Again, Ledeen writes: "Just as the quest for peace at any price invites war and, worse than war, defeat and domination, so good acts sometimes advance the triumph of evil, as there are circumstances when only doing evil ensures the victory of a good cause." (p. 93)
Ledeen clearly believes "the end justifies the means," but not all the time. He writes "Lying is evil," but then contradictorily argues that it produced "a magnificent result," and "is essential to the survival of nations and to the success of great enterprises." (p. 95)
Ledeen adds this tidbit: "All's fair in war . . . and in love. Practicing deceit to fulfill your heart's desire might be not only legitimate, but delicious!" (p. 95)
William O. Beeman tells us about Michael Ledeen's influence. Writing for the Pacific News Service he says:
"Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. . . He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq."
In fact, Ledeen's influence goes even further. The BBC, the Washington Post and Jim Lobe writing for the Asia Times. report that Michael Ledeen is the only full-time international affairs analyst consulted by Karl Rove (President G.W. Bush's "brain") . Ledeen has regular conversations with Rove. The Washington Post said, "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric."
Good Examples of Machiavelli's influence on
Republicans & the Religious Right :
Gary North ( who holds a doctorate degree in Economics and is the President of the Institute for Christian Economics (ICE) is also the son-in-law of R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism,) North has written volumes of books, essays and articles, (some of which falsely predicted that the year 2000 computer problem would bring down modern civilization.) He is most famous among Dominionists for reconciling economic theory with Old Testament passages. North wrote in 1985:
"I propose a program. Some variant of this program must be adopted if we are to have any meaningful hope in recapturing the machinery of civil government, the media, and the educational institutions. It will be done. It has already begun. How long it will take is problematical; I think we will begin to see major victories before the year 2005." http://reformed-theology.org/ ice/books/ conspiracy/html/8.htm at page 5 of 11 pages.
Gary North advises his followers not to give out his literature to everyone — just to interested people. "Let word of mouth tell the story. You need not become very visible if you choose not to." From Replacing Evil With Good http://reformed-theology.org/ ice/books/ conspiracy/html/8.htm on page 9 of 11.
Gary North describes the 'just restitution' system of the bible, which happens to re-institute slavery, like this:
"At the other end of the curve, the poor man who steals is eventually caught and sold into bondage under a successful person. His victim receives payment; he receives training; his buyer receives a stream of labor services. If the servant is successful and buys his way out of bondage, he re-enters society as a disciplined man, and presumably a self-disciplined man. He begins to accumulate wealth."
They hate Social Security & Medicare
These people can't stand the thought of society providing those lucky enough to reach an age when they are too old for employment with any financial security and/or any insurance for medical care:
On August 14, 1985, Pat Robertson unveiled his ingenious program on how to get rid of Social Security. The plan amazingly resembles sections of the Bush Administration's Medicare Prescription Drug bill passed in December of 2003. Robertson, however, outlined what to do twenty years ago as follows:
1. "We should say to all the elderly, 'You're going to be taken care of. The government's going to pay you. Don't worry about it. [You'll] get your Social Security like you're expecting, 'cause you're counting on it."
2. "There should be a gradual moving [up] of [the retirement] age to reflect the fact that we're healthier and we live longer and people should have dignity and be allowed to work a little bit longer."
3. "The last thing we should do is to begin to let the younger workers slowly but surely go into private programs where the money is tax sheltered and over the years build up their own money and that would in turn, through the intermediary organizations, banks, insurance companies, would invest in American industry. They would buy plants and equipment, put people to work and it would help a tremendous boom. Imagine . . . $100 billion dollars a year flowing into American industry. It would be marvelous."
Robertson's transcribed television interviews and dialogs give shocking evidence to the legitimization of greed, hatred, violence and cruelty by members of the various fundamentalist branches of the American clergy and by elected officials of the Republican Party, which can be cited as evidence that Dominionism is not a Christian religion — that above everything else, Dominionism is synonymous with Machiavellianism: the ends justify the means. Under Dominionism, true Christianity is a target to destroy, not a goal to achieve.
The (following) interview was conducted on August 1, 1985 with (Dominionist) Dr. Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of thirty-five books. Danuta Soderman (since divorced and remarried) was a co-host on Pat Robertson's 700 Club at the time. She began the interview with a question about Medicare and Medicaid fraud, suggesting cost possibly "millions and billions" of dollars:
Dr. Williams: "Well, I think that the abuse and fraud in and of itself is a relatively minor problem. That is, the bigger problem is the whole concept of funding somebody's medical care by a third party. And I might also mention here, that is, I saw in the audience many older and senior citizens. Now whose responsibility is it to take care of those people? I think it lies with their children and it also lies with themselves. That is, I think Christians should recognize that charity is good. I mean charity, when you reach into your pocket to help your fellow man for medical care or for food or to give them housing. But what the government is doing in order to help these older citizens is not charity at all. It is theft. That is, the government is using power to confiscate property that belongs to one American and give, or confiscate their money, and provide services for another set of Americans to whom it does not belong. That is the moral question that Christians should face with not only Medicare, Medicaid. But many other programs as well. . . .Well, people should have insurance. But I would say if our fellow man is found in need, does not have enough, well that's a role for the church, that's a role for the family, that's a role for private institutions to take care of these things."
Danuta Soderman: "I thought it was interesting you talked about Medicare and Medicaid as not being a moral issue. A lot of people would think that to want to eliminate the program is rather uncompassionate — that there is something immoral about taking away something that people are relying so heavily upon, but you said that there is no moral issue here."
Dr. Williams: "I think the moral issue runs the other way. That is, we have to ask ourselves, 'What is the moral basis of confiscating the property of one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong for whatever reason?' That is, I think we Americans have to ask ourselves is there something that can justify a legalized theft? And I think that even if the person is starving in the street that act, in and of itself, doesn't justify my taking money from somebody else."
Ben Kinchlow, co-host of the 700 Club with Pat Robertson, was made Vice President of CBN in charge of CBN's charities program "Operation Blessing." On March 27, 1985, while criticizing farmers for wanting a government bailout he said: "What's wrong in this country is that so many people have substituted the government for God. Instead of looking to God to supply their needs, they're looking to government."
Perhaps Jeb revealed the sleaze of the Bush family's character in a remark he made to whistleblower and former Office of Naval Intelligence officer Al Martin, who had been involved with him in Iran-contra. According to Martin, his attorney had sent him in February 1986 to discuss with Jeb his (Martin's) upcoming grand jury testimony in regard to Iran-contra. Martin said the meeting took place in the office of Jeb's Miami real estate business.
In an interview with author Uri Dowbenko, Martin contended, Jeb warned him about telling the truth with these chilling words: "The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in the bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay the rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross — all the way down to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money." (Bushwhacked, P. 162)
Martin further told Dowbenko, "In the past, I've talked about George Bush Sr.'s famous quote that 'truth will get you broke — or dead'."
“Politics is war conducted by other means. In political warfare you do not fight just to prevail in an argument, but to destroy the enemy’s fighting ability…In political wars, the aggressor usually prevails.” - David Horowitz
Charles (or "Chuck") Colson, the former Special Counsel to Richard Nixon, who was called "Nixon's Hatchet Man," pled guilty to charges in the Daniel Ellsberg case during the Watergate Scandal. He served a prison sentence, and started a prison ministry afterward. Pat Robertson has called him "the most brilliant political strategist in the world."
[Justice] Scalia appears to be a Dominionist, for he believes that Romans 13 represents the correct view — that government authority is derived from God and not from the people; he asserts his view was the consensus of Western thought until recent times. Like Pat Robertson, he laments that the biblical perspective was upset by "the emergence of democracy." Taking his cue from Leo Strauss, Scalia argued, "a democratic government, being nothing more than the composite will of its individual citizens, has no more moral power or authority than they do as individuals." Democracy, according to Scalia, creates problems, "It fosters civil disobedience. [ See why Scalia's embrace of Paul's Romans 13: 1-7 should be a matter of grave concern to believers in "democracy", because this is one of the bible's most troublesome passages
.]
As Scalia himself describes it, "The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead. . . It means today not what current society. . . thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted." Once the original thinking is determined, the judge can enforce the Constitution only as a document that is bound by the time zone in which a particular passage was written.
Scalia spilled the beans in his article, "God's Justice and Ours" when he explained how he would determine whether the death penalty is constitutional or not. His reasoning goes like this: since the death penalty was "clearly permitted when the Eighth Amendment [which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishments'] was adopted," and at that time the death penalty was applied for all felonies — including, for example, the felony of horse-thieving, "so it is clearly permitted today." Justice Scalia left no doubt that if the crime of horse stealing carried a death penalty today in the United States—he would find that law constitutional.
All a willing Dominionist Republican controlled Congress need do to extend the death penalty to those people who practice witchcraft, adultery, homosexuality, heresy, et cetera, is to find those particular death penalty laws existing as of November 3, 1791, and re-instate them. No revolution is required. That's why the battle over Bush's judicial appointments is so crucial to the future of the America we know and love. And that's why the clock is running out on freedom-loving Americans.
The following is an insightful interview by the internet site Buzzflash with James Moore about his book on President George W. Bush and Karl Rove, his chief of staff:
"Who is Bush's Brain? Karl Rove is, according to a New Book Chronicling the Political Life of the Machiavelli Behind the Throne of King George"
[ http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/06/02_moore.html ]:
Buzzflash: Karl Rove packages Bush as the "compassionate conservative" - the images of Bush surrounded by black schoolchildren, surrounded by Elizabeth Smart, who had been abducted. The images America sees are not of the extremist ideology - they're of a caring man, a caring President. So there's clearly a dichotomy. Some would call that hypocrisy. And in your book, you again detail that his methodology doesn't necessarily live up to the espoused morality that Bush and the extreme right articulates –- that, as Tom DeLay hypocritically proclaims, there should be no moral relativism. BuzzFlash argues that this administration is the epitome of moral relativism. It's the original bait and switch administration.
What Karl does to achieve his goals in terms of the candidates he's worked for is unscrupulous. He thinks nothing of slandering people. He is a rumor monger. He has allegedly used law enforcement personnel to undercut his opponents. How is that balanced, do you think, in his own mind? That the means, even if illegal or skirting at the edge of the law, don't matter as long as you achieve your ends? Clearly, there's a lot of moral relativism going on there because he doesn't have any compunction about starting a whispering campaign against John McCain in South Carolina, claiming that he has a black child, and he wasn't really a war hero and so forth. And yet Bush and Rove and the White House espouse these absolute, moral values. So how do those two things exist within him?
Moore:
"Well, it's something I said all along. Compassionate conservatism in Texas is where they ask you if want green Jello or red Jello before they stick the needle in your arm and execute you. That's compassionate conservatism. But Karl's method for governance, which he has gotten this President to use very effectively, is completely cynical and it's based on the whole idea that we are all too busy to pay attention to the details of what's going on. We're all running around worrying about our mortgages and our 401Ks, and getting the kids to school or daycare, and picking up the dry cleaning, and planning vacation or retirement, that we don't read deeply into the story.
He once told a consultant that we interviewed for "Bush's Brain" that you should run every political campaign as though people are watching television with the sound turned down. And toward that end, you rely heavily on imagery and not very much on substance, knowing that if the President is photographed in a school of minority and ethnic children, and is interested in their future in that particular photo op, that people will trust that image. And they don't go beyond that image to look at his policy, which is signing the "Leave No Child Behind Act" in a big, high-profile moment with Senator Ted Kennedy, and then gutting the heart out of that bill with the funding that he offers up for it.
The President has become very good at these phony linkages. For instance, you'll see him running around talking about the tax bill, saying we need to get it passed so that we can create jobs for people. Factually, this tax bill -– there's not an economist in America or a successful business person, Warren Buffet among them, who believes that getting rid of the taxation of dividends is going to create jobs anytime in the near future, and ostensibly in the long term. But if the President says it over and over enough, people will believe it, just as Karl Rove got him to say over and over that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. At time of the war in Iraq, the Pew survey showed 61 percent of Americans believed the canard about Iraq. So the whole concept is to speak as though you are a compassionate, sensitive, caring guy, and create these photo opportunities that prove that. But do whatever you want to do when you govern, because the public isn't paying very close attention. And they've gotten away with it thus far."
Buzzflash: Well, I don't know if you cover this explicitly in your book, because the book you wrote with Wayne Slater is very much based on your interviews and fact, and not as speculative as I'm asking you to be. But how do you think Rove balances -– getting back to my last question -– the White House espousing the sense of absolute moral superiority, if you want to call it moral purity, with tactics that include lying, deception, and use of government agencies for political purposes?
Moore: Well, the dichotomy exists within the collaboration between Bush and Rove. And you see it in his campaigns, and you see it in their governance. And it works this way: The President is oblivious, and chooses to stay oblivious, to the things that Karl does, and the contradictions about morality that Karl does. The whole concept, and it works in all of his campaigns, is the candidate or the officeholder takes the high road - talks policy, talks moral clarity, and honor, and principle - while the operative does all the dirty work down in the ditch, and splashes the mud, and spreads the scurrilous smears and rumors and whisper campaigns that have the desired political effect to keep the candidate elected.
And so they ignore the contradiction because they've sort of compartmentalized it in their collaboration. Karl has no problem with it, and the President has this rationalization that, well, I really don't know that's going on out there; I'm just saying what I believe. . . I think what takes place in terms of Karl and the President is almost a sort of selective consciousness. . .
Buzzflash: As you detail in your book, Rove has some interesting biographical notes. His father left the family; his mother committed suicide; he avoided service in the military and Vietnam; he never finished college. It's a very interesting background for someone who is probably the most powerful unelected official in the United States.
Barry Goldwater, the 30-year senator from Arizona, the vanquished Republican presidential candidate in 1964 and the acknowledged godfather of traditional conservatism, had this to say about these people. (as quoted by the Bill Rentschler, a longtime Republican, a political analyst, and a widely published journalist in 1994) :
"Our problem is with these neoconservatives, the radical right, the religious extremists whose interpretation is very narrow, and who want to destroy everybody who doesn't agree with them. I see them as betrayers of the fundamental principles of conservatism. A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what the word means.'
"The hallmarks of Goldwater's brand of 'fundamental' conservatism" says Rentschler, "were individual freedom and equal justice - liberty and justice for all."
The Reverend Sydney Smith, (1771 -1845) had this remarkable insight about the influence of Machiavelli on Christianity many years ago:
"If the bible is universally diffused in Hindustan (now "India"),
what must be the astonishment of the natives to find that we (Christians) are forbidden
to rob, murder and steal; we who in fifty years, have extended our
empire... over the whole peninsula... and exemplified in our public conduct
every crime of which human nature is capable. What matchless impudence to
follow up such practice with such precepts!
If we have common prudence, let
us keep the gospel at home, and tell them that Machiavelli is our prophet,
and the god of the Manicheans our god."
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