Revisionist History

Revisionist History

Thomas Allen

In response to a comment that I made on “MSNBC’s Revisionist History About JD Vance and America’s Failed Wars,” The New American, by Selwyn Duke, July 22, 2024, (https://thenewamerican.com/us/msnbcs-revisionist-history-about-jd-vance-and-americas-failed-wars/#comment-6515624670), I had an interesting discussion with “Confused” on revisionist history. (I have changed his pseudonym to protect his ignorance or stupidity — whichever the case may be.)

Duke’s misleading statements on revision history prompted my comment. My comment was:

A revisionist history is a history that disagrees with the standard orthodox establishment history. It is a historical account based on facts or a perspective that differs from the standard orthodox establishment history, which emphasizes a particular narrative or agenda instead of objective facts. That is, the primary purpose of the standard orthodox establishment history is to declare that the victors had the moral high ground and were not at fault or to advance an agenda of the establishment. More often than not, revisionist history is closer to the truth than is the standard orthodox establishment history. 

(This comment is a quotation from “Another Discussion with the Imbecile” by Thomas Allen.) The essence of revision history is that it significantly contradicts standard orthodox establishment history.

Duke may be the cause of some of Confused’s confusion about revisionist history. He writes that Alexander Nazaryan, a left-winger, condemned JD Vance over who launched America’s failed wars. Nazaryan attacked Vance and claimed that Vance was accusing Democrats in general and Biden in particular for the death of Americans in the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, although Vance hardly mentioned these wars and did not blame Democrats for them. Nazaryan identified the Republican Party as the party of war because of Bush the Younger’s war with Iraq. Yet, Nazaryan ignored the wars in which Democrats led the countries: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Duke called Nazaryan commentary revisionist history. Nazaryan’s historical account may be revisionist history, but that does not mean that all revisionist historians are left-wingers.

Confused maintains that only left-wingers write revisionist histories; right-wingers do not write revisionist histories. However, since progressives, liberals, and neoconservatives write most standard orthodox establishment history, they have little need to write revisionist history. Consequently, right-wingers write most revisionist history.

Among the right-wing writers of revisionist history are Dennis Cuddy, G. Edward Griffin, Jim Marrs, Jack Mohr, Eustace Mullins, Murray Rothbard, Antony Sutton, Nesta Webster, Clyde Wilson, and even Pat Buchanan. (This list is only a minute sample of right-wingers who have written revisionist histories.) Because these writers have written revisionist history, Confused considers them to be left-wingers, even communists. Following are some examples of revision history.

Standard orthodox establishment history claims that the French Revolution began as a spontaneous grassroots revolt of repressed peasants and proletarians against an oppressive aristocracy, monarchy, and clergy. Revisionist historians argue that the French Revolution was planned years earlier and was guided by elites and secret societies. (See “The French Revolution: Part I: The Foundation” by Thomas Allen.)

Standard orthodox establishment history claims that slavery was the cause, even the sole cause, of Lincoln’s War. The North fought to free the slaves, and the South fought to preserve and even to expand slavery.

Revisionist historians argue that slavery was a minor, even an insignificant issue, until about halfway through the war. Tariffs were the primary cause of secession for the Lower South, and the denial of the constitutional right of a State to secede was the primary cause of secession for the Upper South. (Until 1861, most people, including and especially New Englanders, claimed that States had a right to secede. However, once New Englanders and their allies in New York and the Upper Midwest gained control of the US government, States no longer had a constitutional right to secede.) Thus, the South fought against Northern exploitation, and the North fought to continue to exploit the South. Further, the South fought to preserve self-government and not to protect slavery. Most Southerners fought to repeal an invading hoard; if the Yankees had not invaded the South, no war would have occurred.

Standard orthodox establishment history claims that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. Revisionist historians say that it was a surprise attack for the people at Pearl Harbor. However, it was not a surprise to Roosevelt and his inner circle. They knew about it before it happened. Not only did they let it happen, but Roosevelt facilitated the attack. (See “World War II” by Thomas Allen.)

Robert Welch, who was a co-founder of the John Birch Society, asserted that President Eisenhower was a Communist sympathizer and an agent of the Communist conspiracy. Standard orthodox establishment historians disagree with Welch.

Standard orthodox establishment history claims that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin. Moreover, no conspiracy was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Revisionist historians argue that Oswald did not act alone; others were involved in the assassination, which made it a conspiracy. Furthermore, Oswald may not have been the actual assassin. (For more on the Kennedy assassination, see “A Credibility Test” by Thomas Allen.)

One left-wing revisionist history that has become partially, if not wholly, accepted as standard orthodox establishment history is that slaves in the Catholic Latin colonies were treated better than in the Protestant colonies of North America. This history is the opposite of the truth. Slaves were treated better in Protestant North America.

Another slavery-related left-wing revisionist history has become standard orthodox establishment history. That revisionist history was that slavery was the reason for Lincoln’s War. Many Republican leaders, who were the progressives of that day, promoted this revisionist history. Now, this explanation for the war is the standard orthodox establishment history.

Confused is like Imbecile; any history with which he disagrees is revisionist history. The standard definition of revisionist history, which he rejects, is any explanation of a historical event that disagrees significantly with the standard orthodox establishment explanation. (For more on revisionist history, see https://tcallenco.weebly.com/history.html.)

Discussion in Comments

Me: A revisionist history is a history that disagrees with the standard orthodox establishment history. It is a historical account based on facts or a perspective that differs from the standard orthodox establishment history, which emphasizes a particular narrative or agenda instead of objective facts. That is, the primary purpose of the standard orthodox establishment history is to declare that the victors had the moral high ground and were not at fault or to advance an agenda of the establishment. More often than not, revisionist history is closer to the truth than is the standard orthodox establishment history. https://tcallenco.blogspot.com/2024/05/another-discussion-with-imbecile.html

Confused: That’s not correct. “Revisionist history” has a negative connotation and is usually applied to leftist manipulation of history.

There are facts relating to events that have happened. Actual history involves revealing and expressing those facts.

Me: If you are correct and I am wrong, then the official explanation of the Kennedy assassination and 9-11 are accurate, and the revisionists are wrong. Likewise, only revisionist historians claim that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Also, the conspiratorial history that the JBS [John Birch Society] spews out is revisionist history, and, therefore, it has a negative connotation and is usually applied to manipulate history if you are correct. Most revisionist historians do a better job of discovering and explaining facts relating to historical events than do the standard orthodox establishment historians, whom you seem to prefer to believe.

Confused: Your above analysis is incorrect and illogical.

The problem is semantics. You’re defining “revisionist history” in a very anomalous way. The people you’re describing are conspiracy theorists, who may be right or wrong. Here is the definition of “revisionism”: “1 : a movement in revolutionary Marxian socialism favoring an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary spirit.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/revisionism

By calling correct historical interpretations “revisionism” YOU are unwittingly demonizing them by associating them with a negative label. You can do that if you wish, but it’s misguided and unwise.

Please stop hurting the cause.

Me: Your definition is for “revisionism” and not for “revisionist history.” Nevertheless, if you are correct, then people who question the official history of the Kennedy assassination and 9-11 and present an alternative explanation are Marxist socialists.

Confused: Again, that’s illogical. It’s only “revisionist history” if it’s an incorrect portrayal of history put forth to deceive and warp people’s conception of reality. So if the 9/11 doubters are correct, or at least if they’re questioning the official story in good faith, it’s not revisionist history.

Me: I have concluded that you are like Imbecile; any history with which you disagree is revisionist history. The standard definition of revisionist history, which you reject, is any explanation of a historical event that disagrees with the standard orthodox establishment explanation of that event. JBS’s conspiratorial explanation of various historical events is revisionist history, just as a communist class-warfare explanation of the same event is revisionist history.

Confused: Go bake some cookies, hon.

END

Copyright © 2024 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Thomas Allen

The following discusses libertarian ethics and the libertarian view of order verse liberty.

Libertarian Ethics
The following is an example of ethics in a libertarian society. It is also the ethics of the Puritan Yankee.

A city government decides to pursue the libertarian goal of abolishing itself. As part of this program, it privatizes its water and sewer system and its streets. Thus, it sells its waters and sewer system to A Company. Also, A Company buys the city streets. Finally, the city government abolishes itself.

Moreover, the city was built over a geological formation that requires wells to be drilled thousands of feet deep to produce water.

Now, having a monopoly over water and transportation, A Company raises water rates a hundredfold, which is the price just below the cost of drilling a well. (Some libertarians argue that monopolies are impossible.) If any customer fails to pay his water bill, the company immediately cuts off his water. Next, the company prevents any water from being transported over its streets. It also charges the residents an exorbitant fee for using its streets.

Without water, the residents are forced to sell at a great loss — if they can find any buyers, which is doubtful. Magnanimously, the company offers to buy their property at 0.01 percent of its last tax evaluation. If this offer is rejected, the resident has to either abandon his property or let the company take it for nonpayment of his water bill and street usage.

After the residents have been forced to abandon their property or sell it to A Company at a tremendous loss, A Company owns the city. Now, it can do with the city whatever it pleases to do.

Puritan Yankees would compliment the managers of A Company as shrewd businessmen. Because these shenanigans were by a private company, libertarians would defend the company’s actions. They would argue that the residents should have bought insurance to protect themselves from such an event. However, what insurance company would insure such an unknown, unpredictable event — at least at an affordable price? Libertarians would argue that the residents should have sold before A company established its monopoly, although some libertarians deny the possibility of monopolies. In short, the typical libertarian would blame the residents for their predicament and not the company.

As an alternative to insurance, the residents could hire a private security firm to protect their interest and to obtain water for their use and access to the streets. In retaliation, A Company hires a security firm to maintain its monopoly. Soon, the two security firms are warring, and the might of arms solves the disagreement.

Such are the ethics of the typical libertarian. They are almost indistinguishable from the ethics of the Puritan Yankee. A major difference between the two is that the Puritan Yankee does not hesitate to use the government to gain an advantage, while the libertarian loathes using the government.

Order and Liberty
Libertarianism, especially the anarcho-capitalist wing, is built on the false foundation of the notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles. That is, liberty and order limit each other. As one increases, the other decreases. Locke, Blackstone, Hobbes, and Rousseau, among many others, espouse this notion. This notion led to the French Revolution.

Opposing this notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles is the notion of the divine sanction of government. Under this notion, an increase in order leads to an increase in liberty. True liberty can only exist within the bounds of divine law. A just government maintains these bounds. (Despotic governments cause disorder and, by that, reduce liberty. Moreover, order may require a government, but it abhors a state because a state leads to disorder.) This is the notion that lead to the American Revolution.

Adherents of the antagonistic principle believe that natural liberty is a state of perfect freedom where a person acts as he thinks fit, without any restraint or control, i.e., the power to act as each man wills and pleases. Thus, public order reduces private liberty.

On the other hand, adherents of the divine sanction notion believe that natural liberty is a state where a person acts as he thinks fit within the bounds of divine law, i.e., the power to act as God wills. Thus, public order is necessary for private liberty.

Under the antagonistic principle, civil society arises from a surrender of individual rights; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is derived from a transfer of individual rights. The law and government restrain the liberty of human will.

Under the divine sanction notion, civil society arises from a right originally possessed by all, i.e., from a solemn duty originally imposed upon all by God; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is not derived from a transfer of individual rights; thus, neither the right to life nor liberty is transferred to society. The law and government restrain the tyranny of human will.

According to the antagonistic principle, freedom can be extracted and exist apart from the social whole. According to the divine sanction notion, freedom is inseparable from the social whole: Freedom cannot be separated from right reasoning.

Advocates of the antagonistic principle believe, or at least act as though they believe, that man is innately good, which is contrary to all history. Advocates of the divine sanction notion believe that man is naturally sinful, which history and personal experience easily support.

Thus, libertarianism rests on the false premise that humans are naturally good. Unbridled capitalism, as long as governmental collaboration is avoided, can sufficiently regulate, control, and suppress any sinful tendencies — so, libertarians believe. For the most part, a free-market economy may adequately regulate economic order and liberty. However, it fails as a regulator of political and social order and liberty.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Democracy and Morality

Mencken on the Democracy and Morality

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes democracy and morality, pages 162-176. Below is an overview of his discussion on democracy and morality; my comments are in brackets.
    “Liberty gone, there remains the majestic phenomenon of democratic law.” A glance at the law is sufficient to reveal “the identity of democracy and Puritanism.” [Puritanism extends far beyond vice, which today is a minor part of Puritanism — drug laws, especially anti-tobacco laws, and, to a declining extent, the prohibition of prostitution being about the only aspects of this type of Puritanism remaining. Today, Puritanism appears mostly as political correctness, abortion, civil rights laws, laws controlling businesses, zoning laws, hostility toward Confederate monuments, hostility toward Christianity, and the like.] They are merely “different facets of the same gem. In the psyche they are one.” Both derive “their primal essence out of the inferior man’s fear and hatred of his betters, born of his observation that, for all his fine theories, they are stronger and of more courage then he is, and that as they go through this dreadful world they have a far better time.” [Although Mencken description of the inferior man fits many, if not, most Whites, it fits nearly all Blacks. Yet, the old Black man said that he was glad that he was Black instead of White because Blacks knew how to have a good time and Whites did not.] This fear and hatred lead to envy.
    Envy is not “a speciality of democratic man. It is the common possession of all men of the ignoble and incompetent sort, at all times and everywhere.” Nevertheless, democracy liberates it; “it is only under democracy that it is liberated; it is only under democracy that it becomes the philosophy of the state.” [Therefore, all democratic countries have evolved into a welfare-state, which is based and built on envy.]
    Although humanity owes the old autocracies a great debt, the democrat is not likely to remember that debt. About the old autocracies, Mencken writes, “Their service, perhaps, was a by-product of a purpose far afield, but it was a service none the less: they held the green fury of the mob in check, and so set free the spirit of superior man.” When Flavius Honorius collapsed, Europe fell into chaos for four hundred years. [Flavius Honorius {384 –423} was the Western Roman Emperor from 393 to 423.] Charlemagne revived the autocracy and made possible the Renaissance and the modern age. [Charlemagne {742 –814}, King of the Franks {768–814} and Emperor of the Romans {800-814} united much of Europe during the early Middle Ages.] The autocracies kept the mob “from the throat of civilization.”
    Mencken points to the French and Russian Revolutions to illustrate what happens when the autocracy collapses: “The instant such a catastrophe liberates the mob, it begins a war to the death upon superiority of every kind not only upon the kind that naturally attaches to autocracy, but even upon the kind that stands in opposition to it. The day after a successful revolution is a blue day for the late autocrat, but it is also a blue day for every other superior man.”
    Mencken continues, “Democracy, as a political scheme, may be defined as a device for releasing this hatred born of envy, and for giving it the force and dignity of law.” Moreover, “the democratic state, despite the contrary example of France, almost always shows a strong tendency to be also a Puritan state.” Especially, in the field of public law, Puritan legislation “is a thing of many grandiose pretensions and a few simple and ignoble realities. The Puritan . . . always tries to convince himself (and the rest of us) that it is grounded upon altruistic and evangelical motives — that its aim is to work the other fellow’s benefit against the other fellow’s will.” [This is true even after Puritanism abandoned the Bible, of which Mencken probably approved, and became a secular religion.]
    Mencken notes, “The Puritan’s actual motives are (a) to punish the other fellow for having a better time in the world, and (b) to bring the other fellow down to his own unhappy level. . . . Primarily, he is against every human act that he is incapable of himself.” [Mencken has just described the motives of the Yankee.] However, he notes, “The Puritan is surely no ascetic. Even in the great days of the New England theocracy it was impossible to restrain his libidinousness: his eyes rolled sideways at buxom wenches quite as often as they rolled upward to God. But he is incapable of sexual experience upon what may be called a civilized plane; it is impossible for him to manage the thing as a romantic adventure; in his hands it reduces itself to the terms of the barnyard. Hence the Mann Act.” [The Mann Act makes it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of people for the purpose of prostitution or illegal sexual acts.] Likewise, with an alcoholic beverage, the Puritan “can have experience of it only as a furtive transaction behind the door, with a dreadful headache to follow. Hence Prohibition.” [Every chance that Mencken gets to condemn Prohibition, he does so.] Also, “with the joys that come out of the fine arts. Looking at a picture, he sees only the model’s pudenda. Reading a book, he misses the ordeals and exaltations of the spirit, and remembers only the natural functions. Hence comstockery.” [Today, censorship appears in the form of political correctness and vulgar mobs preventing anyone with whom these low-lives disagree from speaking peacefully on college campuses. Now, books are seldom removed from libraries because of sexual content, most sexual content now being politically correct, but because of political content, i.e., the book is politically incorrect because it disagrees with democracy, liberalism, progressivism, socialism, communism, Marxism, or the ever-growing power of the government or is considered “racist.”]
    The Puritan’s “delight in his own rectitude is grounded upon a facile assumption that it is difficult to maintain that the other fellow, being deficient in God’s grace, is incapable of it. So he venerates himself, in the moral department, as an artist of unusual talents, a virtuoso of virtue.” Mencken continues, “His error consists in mistaking a weakness for a merit, an inferiority for a superiority.” Being moral in the Puritan sense “is not actually a sign of spiritual eminence; . . . it is simply a sign of docility, of lack of enterprise and originality, of cowardice.” Once the Puritan forgets “his mainly imaginary triumphs over the flesh and the devil, . . . [he] always turns out to be a poor stick of a man in brief, a natural democrat.” [Thus, Puritans and democrats are twins, and “Puritan” is merely another name for “Yankee.”]
    Mencken adds, “No Puritan has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a poem worth reading — and I am not forgetting John Milton, who was not a Puritan at all, but a libertarian, which is the exact opposite. The whole Puritan literature is comprised in The Pilgrim’s Progress.” He continues, “Even in the department wherein the Puritan is most proud of himself, i.e., that of moral legislation, he has done only second- and third-rate work.” [Puritanism explains the low quality, meddlesome legislation flowing from Washington and most State capitals.] “His fine schemes for bringing his betters down to his own depressing level always turn out badly.”
    “Since the first uprising of the lower orders, the modern age has seen but one genuinely valuable contribution to moral legislation: . . . the Code Napoleon. It was concocted by a committee of violent anti-Puritans, and in the full tide of a bitter reaction against democracy.”
    Mencken continues, “If democracy had not lain implicit in Puritanism, Puritanism would have had to invent it. Each is necessary to the other. Democracy provides the machinery that Puritanism needs for the quick and ruthless execution of its preposterous inventions.” Puritans face great difficulty in advancing their schemes under autocracies. They can only convince the King if the King is crazy. Even then, the King’s ministers will restrain him. “But the mob is easy to convince, for what Puritanism has to say to it is mainly what it already believes: its politics is based upon the same brutal envies and quaking fears that lie under the Puritan ethic.” Continuing, Mencken notes that “the political machinery through which it [democracy] functions provides a ready means of translating such envies and fears into action. There is need only to sound the alarm and take a vote: the debate is over the moment the majority has spoken.” Thus, in democratic countries, “even the most strange and dubious legislative experiments are” enacted with ferocious haste. [Examples are Bush’s police state laws, which were mostly passed by Congress without anyone in Congress reading them and with little or no debate, and Obamacare, which Congress passed without reading or even knowing what was in it. Unfortunately, once enacted even the most egregious, intrusive, meddlesome, cumbersome, ineffective, inefficient laws are next to impossible to  repeal.]
    Mencken remarks “that this process of law-making by orgy, with fanatics supplying the motive-power and unconscionable knaves steering the machine, is bound to fill the statute-books with enactments that have no rational use or value save that of serving as instruments of psychopathological persecution and private revenge.” [And now you know why we have the laws that we do and so many of them.] Most laws “involve gross invasions of the most elementary rights of the free citizen, but they are popular with the mob because they have a virtuous smack and provide it with an endless succession of barbarous but thrilling shows.” Mostly, the victims of these laws are men whom “the mob naturally envies and hates — men of unusual intelligence and enterprise, men who regard their constitutional liberties seriously and are willing to go to some risk and expense to defend them. Such men are inevitably unpopular under democracy, for their qualities are qualities that the mob wholly lacks, and is uneasily conscious of  lacking: it thus delights in seeing them exposed to slander and oppression, and railroaded to prison.” [Although most members of the mob had never traded a stock, the mob was delighted when Martha Stewart went to prison.] Mencken notes that a district attorney is always ready to prosecute a superior man because “district attorneys are invariably men who aspire to higher office, and no more facile way to it is to be found than by assaulting and destroying a man above the general.” These are the type of district attorneys who become Congressmen. (One “is seldom promoted because he has been jealous of the liberties of the citizen.”) Furthermore, many judges reach “the bench by the same route.” [Most of the laws that Mencken uses as illustrations are petty, irritating laws. He seldom mentions the really despotic laws such as the wartime laws enacted during the Wilson administration that have been used since then to terrorize and imprison people who disagreed with the government. The laws that he mentions are nothing compared to today’s tax laws, which gather the mob’s support because they feed the mob’s envy: The mob is convinced that the tax laws are written to punish the rich and give the inferior man a free ride.]
    Mencken continues, “The whole criminal law in America thus acquires a flavour of fraud. It is constantly embellished and reinforced by fanatics who have discovered how easy it is to hurl missiles at their enemies and opponents from behind ranks of policemen. It is executed by law officers whose private prosperity runs in direct ratio to their reckless ferocity.” [If one listens to talk radio for a few days, especially on the shortwave and the Internet, he would discover the truthfulness of Mencken’s observation. He would discover that America has many political prisoners whose real crime, as opposed to the fraudulent crime of which they have been convicted with the aid of bias, prejudice judges, is that they stood for liberty.] Morons “whose chief delight lies in seeing their betters manhandled and humiliated” applaud this injustice. [Political cartoonists on the left are among the most idiotic of these morons.]
    “In the criminal courts a rich man not only enjoys none of the advantages that Liberals and other defenders of democracy constantly talk of; he is under very real and very heavy burdens.” Railroading a “better,” especially one who stands for liberty, is morally excusable. Sarcastically, Mencken asserts, “The district attorney is an altruist whose one dream is Law Enforcement; he cannot be terrified by the power of money; he is the spokesman of the virtuous masses against the godless and abominable classes.”
    Next, Mencken discusses Prohibition and the evils that it has brought instead of the paradise promised by its proponents. At the time that Mencken wrote, even the mob had turned against Prohibition, but its promoters refused to “repudiate their original nonsense.” [This sounds familiar. How many other laws are still being enforced that the mob has turned against? At least the mob got Prohibition repealed — and that required a constitutional amendment instead of a simple legislative enactment.] Prohibitionists are moved by “the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate.” [We see this with other laws — probably all mala prohibita laws. {Mala prohibitum is an offense prohibited by statute, but not inherently evil or wrong, such as failure to submit a report or to have a permit or license, failure to pay taxes, and most traffic violations. They are wrong because the government declares to be wrong. Opposite of mala prohibitum is mala in se, which is an offense that is evil or wrong from its own nature, irrespective of a statute, such as murder, rape, or robbery. Basically, the difference between the two is that mala in se is what God prohibits and mala prohibitum is what man prohibits.}] Like Prohibition, such laws become a means to “badger and annoy everyone who” does not comply with the letter of the law or its spirit, whichever is the most oppressive. Such laws “fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences” [as the drug laws do today]. Most of all, such laws satisfy “the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy.” Moreover, the Puritans can do this “with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.” Freedom from personal risk is the secret of the Puritans’ continual frenzy.
    Mencken notes “the American mob, far from being lawless, is actually excessively tolerant of written laws and judicial fiats, however plainly they violate the fundamental rights of free men, and . . . this tolerance is sufficient to protect them [the Prohibitionists, Puritans, and other meddlesome busybodies] from what, in more liberal and enlightened countries, would be the natural consequences of their anti-social activity.  If they had to meet their victims face to face, there would be a different story to tell.” However, “they seldom encounter this embarrassment. Instead, they turn the officers of the law to the uses of their mania.” He continues, “Thus, under democracy, the normal, well-behaved, decent citizen — the Forgotten Man of the late William Graham Sumner — is beset from all sides, and every year sees an augmentation of his woes.” [Sumner {1840–1910} was a classical liberal, a libertarian, and an American social scientist.] “In order to satisfy the envy and hatred of his inferiors and the blood lust of a pack of irresponsible and unconscionable fanatics, few of them of any dignity as citizens or as men and many of them obviously hypocritical and corrupt, this decent citizen [the Forgotten Man] is converted into a criminal for performing acts that are natural to men of his class everywhere, and police and courts are degraded to the abhorrent office of punishing him for them.” [Although Mencken writes this about Prohibition, it is true of most mala prohibita laws.]
    [What Mencken has written about the Puritan could just as well have been written about the Yankee. Substituting “Yankee” for “Puritan” would not change the meaning of what Mencken has written. The two are synonymous.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Democratic Man

Mencken on the Democratic Man

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the democratic man, pages 9-15. Below is an overview of his discussion on the democratic man; my comments are in brackets.
    Emerging “as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin,” the democratic man came forth “to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” Being at the bottom of the social scale, i.e., being inferior, he acquired “a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude” that “by some strange magic became sort of superiority — nay, the superiority of superiorities.”
    Thus, enlighten countries have moved evermore “toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders.” For, in this democratic man “lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege.” Whatever baffles statesmen, the democratic man can solve “instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition.”
    Moreover, his “yearnings are pure.” Only he is “capable of a perfect patriotism,” and in him “is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball.” [If true, no hope exists for peace. The democratic man is as much of a warmonger as are the aristocrat and the upper class; only his wars are far more brutal and destructive as World War I and World War II demonstrate.] Thus, “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!”
    This notion of the democratic man “originated in the poetic fancy of gentlemen on the upper levels — sentimentalists who, observing to their distress that the ass was over-laden, proposed to reform transport by putting him into the cart.” These gentlemen were “the direct ancestors of the more saccharine Liberals of to-day, who yet mouth their tattered phrases and dream their preposterous dreams.”
    Then Mencken gives a description of the rise of the democratic man during the French Revolution. “Early democratic man seems to have given little thought to the democratic ideal, and less veneration. What he wanted was something concrete and highly materialistic — more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes. He had no apparent belief in the acroamatic virtue of his own class, and certainly none in its capacity to rule.” [Thus, the democratic man seems to have shown more common sense than his aristocratic overlords and other members of the upper class who propelled him into governing.] Extermination of the baron was not his goal; his goal was “to bring the baron back to a proper discharge of baronial business.” In his attempt to force the barons back to baronial business, the baronage ended and others from among the democratic man took the barons’ place. The democratic man quickly showed his “opinion of them by butchering them deliberately and in earnest.” Once the blood began flowing, “it was a great deal more dangerous to be a tribune of the people than to be an ornament of the old order.” “[H]aving been misled into killing its King in 1793,” the democratic man “devoted the next two years to killing those who had misled” him. Then he got another king [Napoleon], “with an attendant herd of barons, counts, marquises and dukes, some of them new but most of them old, to guard, symbolize and execute his sovereignty.” So overjoyed was the democratic man at the return of a king, “that half France leaped to suicide that their glory might blind the world.”
    The blood flow in Europe slowed the rise of the democratic man. However, America had been spared such slaughters; thus, the popularity of the democratic man rose more quickly in the United States.
    Nevertheless, the conditions of the democratic man improved. “Once a slave, he was now only a serf. Once condemned to silence, he was now free to criticize his masters, and even to flout them, and the ordinances of God with them. As he gained skill and fluency at that sombre and fascinating art, he began to heave in wonder at his own merit. He was not only, it appeared, free to praise and damn, challenge and remonstrate; he was also gifted with a peculiar rectitude of thought and will, and a high talent for ideas, particularly on the political plane. So his wishes, in his mind, began to take on the dignity of legal rights, and after a while, of intrinsic and natural rights, and by the same token the wishes of his masters sank to the level of mere ignominious lusts. By 1828 in America and by 1848 in Europe the doctrine had arisen that all moral excellence, and with it all pure and unfettered sagacity, resided in the inferior four-fifths of mankind.” [In 1828, the supporters of Andrew Jackson formed today’s Democratic party got Jackson elected President.]
    Then in 1867, a philosopher [Marx] arose from the gutter and declared “that the superior minority had no virtues at all, and hence no rights at all — that the world belonged exclusively and absolutely to those who hewed its wood and drew its water.” Within a few decades, “he had more followers in the world, open and covert, than any other sophist since the age of the Apostles.” [Today, in the United States, his disciples dominate the Progressives, Liberals, Neo-conservatives, the Democratic party, and even the Republican party.] As the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union showed, this extreme philosophy had some problems. [Unfortunately, for Americans, the followers of the ruling elite have learned little from the experience of the Soviet Union, as the ruling elite is trying to turn the United States into its version of the United Soviet States of America.]
    The failure of the democratic man’s dictatorship of the proletariat did not slow the march of the democratic man. World War I was fought in the name of democracy, and all the defeated countries embraced it “with loud hosannas.” All Christendom now embraced the fundamental axioms of democracy: “(a) that the great masses of men have an inalienable right, born of the very nature of things, to govern themselves, and (b) that they are competent to do it.” [Viewing all the democratic and so-called democratic countries of the world brings into question that the democratic man is competent to govern. They present an argument much greater that he lacks the competence to govern.] When the democratic man is  “detected in gross and lamentable imbecilities,” it is because he is “misinformed by those who would exploit [him]: the remedy is more education.” [Education is the solution to all problems in a democratic society, even when, or especially when, education means indoctrination.] If, at times, he is “a trifle naughty, even swinish, . . . it is only a natural reaction against the oppressions [he] suffer[s]: the remedy is to deliver them.”
    Further, liberation of the democratic man is the “central aim of all the Christian governments of to-day,” which seek to augment his power. Moreover, a good government is one that “responds most quickly and accurately” to the desires and ideas of the democratic man. A bad government is one that “conditions [his] omnipotence and puts a question mark after [his] omniscience.”
    [Mencken’s description of the democratic man is a fairly accurate description of the typical supporters of the Democratic party and the typical supporters of RINOs {Republicans in name only}. Perhaps, this is because, as Mencken notes, the ancestors of Liberals and Progressives are the progenitors of democracy, i.e., ever expanding suffrage.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Allen.

More political articles.

Two Views of History ‒ Part 3

Two Views of History ‒ Part 3

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

Beginning with the French Revolution, all revolutions involving Europeans have had common features that strongly suggest conspiracy. No matter the grievances of the people, which have varied with time, the program of the social revolution has always been the same. Even the same slogans and catchwords have been used. Nearly every program and philosophy that the Illuminists offered during the French Revolution have appeared in every revolution that has followed. The revolutionary leaders are not men of the people. They come from the upper or middle classes, who are not victims of oppression. Weishaupt, Marx, Lenin, and most other revolutionary leaders were bourgeois.[1] The people who back and promote these revolutionary leaders were the super rich, like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. With rare exception they are indifferent about the suffering of the people and even human life. Not only do they have no pity or sympathy for the common man, they frequently disdain him. Furthermore, these revolutions have occurred when the ruling authority was beginning a program of reform for the benefit of the people. The only adequate explanation of this series of “coincidences” is a conspiracy that has maintained itself for at least 250 years. As accidental historians cannot adequately explain these “coincidences” away, they ignore them.

The people never wanted to abolish private property. They wanted to obtain more property and pass it onto their children. A goal of the revolutions over the last 250 years has been to abolish private property and inheritance. (The beauty of fascism is that it abolishes private property without abolishing it. People are allowed to own property, to pay taxes on it, and to be responsible for it. The government has total control over all property. Thus, the government enjoys the privilege of ownership without the responsibility.)

The people have always been nationalistic. They have no real thought, desire, or interest in internationalism. They distrust foreigners and oppose placing the welfare of other countries above their own. Yet internationalism and the destruction of national borders have been key parts of the program of the revolutionists over the last 250 years.

For the most part, the people place great value on their family and their religion. A goal of every revolution over the last 250 years has been to break up family life and to destroy the religion of the people, especially Christianity.

Accidental historians cannot adequately explain this commonalty of every revolution of the last 250 years. They cannot adequately explain why the leaders of these revolutions always act not only contrary to the wishes and goals of the people, but to the detriment of their wishes and goals. Only by resorting to a conspiratorial explanation of these revolutions, can an adequate explanation be given.

Accidental historians who do write about secret societies and conspiracies emphasize the absurdity of secret societies having much impact on the major events of history. They emphasize the divisions and disagreements among secret societies and among members within the same society. If a conspiracy writer confuses facts about an event, conspiracy, secret society, or a person, such confusion is used to pooh-pooh conspiracy and the importance of secret societies. Some conspiracy historians are prone to exaggeration; such exaggerations are, likewise, used to disregard, if not disdain, works of all conspiracy historians. Accidental historians attempt to present secret societies and their presumed schemes as inept comedies of errors. Their members are misguided idealists, knaves, charlatans, buffoons, and the like — none has the intelligence or resources to cause a successful revolution or overthrow a government. They may not deny that primary actors in a coup or revolution are members of a secret society; however, they argue that such membership and society are irrelevant. Such membership is coincidental. Any evidence connecting the secret society with an event or suggesting that a conspiracy was involved is inconclusive and based on circumstantial evidence. (Are not the accidental historians’ explanations also inconclusive and based on circumstantial evidence? If they were not, historians and political analysts would not continue to come up with new explanations.) Accidental historians present believers in conspiratorial aspects of history and the involvement of secret societies as ignoramuses who look for simple answers to complex problems. They are intellectually on the same level as the Flat-Earthers. They are irrational, lack sophistication, and seek oversimplified answers. (Over simplification is reducing everything down to economics and class warfare or to poverty, ignorance, and disease, which is what accidental historians typically do. No explanation of history is more simplistic than the accidental theory of history for the major world events.) McCarthy’s exposure of Communists is reduced to the same level as Stalin’s purges — overreaction to superstitious belief in secret societies and their conspiracies and powers. When writing about the influence of secret societies and their conspiracies on major historical events, accidental historians denounce the whole notion that a secret society could successfully execute a conspiracy of any importance. Any book that describes secret societies and conspiracies as significant and important actors in the great events of history is a “farrago of nonsense.” This is the opinion of accidental historians on secret societies and their conspiracies.

What the anti-conspiratorialists ignore is the clear and overwhelming evidence that in the “democracies” of the West, two governments exist: the visible and the invisible. Lady Queenborough describes this relationship as follows:

The game of politics is the pursuit of power. In all democracies, there are two separate organizations playing the political game. The open and visible one, the members of which hold office as members of a government, and the invisible one composed of individuals who control this visible organization and in whom is vested the real power, the essence of which is finance, controlling the publicity which makes or unmakes its tools.[2]

Such relationship between these two organizations is by its very nature conspiratorial.

Accidental historians see historical events as discrete and independent events. They fail to “connect the dots.” Conspiratorial historians “connect the dots.” They see the interconnections of historical events. To accidental historians, most adverse events happen by accident or incompetence. Conspiratorial historians agree with Franklin Roosevelt: they are planned.

Cochran’s Law Lexicon defines conspiracy as “an unlawful combination or agreement between two or more persons to carry into effect a purpose hurtful to some individual, or class, or the public at large.”[3] When two or more people collaborate to carry out an act that harms an individual, class of people, or the public, a conspiracy exists.

To decide if a conspiracy exists, Dr. Sterling Lacy has asked:

Is it evil to maneuver America from deifying God to deifying man? Does it take more than one person? . . .

Is it evil to socialize America? Does it take more than one person working in harmony to set up this system of legal plunder? . . .

Is it evil to fill school children’s minds with amoral sex education in our government schools? Does it take more than one person to design the programs, print the textbooks, and force our local teachers to teach our innocent children that homosexuality is simply an alternate lifestyle and that sex before marriage is their own business as long it’s “safe” (by “safe” they mean you don’t get a disease or get pregnant)?[4]

If any one of these events is evil and harms an individual, class, or the public and if more than one person is involved, then a conspiracy exists.

The conspiratorial view of history is Biblical. The random accidental view of history is Marxist.[5]

The conspiracy of Illuminism is not one of evil men meeting in secret and plotting to overthrow governments, although such conspiracies do occur. It is one of like-minded people coming together and working toward a common goal without necessarily having centralized autocratic direction. It is as Chaitkin describes:

. . . a conspiracy of this sort, spun out over successive generations, does not operate in the fashion most persons today would assume a conspiracy to work. One must not imagine that the essence of such conspiracies are secret meetings in obscure places, and so forth. The covert features of conspiracies are merely the necessary (usually) auxiliary means to the end in view. The essential thing about the great conspiracies which have, in fact, shaped most of human history, is not the dark plottings, and the begattings. The essential feature of any great conspiracy of this sort is the motivation which causes the leaders of a conspiracy to conspire together.[6]

The conspiracy operates like the Rhodes scholarship system, which serves to recruit and train Illuminists. Frank Aydelotte, American secretary to the Rhodes trustees, described this system:

If he [the Rhodes scholar] has the capacity for assimilation, if he can become part of what he meets, he may return from Oxford to the United States a citizen of the world. . . . Older [Rhodes scholar] men were often able to assist their young protégées, just back from Oxford, in finding suitable posts in the United States.[7]

Skull and Bones and other illuministic societies operate similarity.

The impact of secret societies on history can best be understood in the terms of Hegelian dialectic process: conflict creates history. Thus, controlled conflict can create a predetermined history. Managed use of conflict leads to predetermined ends.[8]

In Hegelian terminology, a thesis, problem, or existing force generates an antithesis, reaction, or countering force. The result of this conflict is a synthesis or solution, which becomes the new thesis.

Using the Hegelian dialectic process, Illuminists create a problem (thesis). Then other Illuminists stir up a reaction, such as fear or panic, in the people (antithesis). Next another group of Illuminists come forth to offer the solution to the problem (synthesis). The solution is always one that advances the cause of Illuminism. It is one that the people would not tolerate if they had not been conditioned to accept it.[9]

An example of the application of the Hegelian dialectic process is the Great Depression. Illuminists in control of the Federal Reserve System inflated the money supply and then greatly contracted it. This action led to an economic depression (thesis). Then Illuminists in the Hoover administration and businesses went to work to exasperate the depression with programs to keep prices and wages from falling — thus, creating massive unemployment (antithesis). Next illuminist Franklin Roosevelt came forth with the solution, a fascist welfare state where people would be dependent on the government (synthesis), a solution that the people would not have tolerated except for the crisis.

Another example is the international financiers financing the Bolshevik Revolution and communist rule of the Soviet Union that followed. “Western capitalists created Communism on one side (thesis) as a perceived enemy to the democratic nations (antithesis) on the other side. The ensuring conflict produced huge markets for finance and armaments and eventually a leveling of both sides (synthesis).”[10]

Illuminists use controlled conflict to bring about their illuministic New World Order, which is their synthesis. Because their New World Order is artificial, it has to be created. Random, spontaneous events would not bring about their New World Order. Moreover, managed conflicts create enormous profits for Illuminists. While they manage conflicts to bring about their New World Order, they also use these conflicts to make themselves richer.[11]

Rather than create movements, Illuminists often capture existing minor movements and turn them to their own evil purposes. They elevate them into major programs. They are notorious for taking important concerns of people, like the quality of the environment, and subverting them into a cause for the advancement of Illuminism. Without illuministic control, many of these movements would be harmless, and perhaps even laudable.[12]

Whether created or captured, Illuminists seek to turn discontent into chaos. Out of chaos, they will bring order. (According to Texe Marrs, “order out of chaos” is a “secret doctrine of the Illuminati.”) They seek “to bring an order of knowledge to the chaos of the various human beliefs and philosophies in the world.”[13] Illuminists will build their New World Order by whatever means possible; “the end justifies the means.”

Does this mean that Illuminists operating through secret societies have caused all, or even most, major events? No. However, they have used and manipulated most of them, especially in modern times, to their benefit. They have been heavily involved to varying degrees in the various revolutions and upheavals over the last 500 years. Often they have caused wars where issues could have, and without their influence probably would have, been resolved without war. Frequently, they exasperate minor problems into major problems. Illuminists do not necessarily create or foment all revolutions and great events of history. However, they have used most of them for their own ends.

Although Illuminists appear to be in control of much of the world’s manmade catastrophes, they often start events into motion only to loss control. Adolf Hitler and Napoleon appear to be two examples where the Illuminists lost control of those whom they brought to power. Furthermore, the Illuminists do not always win. Two examples of illuministic failures are the failure to turn Spain into a communist country in the 1930s and maintaining Communism in Chile in the 1970s. Francisco Franco foiled their attempt in Spain. Augusto Pinochet’s overthrow of Salvador Allende reversed their advancements in Chile. When the efforts of President G. H. Bush, on behalf of the Trilateral Commission, to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union are consider, its collapse appears to have been a setback for the Illuminists — at least the collapse may not be part of their plan for controlling the world.

Two views of history exist: accidental and conspiratorial. Of these two views, the conspiratorial view is superior to the accidental view in explaining the history of the world over the last 500 years.

Endnotes
1. Nesta H. Webster, World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization (Editor Anthony Gittens. Seventh edition. Palmdale, California: Omni Publications, 1994), p. 59.

2. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 241.

3. Robert A. Mace, ed., Cochran’s Law Lexicon (Pronouncing edition, 4th ed. Cincinnati, Ohio: The W.H. Anderson Co., 1956), p. 81.

4. Sterling E. Lacy, Valley of Decision (Texarkana, Texas: Dayspring Products, Inc., 1992), p. 11.

5. Lacy, p. 18.

6. Anton Chaitkin, Treason in America From Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman (New York, New York: New Benjamin Franklin House, 1984.), pp. 144-145.

7. Dennis L. Cuddy, The Globalists: The Power Elite Exposed (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2001), p. 45.

8. Antony C. Sutton, How the Order Creates War and Revolution (Phoenix, Arizona: Research Publications, Inc., 1984), p. I.

9. Des Griffin, Anti-Semitism and the Babylonian Connection (Clackamas, Oregon: Emissary Publications, 1992), p, 69.

10. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), pp. 194-195.

11. Sutton, p. i.

12. Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924), p. 345.

13. Marrs, p. 255.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Part 2 

 More articles on history.

Two Views of History ‒ Part 1

Two Views of History ‒ Part 1
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

People’s view of history and the major events occurring during their lives generally falls into two categories. The first category believes everything happens by accident or chance. No planning is involved. No force is guiding events from behind the scene. The major events are random and spontaneous. The second category believes that not all events happen by accident or chance; many are planned. A force is guiding many, if not most, events from behind the scene. The major events are not spontaneous.

Rush Limbaugh, the well-know conservative and a staunch Zionist, falls in the first category. He rejects a conspiratorial explanation of history. Yet he describes the acts of liberals essentially the same way as most conspiracy historians and conspiracy scientists describe the actions of the conspirators. He also has admitted that people who advance in Washington have been handpicked by an Ivy League school. These people are given certain roles in government. They are monitored and go where the hand pickers put them.[1] Sounds like a conspiracy, doesn’t it?

One argument that he gives for rejecting conspiracy science is that it is too simple. Actually, it is more complex than the alternative of random and spontaneous causes. Conspiracy historians and scientists must look far beneath the surface to explain the cause of an event. Accidental historians merely investigate the surface causes.

Another reason that he gives for rejecting conspiracy science is that some conspiracy scientists claim that William Buckley is part of the conspiracy. Buckley, a neo-conservative, typically advocated conservative positions while most conspirators are identified with the left. Therefore, conspiracy scientists are wrong, and conspiratorial historical interpretations are false. What Limbaugh overlooks is that Illuminists support both sides in order to influence and control both sides for their benefit. Buckley was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations[2] and, perhaps more important, Skull and Bones.[3] He also worked for the CIA[4] and participated in the Bohemian Grove.[5] Therefore, he was an Illuminist of some degree. Buckley directed and influenced the right. His job was to prevent the right from getting too close to the inner circles of the Illuminists. He was to the right-wing what the Lamonts were to the left.

Nevertheless, Limbaugh did agree with conspiratorial historians that a powerful force outside the federal government was directing President Clinton to support NAFTA. He said, “This is the one issue Clinton has, other than welfare reform, where he has just flown in the face of his constituency groups. . . . There are forces, powerful forces, outside Washington, who are steering this one.”[6]

Contrary to Limbaugh’s claim, a sinister force has guided major historical events in the background. This sinister force is termed “Illuminism.” Illuminists have been involved in, if not behind of, most world events of importance that have occurred since the end of the Middle Ages. They were involved in many major events before then. Working through various secret societies, semi-secret societies, and front organizations, Illuminists have been a major force of world history.

Most historians deny conspiracies as the cause of major events in history. Accidental historians have bought Napoleon’s dictum, “history is a fraud agreed upon.” The “fraud agreed upon” is that conspiracy does not exist in history. For example, most historians believe that conspiracy played no important part in the French Revolution. They point to the Jacobins outlawing Freemasonry in 1792 and dissolving Masonic lodges. (Napoleon legalized Freemasonry in 1798 and encourage Freemasons to reopen their lodges.)

This action has been used to argue that Freemasonry was not involved in planning or directing the French Revolution. The thought that a small group of conspirators aided by dupes was behind the French Revolution is belittled. Such an assertion does not rule out conspiracy. Most important collaborators were not dupes. Liberals and Jews throughout the twentieth century have supported and collaborated with the Communist cause, yet they are not Communists. So it was with the French Revolution. People collaborated with the conspirators not because they were dupes but because they were sympathizers. They knew what the conspirators want to do, and they sympathized with that goal.

That most revolutions, wars, and other great events of history have complicated causes does not mean that conspiracy is not involved. Furthermore, conspiracies are not omnipotent. Although a conspiracy may start an event, it may not be able to control it as planned. In the end what really matters is the blood sacrifice to Lucifer. As long as the blood flows, who causes it to flow matters little.

That the Jacobins outlawed Freemasonry does not mean that the two were not co-conspirators. (The Jacobin Club was a puppet society of Freemasonry established to carry out the political initiative of Freemasonry.[7]) A favorite trick of the Illuminists is to use two opposing factions that they control to confuse the masses. They often use the tactic of pressure from below and pressure from above. Illuministic agents either incite the rabble to riot or disgruntled groups to revolt while illuministic agents in positions of power come forth to suppress the violence with superior violence. Another common approach is to control all major political parties or factions; thus, the electorate is tricked into believing that it has a choice when it does not.

The Jacobins may have been a rebellious faction. Or a power struggle may have occurred between the Jacobins and other Illuminists as occurred in the Soviet Union between Stalin and Trotsky. Outlawing Freemasonry may have been part of the Illuminists’ plan to purge undesirables, i.e., anti-illuministic, members from Freemasonry. At this time many Masonic lodges were operating independently of the Grand Orient. When the revolt came and the king was in danger, many Freemasons came to his defense. Thus, outlawing Freemasonry gave Illuminists the opportunity and excuse to purge these lodges and Freemasonry of counterrevolutionists. Furthermore, the Jacobins may have feared that some Freemasonry lodges might be used for a counterrevolution — just as the Jacobins had used them for their revolution. The Jacobins, or the Illuminists behind them, may have had other reasons for outlawing Freemasonry.

However, the most likely reason for outlawing Freemasonry was to prevent it from being accused of cooperating in the revolt. This tactic is commonly used. Secret societies are divided into two factions or parties. One is the intellectual party, which is passive and supports the cause through intellectual means like speeches and writings. The other is the war party, which supports the cause through violence.

Another ploy used to discredit a conspiratorial explanation of great historical events is to identify people whom conspiratorial historians claim were co-conspirators. For example, to disprove that conspiracy and secret societies had any relevant part in the French Revolution, accidental historians identify persons who were suppose to be part of the conspiracy, but who were executed. Philippe the Duke of Orleans, Mirabeau, Robespierre, and others were executed; thus, a conspiracy could not have existed. Why could not conspirators have executed fellow conspirators? The Duke of Orleans was merely a tool of the Illuminists who were behind the conspiracy of the French Revolution. When his usefulness ended, Illuminists fed him to the mob. Mirabeau was a high-degree Illuminist. However, when he began to waver against executing King Louis XVI, he became a threat to the Illuminists and had to be eliminated. Likewise, with Robespierre, he was also a high-degree Illuminist. However, the Illuminists were beginning to lose control of him, and he was becoming a threat. Furthermore, the Illuminists were ready to move to the next level of the revolution, and they no longer needed Robespierre. So they guillotined him. Such explanations account for the execution of Illuminists and other members of secret societies. The executed are tools who have outlived their usefulness, or they are threats and know too much. Also, some may become victims of the passions of the moment. Of coarse, accidental historians give little credence to such explanations.

Accidental historians question how a conspiracy could pass from one generation to another. They point out that most conspirators are nefarious characters. They question how such people could maintain their conspiracy for so long without turning on each other much more frequently than they do. (Responding adequately to these objections is where many conspiracy scientists fail.)

If the conspiracy originated in man and was man-centered, accidental historians would be correct. Such conspiracies are short-lived. They certainly do not pass on to the next generation. The evil men involved in them would destroy each other, especially as the conspiracy was achieving its goal. However, the conspiracy is not man-centered. At the center of the conspiracy is Lucifer. He has organized it, and he directs it. Thus, the conspiracy can transcend generations. Lucifer controls and checks his miscreant conspirators. Consequently, the conspiracy lives.

Another ploy, which is perhaps second only to the silent treatment, used by anti-conspiratorialists is to attack the messenger. If they cannot refute the facts, arguments, or conclusions, which they seldom can, they destroy the messenger. Assail his character. Ridicule him. Smear him as a “fascist,” “racist,” “anti-Semitic,” etc. Anyone who believes in a conspiracy is mentally unstable, if not insane — a kook. Discredit the messenger anyway possible, i.e., as much as necessary to ruin him. If his facts and conclusion cannot be refuted, he can be discredited by destroying his character. (Personal attacks often force the person being attacked to expend his resources to defend his name instead of exposing the conspiracy.)

Most accidental historians approach the conspiratorial explanation of history by ignoring it. They do not attempt to refute the evidence of conspiracy because they cannot refute it.

Perhaps the main reasons that most historians discount conspiracies are (1) career advancements, (2) vested interest, and (3) the difficulty in finding information. Conspiracies by their nature are secretive.[8]

The first reason is the primary reason. Illuminists control academia; therefore, any historian who explains historical events from a conspiratorial perspective risks career advancement and perhaps his career. Illuminists control the major universities, and most minor ones, and the major publishers. Thus, funding for and publishing of conspiratorial histories, especially conspiratorial twentieth century histories, are greatly stifled. Additionally, any historian who writes history from a conspiratorial perspective faces social and professional ostracism.

The teachers, mentors, and employers of most historians are accidental historians and have a vested interest in a non-conspiratorial explanation of history. They instill on historians under their control and influence a bias against conspiratorial history. Thus, these historians also acquire a bias against conspiratorial history. People are highly reluctant to admit that they have been deceived and that they are wrong. For an accidental historian to admit the existence of a conspiracy requires rejecting a lifetime of work.

Finally, conspiracies seldom make their true goals and programs public. (Many of today’s secret societies and their front organizations are open about their general goal of establishing a New World Order with one world government. However, they pooh-pooh anyone who suggests that a totalitarian government will control this New World Order or that a conspiracy is involved.) Much inductive reasoning is required to discover them.

Accidental historians nearly always present revolutions as spontaneous events. The politically, economically, or socially oppressed rebels against an autocratic state, for example the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Rare is the historian who identifies the source of financing for the revolutionists. No revolution would last more than a few months without money, weapons, and other support. Most revolutions would fail if the backers were not also influencing, if not controlling, the government against which they are revolting.

Accidental historians fail to explain why world leaders continue to make the same errors that lead to war, inflation, and depression. They fail to explain why each “mistake” made by world leaders nearly always advance Illuminism in one form or another. (If an accidental historian dares to offer an explanation, it is usually with the Marxist Hegelian dialectic. In reality, the Hegelian dialectic is a description or explanation of planned events — not of accidental, random, or spontaneous events.)

Furthermore, accidental historians must argue that the leaders of the United States are stupid. Yet they fail to explain how such influential people can achieve such success while being completely void of intelligence. If the leaders of the United States are not stupid, why do they continuously adopt domestic and foreign policies that destroy the foundation and fundamental principles of the United States? (The answer is one that few accidental historians will give — they ignore the question and, therefore, do not give an answer. The answer is that most of the leaders of the United States have declared war on the God of the Christians. They may call themselves Christians, although this label is becoming more taboo each day, and go through the motions of being Christian [baptism, church attendance, praying, etc.], but many of them are not really Christians.)

Accidental historians fail to explain why the big bankers, multinational corporations, and other so-called capitalists of the West built up and maintained the Soviet Union. Why would anyone arm someone who threatened to kill him? This is exactly what the rich and powerful in the West did. A basic tenet of Communism is to kill the rich and distribute their wealth to the proletariat. The Soviet Union would not have survived more than a few years if it were not for the money and technology of the West. Accidental historians must believe that these so-called capitalists were greedy fools or dupes. Yet they fail to explain how fools and dupes can successfully run the largest banks, corporations, and governments in the world. (Contrary to what accidental historians would lead one to believe, these men were not fools or dupes. They were not going to arm anyone who was a threat to them, which is why they seek to nullify the Second Amendment and disarm the American people. These men knew what they were doing. They controlled the Soviet Union and knew that it was no threat to them in spite of the communist rhetoric. The rhetoric was for show. These so-called capitalists were greedy, but they were not fools or dupes.)

Those who reject a conspiratorial explanation of history have to believe that the United States’ entry into World War II was an accidental, spontaneous, random event. They have to reject and explain away all the evidence that shows that the Roosevelt administration and the British government planned and connived to bring the United States into the war. Likewise, with the French Revolution, World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution, they must reject and explain away the overwhelming evidence of conspiracy. Accidental historians must claim that the communist capture of the countries of eastern Europe resulted from spontaneous grassroots revolts. The communist capture had nothing to do with Roosevelt and Churchill conspiring with Stalin in secret meetings and giving him eastern Europe.

The Bible clearly shows that a group of Jews conspired to get Jesus crucified. People who reject the conspiratorial view of history must reject any conspiracy involved in the crucifixion of Jesus. They must argue that his crucifixion resulted from the spontaneous act of a mob.

Opponents of conspiratorial historians often suggest that conspiratorial historians are mentally ill. On the contrary, the opponents are the ones who display symptoms of mental illness, for they refuse to look at the evidence. (Or worse, they know the truth and seek to conceal it.) They ignore the evidence and hope that it is not true. A rational person would review the evidence and draw a logical conclusion. The logical conclusion is that a sinister force, a conspiracy, is behind many great events of history.

Endnotes
1. Dennis L. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), p. 204.

2. Gary North, Conspiracy: A Biblical View (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1986), p. 89.

3. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 94.

4. “Neoconservatism: a CIA Front?” 1997, http://lewrockwell.printthis.clikcability.com/pt/ cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=65..., June 8, 2003.

5. David Icke, “Conspiracies, Cover Ups, Truths, Facts, Oddities, Research,” http://mysite.users2. 50megs,com/research/bohemianclub.html, June 18, 2001.

6. Dennis L. Cuddy, Secret Records, The Man, the Money, & the Methods Behind the New World Order (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 1999), p. 182.

7. Bernard Fay, Revolution and Freemasonry (Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown, and Company, 1935), p. 315.

8. Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Seal Beach, California: Concord Press, n.d.), pp. 7-16.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Part 2 

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Freemasonry the Early Years

Freemasonry the Early Years
Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

Interest by non-masons in Freemasonry began to grow in the seventeenth century. Freemasonry began to divide into two kinds: operative and speculative. Scottish Masonic lodges began to allow honorary members, who were not stonemasons. These Scottish Masons brought about the restoration of the House of Stuart in 1660. The beginnings of modern Freemasonry started about 1619 when the London Masons’ Company organized a body called the "Acception." This organization was established for men who were not masons by trade; they were known as "gentleman masons" or "accepted masons."

Freemasonry became so popular and fashionable in Great Britain during the seventeenth century that the "accepted" Masons became the majority. Finally, those who were not operative masons, masons by trade, decided to abandon the operative masonic lodges and form their own gentlemen’s lodges. Thus, Freemasonry was born.

An important figure behind the creation of speculative Freemasonry was Francis Bacon, a Rosicrucian and possibly a son of Queen Elizabeth I.[1] He was highly involved in the tradition of the Knights Templars.[2] Furthermore, Bacon is one of Illuminism’s most important leaders. In his New Atlantis, Instauratio Magna, and some of his other works, he laid out the plan for the New World Order.

Modern-day secret societies and their concomitant conspiracies and occultism may be said to begin in the early eighteenth century with the establishment of modern-day Freemasonry. Modern-day Freemasonry began in 1717 with the union of four London lodges to form the United Grand Lodge of British Freemasons (the Grand Lodge of London).[3] The seven founders were James Anderson (a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and a libertine), Calvert, Theophile Desaguliers, Joseph Elliott, James King, Lumen-Madden, and George Payne.[4] All seven were Gnostics and Magi of the English Rose Croix. Anthony Sayer became the first Grand Master. In 1721, John, the Duke of Montagu, became the GrandMaster; since then, the Grand Master has always been a nobleman. Philip, Duke of Wharton, a prominent Whig politician became Grand Master in 1722. The first person of the royal family to be Grand Master was Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, brother of George III, in 1782. Since 1782, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of York, or the Duke of Sussex has been grand master. Traditionally, a member of the royal family, or someone with close ties to Buckingham Palace, has been Grand Master of the English lodges.

By 1732, the Grand Lodge of London had become the center of English Freemasonry. By 1747, it dominated Freemasonry throughout the world.

The Freemasons modeled the structure of their organization after the craft guilds of the Middle Ages, primarily the French Compagnons and the Vehmgerichts, with degrees of membership. To this structure was added a speculative philosophy acquired from the Cabala. Among the other ancestors of Freemasonry are the ancient Mysteries of Egypt and Greece, Pharisaic Judaism, the Essences of Jerusalem, Hinduism, Gnosticism, the Roman Collegia of Artificers (Roman College of Builders), the Templars, the Steinmetzen of Westphalia, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. Of these, Jewish ones predominate and are, by far, the most important.

Fahey describes the relationship between Jews and Freemasonry as follows:

What we see, then, in the years following 1717 is rather the emergence into fuller light of a secret organised Force aiming at enrolling and forming groups of adepts to work for Naturalism, that is, for the denial of the Supernatural Life and the elimination of membership of Christ from society. The Jewish nation is a non-secret organised naturalistic Force, that is to say its naturalistic opposition to the Mystical Body of Christ is openly proclaimed. Freemasonry, the organised naturalistic Force action in subordination to and in conjunction with the Jewish nation is a secret society or group of societies, for its naturalism or anti-supernaturalism is secret or camouflaged.[5]

Of the relationship between modern Judaism and Freemasonry, Cahill observed,

(1) That much of the external trappings of Freemasonry, such as its ritual, its terminology, its legends, etc. are of Jewish origin;

(2) that the philosophy or religion of esoteric Freemasonry (that is of the inner circles and controlling power) is practically identical with the doctrines of the Jewish Cabala, which is the religion or philosophy of a certain section of the Jews;

(3) that a certain group of Jews, probably very few in number, but of immense influence and power, are leading Freemasons; and

(4) that a somewhat larger group of very influential Jews pursue the same ends as Freemasons, and use similar means, and are at least in close alliance with them.[6]

According to James Anderson, the real aim of Freemasonry was to carry "pure Gnosticism and liberal rationalism throughout the entire world"[7] and that "the secret teachings of the supreme leaders of Freemasonry may be summed up in these words: to establish all the rights of Man."[8] (Masonic Gnosticism goes back at least 200 years before the union of the London lodges.)

Freemasonry soon spread across Europe. In 1721, speculative English Freemasonry first appeared on the Continent in France. In 1725, English nobles and gentry who were supporters of James II, the Jacobites, founded the Grand Lodge of Paris. Charles Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater was its first Grand Master. (Thus, while Illuminists through Freemasonry in England supported the house of Hanover, Illuminists through Freemasonry in France and Scotland supported the house of Stuart.)

After arriving in France, Freemasonry spread rapidly across the continent. It appeared in Spain in 1728, Holland in 1730, Germany in 1730, Russia in 1731, Italy in 1733, Poland in 1735, Portugal in 1735, Sweden in 1735, Switzerland in 1736, Austria in 1742, Hungary in 1742, Denmark in 1743, and Finland in 1756. Monarchs in Spain, Portugal, and Naples opposed Freemasonry. However, in Germany and Austria, the monarchs viewed it favorably.

Freemasonry soon received the opposition of King Louis XV, who forbad his subjects to become Freemasons. Opposition to Freemasonry in France seemed to have been directed against selected individuals rather than Freemasonry per se. Two anti-masonry movements occurred in France: one in 1737 and the other in 1744 and 1745. However, persecution was sporadic and ineffective. Cardinal Andre de Fleury, who lead the first anti-Masonry movement, did not submit the Papal Bull issued in 1738 condemning Freemasonry to the French Parliament. Opposition to Freemasonry was mostly from the Catholic Church; the government showed little concern. Much of it may have been Cardinal Fleury’s attempt to protect himself from a high-ranking aristocrat using Freemasonry against him.

Frederick the Great aided the introduction of Freemasonry into Germany. In 1738, he was initiated into Freemasonry. He became Grand Master, and in 1761, he headed the Scottish Rite. Other rulers of German states followed his lead, as did Francis I of Austria. Frederick used Freemasonry as a cover for his intrigues.

Schisms soon developed within Freemasonry. In Great Britain, Freemasonry divided between the United Grand Lodge of England, which followed the new rules and ceremonies of The Constitutions of the Freemasons that Dr. James Anderson had written, and the Grand Lodges of Scotland and of Ireland, which preferred the old constitutions. Adherents of the new rules and ceremonies were known as the Modernists, and the adherents of the old, as the Antients or Ancient Masons. The Antients supported four Masonic degrees while the Moderns supported only three. Furthermore, while the Moderns had fully de-Christianized Freemasonry, the Antients had not. (Freemasonry did not seek to destroy the established religion so much as to replace it with the religion of Freemasonry.) Furthermore, the new constitutions replaced loyalty to country and patriotism with loyalty to the brotherhood of Freemasons, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and nebulous mankind. (Freemasonry placed itself above state and country; for practical reasons, it avoided open conflict with the state.) This division remained until 1813 when the rival Grand Masters, George IV’s brothers, Edward Augusta, Duke of Kent and Grand Master of the Antients, and Augusta Frederick, Duke of Sussex and Grand Master of the Moderns, reunited the two factions. The union resulted in the United Grand Lodge of England with the Duke of Sussex as the Grand Master. The Moderns won in de-Christianizing Freemasonry, and the Antients won in having higher degrees and the invocation of the supposedly rediscovered long-lost name of God associated with the higher degrees.

In France a split occurred between followers of the Jacobites, who favored higher degrees (the Scottish Rite), and followers of the Grand Lodge of France (the English Grand Lodge of France), who opposed higher degrees. Masonic lodges that followed the Scottish Rites were known as red masonic lodges. Lodges following the English were known as blue masonic lodges. In 1754, Louis, Prince of Bourbon, Count of Clermont, and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, began adding higher degrees. (Louis was Grand Master from 1743 until 1771.) In 1756, the Grand Lodge of France declared itself independent of the Grand Lodge of England.

At the urging of Mirabeau, Philippe Egalite, Duke of Chartres, later Duke of Orleans, united the various factions of French Freemasonry in 1773 with himself as Grand Master. Thus, to bring greater coordination and discipline among the red lodges, the Grand Orient of France was founded. Essentially, the union resulted in the Grand Lodge being submerged into the Grand Orient with the masters of the Grand Orient being masters of the new organization. The union was one of force as mush as of mutual agreement. (Even after this union, schisms continued until 1799.)

The Duke of Orleans led the faction that sought to overthrow Louis XVI, his brother-in-law, and put himself on the throne. He used the Grand Orient, which was no social club, to fulfill his ambition. It was in the forefront of revolutionary incitement. As early as 1776, it leadership was instructing the membership in preparation for insurrection.

In Germany a power struggle occurred between the Rosicrucian element and the French element. (French prisoners of war introduced the French element in 1756 and 1757.) Disagreement involved craft practices. The Rosicrucians had adopted the Scottish Rites, which had degrees above the first three. An appeal was made to the Grand Lodge of London, which claimed that to guarantee the purity of Freemasonry, it must instruct and rule on all matters of Freemasonry. It ruled that only three degrees were authentic. German Freemasonry divided into two factions: the Rosaic (Rosicrucian) lodges and lodges adhering to the Grand Lodge of London.

While these two factions squabbled, another Masonic faction rose to become much more important than these two. This was the Order of Strict Observance, which was founded in 1751. Karl Gotthold, Baron von Hund, organized this Order, which was based on the Scottish Rite and the Order of the Gold and Rosy Cross (a Rosicrucian society), and which was a Templar order.[9] Among the members of this Order were Prince Charles (Karl) of Hesse, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick (who became the head of the Order), von Bischoffswerder (the Prussian minister), Christian Bode (the Councillor of Legation in Saxe-Gotha and later a member of the Bavarian Illuminati.), Baron de Wachter, von Haugwitz (foreign minister of Frederick the Great), Baron Adolph von Knigge (Weishaupt’s assistant), Marquis de Chefdebien d’Armisson, and Count Leopold de Kollowrath-Krakowski.[10] Behind this Order were the Unknown Superiors, who remained in the background yet who had supreme control of the Order. Frederick the Great, Voltaire, and Hayyim Samuel Falk were probably among the Unknown Superiors.[11] The Order of Strict Observance eventually gained control of German Freemasonry. Then it was absorbed into the Order of the Illuminati as a result of the Congress of Wilhelmsbad in 1782. Officially, the Order of Strict Observance disappeared after the Congress of Wilhelmsbad. Nevertheless, it seems to have merely changed its name and became the Rectified Scottish Rite.

The Order of Strict Observance spread to France, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, and Russia. The Duke of Sudermania, who later became King Charles XIII of Sweden, presided over the Order in Sweden. In France, Jean-Baptiste Willermoz set up the first lodge in 1774 in Lyon, the year that he joined the Order. However, in 1778, Willermoz made French members of the Strict Observance independent of the Germans.

Besides Freemasonry, other secret societies also played an important role in the development of Illuminism during the eighteenth century. One such society was the Martinists or French Illuminati.

In 1754, Martines de Pasqually (Martinez Paschalis or Pasqualis), a Jew of Portugese origin, who was supposedly a Catholic by faith, founded the Order of the Elected Priest, whose members became known as Martinists and as French Illumines. Pasqually was a Rose Croix Freemason and a Rosicrucian. His Order was centered in Lyon, but it spread as far as Russia. This Order was an important instrument in spreading occultism across France. It emphasized theurgy, the Cabala, magic, divination, alchemy, Gnosticism, and Theosophy. Its goal was to use hedonism, secrecy, terror, and revolution to destroy Christianity and the existing order. From this anarchy would arise a New World Order without God where the Illuminists would hold the sexes and goods in common and mankind would be reduced to a herd of animals. Like all Illuminists, the Martinists had an intense hatred of the God of the Christians—thus, their rampant immorality, which is merely open rebellion against Him. It eventually became the third great Masonic power in France. Its philosophy became the predominant philosophy of Freemasonry.

In 1771, the Martinists and several other rival Masonic orders united and formed the new lodge of the United Friends. Savalette de Lange, a high initiate in Freemasonry and "the man of all conspiracies,"[12] founded this lodge. When he founded it, he was the Royal Treasurer, Grand Officer of the Grand Orient. To unite the other lodges into his, he blended sophistic, Martinist, and Masonic systems. Among the members of the United Friends were Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville, Marquis de Chefdebien d’Armisson (he was also a member of the Grand Orient and the Strict Observance), Condorcet (Freemason), Danton, Frederic-Louis de Hesse-Darmstadt Count de Gebelin, Baron de Gleichen (Freemason), William Law (English clergyman), Mirabeau, Louis Claude Saint-Martin, Emmanuel J. Sieyes (Freemason), Viscount of Tavannes, Willermoz, and William IX of Hesse.[13] The United Friends "prosecuted the dark and dangerous work of preparing that reformation of society which in practice became [the French] Revolution."[14]

At the time of the union, Willermoz, who had joined the Martinists in 1767, controlled the Martinist lodges. He remained at Lodge Theodore in Munich until 1784, two years after Weishaupt’s Illuminati formerly united with Freemasonry. Lodge Theodore was the center of the Illuminati.

Endnotes
1. William T. Still, New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990), p. 47.

2. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 228.
3. Norman MacKenzie, ed., Secret Societies (New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 163. K.R, McKilliam, Conspiracy to Destroy the Christian West (London, England: The Board of Anglo-Saxon Celtic Deputies). p. 5.
4. Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), pp. 34, 175. J. S. M. Ward, Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods (London, England: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., 1921), p. 68.
5. Denis Fahey, Grand Orient: Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power behind Communism through Discovery of Lost Lectures Delivered by Monsignor George F. Dillon, D.D. at Edinburgh, in October 1884 (New and Revised Edition. Metairie, Louisiana: Sons of Liberty, 1950), p. xiii.
6. E. Cahill, Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement (Second edition. Dublin, Ireland: M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1930. Reprinted 1952), p. 77.
7. James W. Wardner, Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America (James W. Wardner, 1996), p. 81.
8. Ibid., p. 82.
9. Marrs pp. 240, 246-247. Queenborough, p. 350. J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Society (New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), pp. 106-107. Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924), p. 154.
10. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), p. 72. Webster, pp. 154, 210, 236.
11. Kelly, p. 72. Webster, pp. 157,190.
12. Una Birch, Secret Societies and the French Revolution Together with Some Kindred Studies (New York, New York.: John Lane Co., 1911), p. 31.
13. The Cause of World Unrest (New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920), p. 23. Queenborough, pp. 183, 369. Webster, p. 171.
14. Birch, p. 31.
[Editor's note: The original contains a list of references, which has been omitted.]
Copyright © by Thomas Coley Allen.

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