SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute Benjamin C.
Works, Director
703 415-1191; www.siri-us.com; 
E-mail: Benworks@AOL.Com
--Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil--


SIT 2-24-01; February 24, 2001

Disestablishing the Left:

Certain Liberal and Leftist partisan groups have managed
not only to gain publicity and authority in the exercise of
government, they have reached the point of getting some of
their funding from government. Groups pursuing partisan
political agendas have accomplished the trick of getting
themselves "established," and exercise tangible political
power. 

No, this is not a blanket attack on Liberalism or
"Liberals," just an analysis of a major element in our
political and constitutional process that is out of
balance.  Liberals, Moderates and Conservatives need each
other as counter forces when one side or the other gets
silly about some attempt to use government's power to
advance an ideological goal. A fair number of good
Liberals, even a few honest "Lefties" read these reports
and provide a healthy debate in their e-mails and
conversations.  

But we do not need, what many call, "the Coercive Utopians"
of the Left's Establishment, whose every resort is to big
government and excessive regulation. Think this through
with me, please. We Americans -or any nation- cannot be
effective citizenries if we do not understand the forces
surrounding our political processes. We cannot hope to
maintain our sovereignty for long as free peoples, with
this growing transnational establishment seeking to direct
our lives.

On States, Universalisms and Non-Governmental Organizations:

Europe and Asia represent nations and states whose founding
principle was the rule of "The King's Realm," stretching in
precedent, back to Caesar, Alexander and Pharaoh.  Most
states have evolved from the principle that government
rules its subject people or peoples.  And the idea of a
Universal Empire of Commerce, Religion or Ideology is as
old as Sargon of Akkadia, as quaintly impossible as the
current attempt to impose Wahabi Universalism (or any
religion) upon the ethnically-diverse peoples of central
Asia, as antique as the theory of Marxist-Leninism.  

Universalisms never work; yet they repeatedly try to impose
their rhetorical (and self-serving) sense of order upon the
rest of us, the Unenlightened. Worse, the collapse of
Universalisms always entails massive casualties --their
demise kills in quantities.

Switzerland and America were the first nation-states
founded on the counter-proposition that the People create
the polity; founding themselves on the bedrock "consent of
the governed," rather than the docile servility of "the
subject." "All politics is local;" but clever and
determined minds conspire --daily, among us-- to divest us
of the inconvenient sovereignty of "The People."  Serbia
once tried to combine the People, peoples and State; Tito
ruined that by imposing "ideology" upon "government."

Think about it: There is nothing in the US Constitution
that establishes political opinion, though it allows for
the political process in the Legislative Branch and in
elections.

Political parties and Bureaucracies have long since
discovered how to advance their self-perpetuating interests
by injecting a "caring" ideology of the "social safety net"
into government.  This, one may argue, is the "Genius" of
Socialism.  Offer something for nothing. But these politics
necessitate a stimulation of greed and envy, which
necessitate fear and "otherness" and lead quickly back to
the politics of "divide and conquer," by setting classes or
ethnic groups against each other.  

No matter!  If a country is dissolved into its constituent
ethnicities, it simply spawns more bureaucracies, more
government jobs; more sinecures.  What bureaucrat worth his
or her salt really cares about the taxpayer; the subject?

NGOs in History:

Non-profit organizations began as Churches, "doing good"
through the discipline of sound theology, but fell
repeatedly into the business of imposing an Orthodoxy and
becoming part of the governing Establishment. Modern
secular Philanthropy began as the effort to "do good" by
providing education at Harvard, William & Mary, St. John's,
Yale, Pennsylvania (Ben Franklin) and the Cooper Union.
Philanthropy attacked ignorance, poverty, idleness,
criminality. America had spawned an interest in citizens'
well being and rights, and philanthropists looked for ways
to further that cause, primarily through education and the
Arts.

The Red Cross was the first international, secular
non-profit designed to "do good," but was preceded by
national anti-Slavery movements, "Suffragism," and by
anti-alcohol Prohibitionists. Then, Ideology latched on to
Philanthropy: "Doing good" became "thinking properly" at
some point after 1864 and has snow-balled since 1960. 
Non-profits now seek to dictate how we all will think,
behave and react in the future.  To explain this phenomenon
of calculated social engineering.

Herbert Hoover led relief efforts for the Quakers in World
War One and during the Russian Revolution. CARE was founded
after World War Two and reinforced the Marshall Plan.  As
children, we would make contributions to CARE in school. 
Then the UN bureaucracy found a way to play the game,
through "Trick or Treat for UNICEF."  Still, it felt good
to help others less fortunate, because it is good. But more
and more, the NGOs are about policy, not relief and human
development.

At the same time, many Left-of-Center advocacies have
managed to get themselves "established" as recipients of
annual Federal government funds to support their own
operations domestically and abroad. This is in addition to
contributions from individual supporters and grants from
charitable foundations large and small. In the 1990s there
has been an explosion in the visibility and semi-official
activity of these "Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs),"
particularly at the UN, but also in the Media.

In fact, this trend became overt with the Public Interest
Research Groups (PIRGs) established by Ralph Nader and his
followers.  At Yale University in the early 1970s, I was
among those who successfully prevented a Nader PIRG from
awarding itself a mandatory percentage of my student
activity fees. I am certain that a few years later, they
came back and succeeded; we only delayed the drive for
revenues.

These NGOs first inserted a political position into
politics and commerce, following Mr. Nader's consumer
rights crusade; and much of what they accomplished has
contributed to rising standards in manufacturing, but so
did competition from Japan and other factors. And of
course, it is fair to add a political voice in the realm of
politics.  But we are looking at people who fly false
colors, who substitute the subjective and emotional for the
objective and rational, in order to manipulate public
opinion, particularly at election time. 

Secular Establishmentarianism:

But these NGOs went on to inject a partisan political view
into science, government, even justice and diplomacy;
realms where political pressure is not an unalloyed help. 
Increasingly, NGOs advance international and transnational
agendas and attempt through UN conferences and treaties to
redefine the law in order to impose their politically
correct, neo-socialist order upon us all.  

In the US, they are learning to side-step the Constitution,
which was designed to provide a separation of partisan
politics, as well as religion, from the structure and
operation of government.  The founders separated political
ideology from government just as surely as they called for
the disestablishment of a Church --and four states still
had established Churches for some years after the
Constitution's ratification; Connecticut & Massachusetts
(Congregational), Maryland (Catholic) and Virginia
(Episcopal).

Because these groups have defined their charters as
non-profit charitable institutions and because their
objectives are so "noble," as they define themselves, they
get substantial sympathy from the media. They get perks
from politicians. --Activists are determined; politicians
want to retain their jobs. Power lies in that difference of
objectives.

We have an ideological establishment in the process of
accreting even more perks than our religious institutions
because it is not being held to the same discipline of the
separation of faith (ideology) and the state --Ideology was
not an industry in 1787. Analytically, the Left's atheistic
belief system has all the same core elements of a religion
(including the apocalyptic eschatology of environmental
Catastrophe wrought by Corporate Man, instead of Noah's
Jahweh), except a God. That is because to the Liberal
humanist mind, "man is god," while to the Leftist,
government by the vanguard of the Left is God. --I respect
the erroneous Liberal attempt to be good; but disrespect
the misanthropic Leftist will to rule.

At the same time, the cream of NGO establishment have been
able to get themselves accredited at the United Nations and
are allowed to help write treaties, though no government has
directly appointed them and no electorate has mandated a
legitimate role for them to play.  They hold no charter or
commission to speak not for The People or peoples, but
militate for persons of a particular political stripe and
ideological view. The NGOs have become a "shadow
government" of would-be dictators.

That brings us back to the point that despite the fact that
they have not been elected by the People or commissioned by
the President, many of these groups have been awarded
ongoing federal and state funding, atop contributions and
foundation grants. The Right's organizations do not receive
federal funding and precious little in the way of foundation
money, though they do get large private contributions from
wealthy conservative supporters, as well as a stream of
small contributions from the People.

Now, politicians, aware of their media and public relations
clout, are inclined, when approached, to endow major NGOs
with other important and expensive perks at the expense of
the People, including relief from property taxes. Here is a
current example in Virginia: who would dare face voters
after refusing tax relief to the National Wildlife
Federation (NWF), now in the process of being awarded
property tax exemption on its headquarters, in the amount
of $300,000 per year? The NWF fights to obstruct even the
reasonable and productive use of property by citizens and
business, and so, its taxes will be picked up by Fairfax
County's other property owners --families and businesses.
Some conservative fighters are fighting to stop this award,
which is now in the Virginia legislature.  The NGOs are
rapidly evolving this kind of situational shakedown of
politicians into an organized extortion racket, aimed at
all available householders and small businesses, which much
pick up the extra burden, wherever NGOs choose to set up
shop (centers of power, where cameras and microphones are
handy-by). The less in taxes they have to pay, the more
they can devote to "issue advertising" and other operations
against conservatives and for Liberal or Leftist causes.

Most of the Left's NGOs preach a secular faith (dogma) and
an apocalyptic eschatology of imminent doom due to "Global
Warming" "Nuclear Holocaust," "Terrorism," Pollution,
Overpopulation and other Malthusian-Luddite nonsense. So we
have an Established Secular Faith --an orthodoxy that
Socialist and Communist ideologues have always tried to
impose on their masses.  Our government, following an
increasingly contemporary interpretation of the "separation
of Church and State," does nothing to protect the People
from the imposition of a secular faith by an unelected,
un-appointed secular establishment.

Among the human rights establishment, only British Helsinki
Watch demonstrates any true objectivity and discipline, the
others are pursuing an agenda, as their performance during
the Kosovo air war and the earlier wars in Croatia and
Bosnia demonstrated.  Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International have also betrayed a pronounced bias against
US governments at every level, and a bias against other
governments struggling to maintain law and order against
the most violent inter-ethnic civil wars. Now they wish to
impose a highly jaundiced version of international justice
upon our civilian leaders and military personnel, under the
International Criminal Court. 

Meanwhile, under the Kyoto environmental treaty, Green
Peace and other environmental groups attempt to re-write
physical science in order to impose an anti-electricity,
anti-energy world that would cripple the sustained economic
and social development of modern civilizations and
societies.  Sublime aspirations or malign ambitions?  This
Leftist Establishment is not very interested in letting
civilization progress through economic development in the
Third World.  Even their loud devotion to human rights only
obscures the fact that they do appear to be interested in
encouraging ethnic secessionism in the name of the supposed
right of self-determination.

It has come to the point where NGOs are directly involved
in serving as agents of US foreign policy.  In particular,
Planned Parenthood has been awarded government funds to
conduct its activities in foreign countries. That's one
step too far.

Disestablishmentarianism:

There is not that much distance between some fairly
plausible but dangerous human rights initiatives and true
justice, between a clean environment and outrageous
political agendas cloaked as enlightened policy. These are
the distances between the subjective and the objective;
between emotion and reason.

Policy should not be formulated and imposed through
publicity and "pseudo events" by persons who have never
been elected by the People or by the governments of the
sovereign nations of the world. The NGO establishment has
the right to air their views, but not the exclusive right
to formulate policy. But that is what they are attempting
to do in national capitals and at the United Nations.

Nobody argues to end the award of not-for-profit status for
groups that arguably, engage in partisan politics to an
extent that many observers find naked and shocking. There
should be some return to discipline though. It has simply
been suggested that they stop receiving taxpayer funds.  It
would be a separate effort to expect the Internal Revenue
Service to audit these groups and determine whether or not
they are massively violating the rules of their
not-for-profit charters as the Clinton Administration did
to keep Conservative not-for-profits on the defensive. It
would be a further separate initiative to determine whether
or not NGOs should be included in the campaign finance
reform bill that is alive in Congress.  But Free Speech
commands that the NGOs be entitled to air their views. 
Yet, just as Justice Coke found, NGOs, like corporations,
"have no souls."  They are not any more entitled to play in
the battleground of elective politics and government than
corporations.  

It is time to level the playing field and to re-balance the
definition of what is politics and what is Science; what is
sound economic regulation and environmental responsibility;
what is Politics as opposed to Justice and Diplomacy.  What
is to be our future position on the separation of powers
and our "checks and balances?"  If we respect the
separation of Church and State, should we not also respect
the separation of partisan political ideology and State? 
Yes.

Listening to Libertarian and Conservative activists discuss
this new campaign to "de-fund" the Left, I began to think of
disestablishing the Left, which led to a laugh when I
recalled the meaning of that old "longest word in the
English language," antidisestablishmentarianism."  The word
defines those who oppose efforts to disestablish The Church.
"Gads," I realized, "I'm a Disestablishmentarian," and the
Left's spin doctors, when they start to fight this
libertarian-conservative initiative, will be the new,
secular `Antidisestablishmentarians!'"

And the Left has begun to preach its
antidisestablishmentarianist doctrine by attacking the
repeal of the "death tax."  American philanthropy began
with John Harvard and Eli Yale, and counts Ben Franklin,
Peter Cooper, Isaac Merritt and Andrew Carnegie among its
most celebrated philanthropists --all before the imposition
of the Estate Tax.  Even the Rockefellers began their
philanthropy before the imposition of the Federal Estate
Tax.  Still, the antidisestablishmentarians argue that
without the death tax, there would be no new charitable
trusts and foundations. --No high-pay/low intensity jobs
for the educated "non-productive" who consume some of our
taxes, as well.

The subtext is that there would be no more funds to employ
and sustain the Liberal-Left establishment.  But in the
Washington Times, economist Bruce Bartlett observed on Feb.
19th that the heirs would still be subject to the capital
gains tax on their inheritances. And as research on tax
policy shows, every cut stimulates greater revenue growth
as investors and wealth creators adopt strategies for
growth, instead of strategies to shelter capital.  Further,
as our history of philanthropy clearly demonstrates, our
country's great successes have always endowed society with
the lion's share of their wealth.

On January 23rd, President George W. Bush issued an
executive order to rescind Planned Parenthood's use of
federal funds to promote or finance abortions in developing
countries.  This was the first shot in the battle to
de-fund, or to disestablish the Left's massive array of
propaganda and activist mills. It is unlikely Mr. Bush
thinks he can end the obnoxious but "necessary" institution
of baby-killing.  It is reasonable to expect that he will
exert his efforts to reducing the frequency of safe and
legal abortion through emphasizing pro-active, positive
alternatives.  Pro-Life and Pro-Choice activists should all
be spending more time reinforcing positive alternatives to
pregnancy, including soccer and baseball leagues, Scouting,
and, even calculated copulation (safe sex).  Perhaps, we
should think about the "Right to Good Life," where we
expose our young to Art, Science and historical museums,
sports, interests and other clothes-on interactions of
society.

So, let's get behind the campaign for secular
Disestablishmentarianism! The secular NGO establishment ran
roughshod over the People from 1992-2000 and remain out of
control. Let's get this Globalist, shadow anti-government
of Secular Universalists off the taxpayers' backs and then
constrain their ability to dictate the terms of government
to the People. 

*  *  *  *

Mr. Works is Director of The Strategic Issues Research
Institute (SIRIUS) a "not-very-profitable," independent
"think tank" concerned with national defense and foreign
affairs.  Words: 2840

Subj:	 Re: SIT 2-24-01; February 19 & 24, 2001
;Disestablishing the Left:
Date:	02/26/2001 10:52:32 AM Eastern Standard Time
To:	BenWorks@aol.com

Apocalyptic eschatology is the core of Marxism. They
attmept to bring about the apocalypsis (the revolution) in
order for the new world to emerge. Hence the communist
terror. I think most people do not realize this. +
Ivan V

*  *  *