Those of us interested in what is going on in the UFO arena are constantly treated to statements about what "the government" knows or doesn't know about UFOs. But what IS this "government," who has power within in it and how did they get that power? We all suspect that the our elected leaders are only very marginally powerful -- and this should be obvious since they serve at the pleasure of a fickle and media-influenced electorate and can be turned out, as they are being turned out now, at very high rates.
No, the interesting people are those like Averell Harriman, who "served" in five different administrations, and Clark Clifford, who was in the Truman administration and still figures in the councils of the great today. And we can't forget the minions of the Rockefellers -- and Nelson himself, who wielded enormous power throughout the heart of the Cold War years. So, how does all of this work? Well, we have to look back to get the picture.
To understand the true nature of our government and the ideology of those who created it and maintain it we have to go back to 1787 and the Constitutional Convention. Our tour guide for this trip back in time will be chapter 2 of "The Irony Of Democracy, based on The Economic History Of The Constitution" by Charles Beard (1912). The fifty-five men (all men) who met in Philadelphia shared one or more of the following characteristics: owner of a large estate; big-time merchant; real estate/land speculator or large-scale owner of public bonds or securities. To see how narrow this class was consider this quote: "Jefferson and Adams were among the very few of the nation's notables who were not at the Convention." What was the population of the United States in 1787? Well, it was just about 4 million people!
Let us continue in this vein, "At the top of the social structure there was a tiny elite, most of them well-born, though some of them were self-made. This elite group dominated the social, cultural, economic and political life of the new nation."
Thus we can see that from the very beginning the USA was founded of, by and for The Inheritors--the "well-born." Here is the absolute key to understanding American politics and economics. Until you get this, that the entire purpose of government in this country is the protection, creation and conveyance to the next generation of inherited wealth, you do not understand anything about American politics and economics. And the source of this inherited wealth was the power of the British Empire in creating, protecting and financing the Thirteen Colonies. For you see, "The Founding Fathers" were creatures and retainers of empire, from the very beginning. The United States was set on an Imperial course right from the very start, when Alexander Hamilton realized he that could begin to retire the massive national debt by selling land that belonged to the American Indians, who quickly became expendable. But I digress.
In 1787 America was de-facto ruled by a few elite families, among them the Pinckneys and Rutledges in Charleston; the Adamses, Lowells and Gerrys in Boston; the Schuylers, Clintons and Jays of New York; the Morrises, Mifflins and Ingersolls of Philadelphia; the Jenifers and Carrolls of Maryland; and the Blairs and Randolphs of Virginia. The members of these families and their employees ran the place, or were trying to run it, at the time of the Revolution. But they were having some problems and that's why they needed something new and more powerful than the Articles Of Confederation.
Under the Articles a war had been fought and eventually won. But each state was more or less free to ignore the Continental Congress' call for funds and thus a whole lot of borrowing had been done and an enormous debt created. The old Congress and various states owned investors (both foreign and domestic) about $70 million. This doesn't sound like much today but in 1787 that was equal to half of the total valuation of the entire property of the nation! And after the war the place was in ruins, one- third of the population (Tories) having been run off or killed (but their property expropriated!) and foreign trade wrecked. There was little money to pay anyone and the credit of the USA had fallen so low that "not worth a Continental" was a common epithet, on both sides of the Atlantic.
The core of this problem lay with the Articles themselves, which did not give the central government the power to tax the states and make it stick. Also, with each state able to impose tariffs on interstate trade business between the colonies was a maze of small duties and tolls. Finally, without the power to tax, a decent military was impossible to maintain over time and the overseas trade of the colonies was vulnerable to piracy from individual thieves and military pressure from other powers. The new nation was in great trouble and so were its elites. As Franklin had said, "We must hang together or we will hang separately." At the time Franklin made this statement he was worried about the British army but with the war ended there was a new and equally serious threat--the rank and file population of the USA itself(!), now made destitute by war and wondering what had gone wrong.
In the summer of the year before a full-scale revolt of farmers, small merchants, craftsmen and laborers (led by Daniel Shays, a Bunker Hill veteran) had for a while held the capital city of Massachusetts and this had to be put down with a mercenary army (paid for by the state's rich men) led by George Washington. Shay and dozens of others, who were protesting the foreclosure of veteran's small farms by the big landowners, were put to death, and the mood of the country was ugly. It was this event that was the referent for "insure the domestic tranquilty" in the preamble of the Constitution! Shay had said that if debts to British merchants could be legislated out of existence then so could outrageous debts owed by U.S. little people to the American rich. This, shall we say, was unacceptable, just as much now as it was then.
Thus in February, 1787, fifty-five men of property and wealth met, in secret, to decide what to do about the serious condition of the country. Yes, folks, this was about the closest thing to a conspiracy you are ever going to see. Quote: "The founding fathers quickly chose George Washington (owned 30,000 acres on the Potomac, including the swamp that would later become the nation's capital) to preside over the assembly. Just as quickly the convention decided that its sessions would be held behind closed doors and that all proceedings would be a closely guarded secret."
The author's next line is choice, "The founding fathers apparently realized that elites are most effective in negotiating, compromise and decision making when operating in secret." Yes, you could say that. . .although most of us might put a different "spin" on it. Let us consider that "The convention was said by many to be a happy reunion of old friends and comrades. They had shared many activites in their elite experiences." This was a cabal.
Viz: "Washington could look around the room and see a half a dozen men who had voted him into command in 1775, a dozen who had been with him at Trenton, and another dozen who had supported him in Congress or had fished with him in the Potomac. Livingston had studied law with Yates and had been a patron of Hamilton. Hamilton was a friend of Madison and had shared books with Williamson, who had done experiments with Franklin, who was a close friend of Sherman, who had sold books to Baldwin, who was an old friend of the Morrises. And so on."
"These same men had made all the key decisions in American history from the Stamp Act to the Declaration of Independence to the Articles of Confederation. They controlled the Congress of the United States and had conducted the Revolutionary War. Forty-two of these fifty-five men had already served in Congress and forty of them held high offices in the various states-- Franklin, Livingston and Randolph were governors. At a time when college educations were almost non-existent in America over half of these men had been educated at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, William & Mary or in England. Thirty-six of them were trained in the law or were lawyers."
Now we get to the skinny, "At least forty of the fifty-five delegates were known as holders of public securities, twenty-four were moneylenders, fourteen were real estate speculators, fifteen were large-scale slave owners and eleven were in commerce or manufacturing." Because of their economic positions these men had their differences. But their primary political attitudes were most uniform, even as they acknowledged differences over the methods by which those attitudes would be actuated. Government existed to do the following:
Ensure the protection of life, liberty and property. By which they meant their lives, their liberty and their property. The new government was to do nothing which might modify the then- current distribution of wealth (existing, to them, by natural law) in the United States. This the founding fathers considered "dangerous leveling" and a serious violation of the "right to property." Though they made a show out of eschewing "hereditary monarchy" they did nothing to alter the ability of their heirs to inherit their property. In fact, they much strengthened it, thus insuring that the government, by and for propertied men, would remain in their and their families' control for as long as possible--forever in theory! You might note that many of the names seen above still figure in the elite life of the country, see Birmingham, The Right People and Lundberg, America's Sixty Families.
Finally, government was to "protect and nourish private property, foster trade and commerce, protect manufacturing, assist in land development, enforce contracts, maintain a stable money supply, punish thievery, assist in the collection of debts, record the ownership of property and deeds, punish counterfeiting and piracy, protect copyrights and patents, regulate the value of the coinage, establish courts and regulate banking." And they would control it!
In the end then, government would "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity." That about sums it up. The new government would have an army and the power to tax everybody, through the various states, and thus pay off the bondholders of the revolution--themselves and their foreign allies. It's pretty good work, if you can get it. And they still get it today since their captive government has tripled the national debt since the early 1980s and THEY own most of it, the best parts of it, and we will be paying them and their heirs for decades to come, which was the whole and complete idea.