Columnist Richard Reeves of the Universal Press Syndicate writes, "... what Buchanan has done (in talking about corporate "downsizing," Free Trade and economic insecurity) ... is agitate the plebes (i.e., the "common folk") ... The big danger ... (to the nation’s economic and political elites - both Democratic and Republican) is that ... Buchanan is spouting out the secrets of the lodge[1] in public ..."

Reeves continues, "Don’t you love it?" - Buchanan is denouncing the moneyed elites of his own party![2]

The rich reply that Buchanan is stirring up "class envy" and "class warfare." But Reeves - who is not Buchanan's friend, and who says that Buchanan frightens him - counters,

"Class Warfare? ... the rich (i.e., Wall Street, the "captains of industry," the yuppie elite) ... have already won that battle, and now this madman (i.e., Buchanan) is out there stirring up trouble among the losers (i.e., the nation’s blue collar workers and low and mid-level white collar workers) ... Doesn’t he (i.e., Buchanan) understand the benefits of disorganized labor (which unrestricted immigration and Free Trade promote), to say nothing of (the high) dividends (i.e., money which used to flow into the paychecks of blue collar workers, etc. and which now flows as dividends into the stock portfolios of the rich) ..."[3]

Reeves goes on,

"Buchanan will (eventually) be beaten down by his enemies, now legion ... But there is (still) this: A lot of what he’s saying is true for many voters, and is extremely dangerous to ... (the nation’s economic elites). They have to try to destroy him, because he has the capability to destroy them - not just in this one election, but over time."[4]

And how, exactly, do the elites plan to "destroy" him? - by denouncing him as a "demagogue!" - which is exactly what William F. Buckley, Jr., Bill Kristol, William Bennett, Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm, Dick Cheney, Frank Fahrenkopf and all the rest of them are doing. The effort by these men, however, is somewhat disingenuous and not a little hypocritical. In the end, their effort to label Buchanan a demagogue cannot help but engender contempt towards them - after all, the demagogic record of these men is hardly any better: Buckley has defended Pat Robertson’s anti-Semitic tome, The New World Order; Bennett says that Herrnstein and Murray’s racist polemic, The Bell Curve, is an "excellent piece of scholarship;" Fahrenkopf has innumerable links with anti-Semitic Croatian nationalists[5], etc. To say that these men have any real care about "immigrant rights," better race relations, anti-Semitism, etc. - things which all of them cite as examples of Buchanan’s demagoguery - is asinine.

Reeves sneers at these efforts. He writes, "Buchanan is no demagogue ... (Indeed), he deserves more than a little credit for having the guts and smarts to (fashion) ... a message that actually broke through the smog of ‘politics as usual’ ..."[6] - a smog which all these men have purposely created over the years to cloud their real agenda - which is to enrich themselves at the expense of average, "everyday," working Americans, many of whom are evangelical Christians.

No! - it’s not Buchanan’s stand against social issues which sends Kemp, Bennett and all the rest of them into a panic - what they’re really concerned about is Buchanan’s stand against Free Trade - the vehicle through which the corporate elite has destroyed unions and lined its pockets with the money that used to flow into the paychecks of average Americans. And it should be noted in this connection - and contrary to what the elites trumpet - that only a relatively small amount of this money has flowed back to consumers as lower prices at the check-out stand - the great majority of it has flowed as profits into the coffers of the new multinational corporations and ipso facto into the wallets of the corporations’ shareholders - about 2% of the American population.

And where, one asks, have these profits been invested? - into new "high tech" plants in this country? No! - for the most part it has flowed as naked speculation into the stock market and has been the principle reason behind the unprecedented rise in stock prices over the last ten years, producing in the process the same dizzying stock highs [in relative terms] that were reached just prior to the market’s crash in 1929 - highs which possess little relation to the dividends these stocks can be expected to produce.

And what about the nation’s new "high tech jobs of the future" which these profits were supposed to produce? While some jobs have been created, most of these jobs exist only as "promises for the future" - a future which, after 20 years of empty pledges, is as remote as ever to most workers. The sad fact of the matter is, the promise of new "high tech" jobs has been nothing but blather. Yes, export jobs have grown, but what does it matter when exports grow by 10% over a given period of time if imports grow by 40% over the same period - and that’s the meaning behind today’s 180 billion dollar a year trade deficit! - that translates into 2,880,000 lost jobs a year! - jobs which have flowed into the sweat shops of Mexico, the Far East and Latin America. And the effort of the elites to say otherwise - to blame the loss of these jobs on technology, the supposed low growth in domestic "R & D," worker productivity, low rates of savings, etc. - is deceptive at best, as Professor Emeritus Alfred E Eckes, Jr. of the University of Ohio has shown[7] (please see our upcoming summer edition).

Buchanan has "caught on" to this game of "smoke and mirrors" which the corporate elites have been playing with the American public for the last twenty years, and he’s blabbing this secret to the "plebes." That’s why Bennett, Kemp, Dole and all the rest are so intent on denouncing Buchanan as a demagogue. They don’t dare attack him on the issues! They have to attack him on personal grounds - they have to destroy him by destroying his character. This is what Reeves is saying the elites are doing to Buchanan. Buchanan’s great "sin," according to Reeves, is that he has "enumerated the secrets of the lodge ..." and if they don’t shut him up quickly, he will destroy them by revealing what they’ve really been doing over the last twenty years.

George J. Church of Time Magazine writes,

"In his (i.e., Buchanan’s) strident demands for trade protection can be heard the long mute anger of workers who feel both injured and insulted by free traders in the (educational) academy, business and politics: injured by the loss of jobs and income to foreign competition; insulted because too many free traders have airily dismissed their pain as either illusory or inconsequential."

Church continues,

"(Free Trade) has claimed ... real victims who can no longer be kept quiet by sermons about the greater good of the overall economy."[8]

Richard Lacayo, also of Time, agrees. He writes,

"What unnerves (the economic elite) is the possibility that his (i.e., Buchanan’s) attacks on Wall Street and free trade may catch on even if his candidacy doesn’t ... It’s hard to put the populist genie back in the bottle (once it gets out).[" 9]

William Safire of the New York Times - like Reeves, no friend of Buchanan - concurs. Writing about Buchanan in the New York Times, Safire says,

"Being denounced as a demagogue is a sure sign to a speaker that he is making powerful points with some part of the public." Like Reeves, Church and Lacayo, Safire thinks that what Bennett, Kemp and the rest are saying about Buchanan is contemptible. He cites the famous turn-of-the-century progressive, Lincoln Steffans, who once said, "I had begun to suspect that, whenever a man in public life was called a demagogue, there was something good in him, (and) something dangerous to the system."[10]

And where are the leaders of the Religious Right in all this? - clearly, they’re not on Buchanan’s side [though there is a great deal of evidence to indicate that rank-in-file evangelicals (in contrast with their leadership) support Buchanan]. Robertson, Dobson, Reed, Kennedy, LaHaye, Sheldon, etc. all support Dole. Why? - because all of them long ago "sold out" to the Republican Party "fat cats" who support Dole and "Free Trade" - and this is the dirty little secret of the Religious Right’s alliance with the Patricians of the Republican Party: they’ve given their political support to the moneyed elite in exchange for the Secular Right’s economic support of their cultural agenda and their innumerable religious and cultural institutions (i.e., TBN, CBN, the Christian Coalition, etc.) - and hang the jobs of every-day, working evangelicals. This is why all of these men supported (or at least were silent on) NAFTA and the legislation which created the World Trade Organization.

Ask yourselves, why didn’t the Religious Right speak out against these deals? - after all, these deals play right into one of the primeval fears of their constituents - world government! The reason they didn’t speak out is that they have been "bought off."

Christ wasn’t kidding around when He said,

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (I Tim. 6:10)

And again He warned:

"... flee these things (i.e., money) ..." (I Tim. 6:11)

The love of money! - that’s what’s led the Religious Right into the Secular Right’s trap - and not only them, but many churches and denominations as well. Thinking of the "good" they can do with the money the Secular Right has bestowed upon them, the Religious Right has made a deal with them. But it’s a bargain with the Devil! - it’s the equivalent of Judas’s thirty pieces of silver.

You doubt? Well stop and think about it for a minute! - you don’t really think that all the many religious (and now political and cultural) institutions of the Religious Right - institutions like the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values Coalition, Promise Keepers, CBN, TBN, Focus on the Family, etc. and countless numbers of churches as well - derive their incomes solely from the "offerings" of their constituents, most of whom are "blue collar" workers and low and mid-level white collar workers, do you? A little math would quickly dispel such a notion. The thought that these institutions could long exist on the paltry sums which could be generated in such a fashion is farcical. From where, then, does the money come? You guessed it! - from Republican "fat cats" and corporate treasuries (more about this in upcoming journals and reports).

Christ warned His disciples:

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matt. 6:24)

God help those who ignore this verse - eventually, the Devil will demand his due!

All this isn’t to say that Religion in Politics supports Buchanan. God forbid. People like Buchanan represent a far greater danger than Dole, Kemp, Bennett, etc. But by making the kind of bargain they’ve made with the country club patricians of the Republican Party, the leaders of the Religious Right have revealed themselves for the hypocrites they really are - people who will "sell out" their constituents for a "mess of pottage."

Eventually, of course, the "fat cats" will have to deal with the likes of Buchanan - if only to save themselves from the rage of the "working masses" which they have "stiffed" for the last twenty years, a rage which is now reaching a boiling point. And when they do, the Religious Right will be there with them - following the money like the "TOADIES" they really are.

God help the Christians who follow these leaders - men like Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, D. James Kennedy, etc. - they’re going to lead the American Church straight into a terrible disaster!

1. Reeves is referring in jest to the Masonic Lodge - an organization whose members swear themselves to secrecy with regard to their rites.
2. Richard Reeves, United Press Syndicate dated March 1, 1996 [as reported in the Sacramento Bee, pg. B-6.]
3. Ibid., pg. B-6
4. Ibid., pg. B-6
5. Fahrenkopf, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, has become particularly linked to anti-Semitic Croatian Republicans. For example, Fahrenkopf signed a 1984 Republican Heritage Groups Council booklet listing commemorative dates of significance to ethnic Americans. The entry for April 10th reads, "The Independent State of Croatia was declared by unanimous proclamation in 1941 ... Lack of Western support and Axis occupation forced the new state into an unfortunate association with the Axis powers."
   The statement is a fabrication. Croatia was pro-Nazi long before the German occupation. The Nazis had a long-standing relationship with the Croatian Ustashi beginning years before the Second World War; indeed, the Nazis conspired with the Vatican to help create the "independent state of Croatia" after the German attack on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941; and it is no doubt safe to say that without Vatican and Nazi support, Croatia would never have gained its "independence." Soon thereafter, the Ustashi began systematically liquidating Orthodox Serbians, Jews, and Gypsies. So frenzied did their effort eventually become that even the Nazis were taken aback by the barbarity of the Ustashi concentration camps and the liquidation of whole Serbian villages. Huge ovens at Jasenovac reportedly burned Serbs, Jews and Gypsies alive. An estimated 750,000 people, mostly Serbians, were killed by the Croatians. The "independent state of Croatia," which Fahrenkopf suggests should be commemorated, ceased to exist after the fall of the Third Reich.
   It’s re-emergence four years ago under right-wing German, Austrian and Vatican pressure is a foreboding of things to come in the former Yugoslavia. It's past history may very well foreshadow the kind of power structure which is currently re-surfacing in Croatia.
6. Op. Cit., Reeves, pg. B-6
7. Please see Dr. Alfred E. Eckes, Opening America’s Markets, 1995.
8. George J. Church, "Where He Rings True: Free Trade Isn’t Always Fair," in Time, March 4, 1996, pg. 29.
9. Richard Lacayo, "The Populist Blowup," in Time, February 26, 1996. pg. 30.
10. Ibid., pg. B-6