Communism

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Secret Government

January 19, 2010 in Communism by Greg | 1 comment

The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis is a 1987 Public Broadcasting Service video documentary with Bill Moyers following the Iran-Contra affair – ostensibly, an effort to prevent the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere.1 According to Mr. Moyers,

The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to them when they can’t win the support of the Congress or the people, creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our Constitution.

The documentary traces the history of the secret government to the National Security Act of 1947 which was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It “realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II.”2

Although originally intended to be only an “intelligence-gathering” organization, under the auspices of this act the CIA quickly became an “operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”3 According to the documentary “a secret report [was] prepared for the White House in 1954 by a group of distinguished citizens headed by former president Herbert Hoover”:

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us.

Secret Government »»

  1. See Wolf, Julie. “The Iran-Contra Affair”. PBS. 18 Jan 2010 for background on this event.↩
  2. “National Security Act of 1947”. Wikipedia. 17 Jan 2010.↩
  3. Truman, Harry S. “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence”. 22 Dec 1963. Washington Post. 17 Jan 2010. See also, McGovern, Ray. “Break the CIA into Two”. Consortium News. 17 Jan 2010.↩

Cleon Skousen

November 16, 2009 in Communism by Greg | 27 comments

This last week I happened across an article by Brian R. Mecham which contained Thomas S. Monson’s comments at the funeral of W. Cleon Skousen in January 2006.1 At the time of the funeral, Thomas S. Monson served as the First Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

W Cleon Skousen So, as I read Mr. Mecham’s article and listened to some audio excerpts from President Monson’s funeral address, I wondered why such a man should be pilloried as Mr. Skousen has been of late in the media.2

Mr. Skousen rose to national prominence with the publication of The Naked Communist which was originally published in 1958 at the request of David O. McKay3, then the President of the LDS Church. The book quickly became a national bestseller despite never being reviewed by the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune or the Saturday Review.

According to Earl Taylor, Jr. the following is an excerpt of how Mr. Skousen came to write this book,

Shortly after we moved to Utah in 1952 and joined the faculty of Brigham Young University, I was asked to give talks on the threat of Communism as I encountered it in the FBI. There were two of us who specialized in this subject and we were the only ones allowed to speak on Communism in case Mr. Hoover could not take the talks himself.

Cleon Skousen »»

  1. “An Open Letter to Latter-day Saint Detractors of W. Cleon Skousen and His Works“. 22 Oct 2009. Latter-Day Conservative. 15 Nov 2009.↩
  2. See, for example, Zaitchik, Alexander. “Meet the Man Who Changed Glen Beck’s Life”. 16 Sep 2009. Salon. 15 Nov 2009. See also, Kristine. “Skousen in Dialogue”. 16 Sep 2000. Common Consent. 15 Nov 2009.↩
  3. Mecham. “W. Cleon Skousen Is Asked to Write the Naked Communist”. Nov 1998. Latter-Day Conservative. 15 Nov 2009.↩

Ezra Taft Benson at Moscow Baptist Church

June 29, 2009 in Communism by Greg | No comments

Earlier this month, the LDS Newsroom published a reprint of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson’s visit to Moscow’s Central Baptist Church in the midst of the cold war. According to an office memo from Grant Salisbury and Warren K. Leffler, the writer-reporter team who reported on this event:

Ezra Taft Benson in Russia in the 1970sTHE NIGHT we left Moscow to fly down to Kiev, Secretary Benson literally took us to church.

Many of the reporters laughed about it on the way, because Mr. Benson, who is a leading Mormon, had arranged for us earlier to attend a service at the Latter-Day Saints Church in West Berlin, but all the newsmen found one excuse or another for not going. In Moscow, we had no choice because the cars picked us up at the hotel and stopped at the church on the way to the airport. It was around 7:30 o’clock on the chill, rainy evening of October 1.

As the cavalcade of cars arrived at the Central Baptist Church, on a narrow side street not far from Red Square, somebody wisecracked, “Well, boys, you’re going to get to church whether you like it or not.”

It turned out to be one of the most moving experiences in the lifetime of many of us. One newsman, a former marine, ranked it with the sight of the American flag rising over the old American compound in Tientsin, China, at the end of World War II.

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Auto Bailout and Class Conflict

December 10, 2008 in Communism by Greg | 2 comments

Over the past number of weeks, Detroit’s auto bailout has been in the news. However, the media refuses to frame the debate as “class conflict” despite obvious parallels. Recently, The New York Times published an article about how some auto workers were approaching the bailout. Here’s an excerpt:

DETROIT — The Sunday service at Greater Grace Temple began with the Clark Sisters song “I’m Looking for a Miracle” and included a reading of this verse from the Book of Romans: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Praying for a Miracle at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit

Pentecostal Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who shared the sanctuary’s wide altar with three gleaming sport utility vehicles, closed his sermon by leading the choir and congregants in a boisterous rendition of the gospel singer Myrna Summers’s “We’re Gonna Make It” as hundreds of worshipers who work in the automotive industry — union assemblers, executives, car salesmen — gathered six deep around the altar to have their foreheads anointed with consecrated oil.

While Congress debated aid to the foundering Detroit automakers Sunday, many here whose future hinges on the decision turned to prayer.1

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  1. Bunkley, Nick. “Detroit Churches Pray for ‘God’s Bailout’“. 7 December 2008. The New York Times. 10 December 2008.↩

Bacevich on Reinhold Niebuhr

November 23, 2008 in Communism by Greg | 1 comment

In The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew J. Bacevich speaks very highly of Reinhold Niebuhr:

Andrew J. Bacevich The United States today finds itself threatened by three interlocking crises. The first of these crises is economic and cultural, the second political, and the third military. All three share this characteristic: They are of our own making. In assessing the predicament that results from these crises, The Limits of Power employs what might be called a Niebuhrean perspective. Writing decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr anticipated that predicament with uncanny accuracy and astonishing prescience. As such, perhaps more than any other figure in our recent history, he may help us discern a way out.

As pastor, teacher, activist, theologian, and prolific author, Niebuhr was a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s. Even today, he deserves recognition as the most clear-eyed of American prophets. Niebuhr speaks to us from the past, offering truths of enormous relevance to the present. As prophet, he warned that what he called “our dreams of managing history” – born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism – posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today, we ignore that warning at our peril.1

A couple months ago, I noticed that Dr. Bacevich had written the introduction to the recently reissued The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr. He called the book, “The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.” So I immediately wondered who is this man – Reinhold Niebuhr – whom Dr. Bacevich called “the most clear-eyed of American prophets”?

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  1. Bacevich, Andrew J. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. 6-7.↩

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