Britain
Rule by force was partially overcome by the granting of
limited free speech to Christianity, a religious ideology
which in its authentic form, as Locke and Jefferson
recognised, approximates closely to the inclinations of
common sense. Christian moral influence created the
conditions for abolishing slavery in Europe and throughout
the world because it combines at its heart egalitarian
human ideals which are both transhistorical and universal:
that we are all born equal, that the meek should inherit
the earth, and that it should be easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
the gates of heaven. Roman imperialism, the Christian
church and Feudal monarchy alike however, though willing to
concede equality in the hereafter, were not willing either
to lead or to consistently support the transition to
government by consent.
The Galileo affair confirmed the Papacy, mired in
scholastic dogma, to be an unreliable ally of common sense
not only in matters of politics but also of science. Papal
opposition to freedom of speech and worship and its support
for royal claims to divine right made the transition to
government by consent more difficult and more complex.
Despite, therefore, the affinity of Christianity with
common sense, its chief constituency of social support has
derived mainly from craft industry and skilled labour along
with their natural ally: the movement for democratic
progress. This movement gave political expression to the
increasingly organised character of common sense
understanding in British society, including its influence
upon the development of modern science.
Nonetheless the conversion of slavery to serfdom
facilitated by Christianity granted rights to the lower
classes which could be developed when the opportunity
arose. Rights to bear arms and to trial by jury even for
serfs emerged against this background. In 1215 the church
scribes who put the Runnymede agreement to paper affirmed
the implicit relation between government by consent and
sortition by upholding the right to jury trial.
Subsequently, as with the right to bear arms, this relation
was reaffirmed in the English Bill of Rights.
The struggle against monarchical resistance to realise
common sense principles of understanding in political life
became both more successful and more complex in the English
revolutionary period of transition to government by consent
in consequence of the reasons cited above. The republican
James Harrington, appointed to counsel King Charles I in
his period of detention and trial prior to execution,
developed his theory of constitutional reform from general
study of all previous government, but most especially of
the Venetian republic, which had incorporated the use of
sortition for over five centuries. He advocated abolition
of primogeniture and the regulation of inherited wealth
based on a written constitution of mixed government which
would incorporate sortition, rotation and the secret ballot
as the main instruments of electoral method along with the
separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers.
Harrington proposed sortition as a means to empower
democratic forces and contain what had long been considered
to be the main deficiency of aristocracy - the tendency to
faction and intrigue. He also, as stated, strongly
advocated the right to bear arms. In short, Harrington
advocated almost all that may be considered most essential
to government from the point of view of common sense.
History since Harrington is very much a tale of how, even
from a promising beginning, things can go very wrong due to
the factors outlined above. King Charles reportedly was not
unsympathetic to these ideas but they were nevertheless
viewed with suspicion both by Cromwell and subsequently by
King Charles II. The English republic was so weakened by
factional intrigue that Cromwell trusted neither Levellers
or closet Royalists, and in this context ordered
Harrington's work Oceana to be seized from the printing
presses. This state of instability and mutual suspicion
still continued after the restoration, and in 1662
Harrington was arrested and imprisoned for conspiracy.
Charles II thereafter sought to restrict fundamental rights
to the rich, including, as stated, the right to bear arms.
Even so the independence of the jury, and with this rights
to free speech and freedom of worship were largely
established after jurors refused to convict William Penn in
1670 despite being imprisoned by the judge for their
defiance of his orders. The origins of the American
republic can be traced to this event. Jury support for
defiance of sedition laws contributed decisively to the
development of the American revolutionary movement and its
ultimately successful defence of the unconditional right to
free speech and assembly.
In this way it can be seen that the use of sortition was
integral to the process of Anglo-American democratic
development even from its early beginnings in pre-feudal
society. In the modern period its use became essential to
social progress and yet was also limited by factional
rivalry and suspicion. Without stable unity of leadership
and agreement between at least two of the contending powers
- aristocracy, monarchy and democracy - sortition appears a
less attractive constitutional option to rival aristocratic
factions because it is itself the organisational form which
is least amenable to monopolistic control from above. Yet
without the right to trial by jury the American
revolutionary movement may never have developed a
leadership able to remain at liberty while organising
popular support for the democratic struggle. In short,
without the right to trial by jury modern democracy, even
in its limited representational form, may never have been
established. By the 18th century therefore the transition
to government by consent had begun, but had been
complicated and distorted chiefly by a combination of
factors arising from the reasons cited above. The secret
ballot had been introduced but only within narrow
parameters. Sortition had been suggested as a goal of
constitutional reform but rejected, not because it had been
demonstrated to be intrinsically flawed or been tried in
practice and found wanting but because of factional
impediments to democratic progress.
The commercial and trading aristocracy within modern
society developed on a more influential and cosmopolitan
foundation following the English revolutions. The integral
relation between Jewish diplomacy and finance with the
British state dates from this period, following Cromwell's
decision to annul the feudal ban on such influence, itself
originally inspired by Christ's famously demonstrated
contempt for banking practices, which in the ancient world
were frequently conducted in temples for reason of
security.
The protestant cause in the medieval period gained support
in the world of finance and commerce chiefly because it
adopted a more pragmatic approach to these activities. In
this context Cromwell aimed to enlist the influence exerted
by Jewish diplomacy on world affairs for English republican
purposes. Religious suspicions in regard to usury do
nevertheless have a commonsensical foundation, especially
when consideration is given to the fact that it was the
financial aristocracy which gained most from the English
revolutions, and which thereafter has exerted a more
powerful mode of influence upon political development.
While Harrington's suggestions had indicated the
possibility of genuinely democratic development, what
instead transpired in practice was the substitution of one
bluntly crude system of direct patronage based on blood
ties and land ownership for another in which power could be
exercised less directly but just as effectively through
more sophisticated and discreet methods of influence and
control. Jewish banking financed the conquest of Ulster by
William of Orange. The origins of elective aristocracy,
long before its mature metamorphosis to representative
democracy, begin with this process, as does the
preponderant role of banking and finance in world affairs.
Freemasonry, the Bank of England and the National Debt were
all established in the period following the Glorious
Revolution. British Parliamentary and borough elections,
founded almost exclusively on election by choice, not
sortition, similarly develop in this context, and along
with the party system come to increasingly supplant and
subsume both the feudal practice of appointment during the
18th century and the genuinely non-partisan democratic
inclinations of the English revolutions. Freemasonry played
a leading role in the American, French and European
revolutions. Marxism, as does most social theory,
effectively ignores this fact. This phenomenon however
needs to be taken account of in relation to democratic
development.
Freemasonry has sought to portray itself as a symbiotic,
not parasitic, ally of free thought. No reasonable person
can deny this claim is problematic given masonic
organisational practices and the facts of history, which
include the rise and decline of the American Anti-Masonic
party, fourteen US Presidents openly named as freemasons,
and a shrine to J. Edgar Hoover in the Washington DC
Masonic temple. Such evidence of conspiratorial influence
in the political realm cannot be ignored, especially given
the suspicions it has aroused in Europe and the Arab world.
A widespread belief is that freemasonry has long served the
interests of an international Jewish cabal of the super
rich headed by the Rothschild dynasty, patrons of the
Rockefeller family and thus the United Nations itself.
There is no concrete proof of this murky allegation
however, and so it cannot serve as a basis for firm
conclusions. Nevertheless it is a matter of public record
that from Metternich to the Third Way the Rothschild
dynasty has been involved in global diplomacy and intrigue
on both sides of the political spectrum sometimes at one
and the same time for over two centuries. Political
analysis should therefore be alert to suspect relations
between finance and politics, including communism, not
least when account is taken of publicly admitted facts such
as that most Bolshevik leaders were Jews, along with the
recent disclosure of the former de facto Soviet state
secret that Lenin himself was of Jewish descent.
Though theory is more safely informed by an approach which
is sceptical, it must also be comprehensive and free from
all constraints of censorship while at the same time
maintaining a clear focus on the most important factors of
influence upon social and political development. In this
regard the aristocrat Thomas Jefferson was quite clear that
despite the seeming complexity of political allegiances
they can all nevertheless be understood within a single
framework of analysis: 'Men by their constitutions are
naturally divided into two classes 1) those who fear and
distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them
into the hands of the higher classes 2) those who identify
with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and
consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the
most wise depository of the public interests. In every
country these two parties exist, and in every one where
they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare
themselves. Call them therefore liberals and serviles,
Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, republicans and
federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name
you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the
same object. The last appellation of aristocrats and
democrats is the true one, expressing the essence of all.'
Judged by this standard it can be seen that despite the
claims of freemasonry to the contrary it can be more
adequately understood as a disguised form of aristocratic,
not democratic organisation. As such, like hereditary
monarchy, it is not natural, that is to say it does not
reliably combine virtue and talent, but can even exclude
them altogether. As self selecting aristocrats freemasons
unsurprisingly tend to regard themselves as better
qualified to rule, or at least a more wise depository of
the public interest, than the people themselves, and on
these grounds can be tempted to use, at certain decisive
moments, the power of secret influence - that is to say,
force - not only against the higher classes but also
against the people. Moreover, the principle of unlimited
centralism at the heart of freemasonry, whereby the lower
ranks cannot know the identity of those holding higher
rank, means that the elite rulers of the highest masonic
degree comprise an aristocracy whose power is not
accountable to anybody. They are less accountable than even
absolute monarchs.
Although there is a case for using such organisational
methods in conditions of dictatorship and tyranny, in
states where men are free to think, speak and write, they
assume an increasingly negative character the longer and
more stable the conditions of free speech and assembly are
established. In modern democracies the common people enjoy
reasonable access to educational facilities and have no
need of secret, artificial aristocracies, no matter how
well intentioned they may be. In these circumstances
masonic practices are an impediment to the organisation,
scrutiny and election of competent, honest leadership in
politics and may serve as a locus of power for new forms of
aristocracy to develop in inverse relation to the
democratic cause, in which the temptation to use force
against the people assumes a more purely reactionary
character.
Against the background of these considerations any serious
appraisal of masonic influence in the transition to
government by consent must take account of the strong
possibility that it has served to disguise, confuse, and
misrepresent the relation between its own aristocratic
interests and those of general democratic progress. This
consideration is more especially pertinent in the modern
period given the accentuated importance of information and
intelligence in the world of business, politics and
military affairs. Freemasonry may or may not be at the
heart of secret influence in the world, but in either
possibility it remains the case that both political and
economic power during and since the industrial revolution
has been integrally connected to and dependent on an
expanding realm of espionage and intelligence agencies to
degrees which are historically unprecedented. It is this
dependence which has led sociologists such as George Simmel
to conclude that 'under modern conditions, the lie,
therefore, becomes something much more devastating than it
was earlier, something which questions the very foundations
of our life.'
These factors are best taken account of - certainly their
possible effects, known and unknown, on political
development cannot simply be ignored. The provisions for
intervention in world affairs postulated through the
infamous protocols of the elders of Zion are shocking but
they are not especially out of place given the realities of
international diplomacy in the industrial age. As many
observers have remarked, they were knowledgeably crafted,
either by the Tsarist secret police or by the elders
themselves. They encapsulate doctrines of a Machiavellian
character which theoretically any major power could
discreetly uphold as a guide to realpolitik in the exercise
of state power among all classes and nations. Their
essential points can be summarised as follows:
1) International control, through ownership, of banking and
communications is a form of power greater than the military
capacities of any single state, no matter how strong it may
be, because war requires both money and the support of
political and public opinion while allies and enemies can
be played off one against the other. The viability of any
regime can be decisively influenced by economic methods,
including the creation of crises.
2) As with nations, different policies can be coordinated
to influence opposing classes. The rich can be influenced
by greed, but the idealistic striving of the lower classes
for equality can also be exploited and used to help
undermine unfriendly rulers. Radical movements for change
can be fomented and misled by promoting utopian theories of
social development which are extremist and not based on
practical experience. In this way the striving of the poor
for equality can be used to destabilise an enemy power and
establish a dictatorship. Economic power and secret
influence among the rich and poor alike can be used to
promote and exploit freedom at one and the same time to
create chaos, and with this the conditions for establishing
dictatorship. In this way the striving of the poor for
equality can ultimately be rendered futile, thus making the
poor easier to rule after their illusions have been
shattered and power has been taken from the old regime and
used to crush dissent.
3) Stealth is very important to the success of these
policies. Greed and fear are the most reliable motives to
be exploited to influence human behaviour. Bribery,
blackmail and blacklisting are instruments of policy to
this purpose. The masses and most of their representatives
are relatively easy to control by the use of such methods
provided they remain cowed, ignorant, or confused.
Tenaciously alert individuals who cannot be corrupted are
far more dangerous than huge numbers of the unorganised
masses and so must be dealt with by exceptional methods, if
necessary up to and including murder. Although it is not
explicitly included in the protocols the masonic practice
of unlimited centralism in organisation is a cardinal
principle of all clandestine methods which best meets the
requirement of stealth. Plausible deniability - an option
if available no practitioner of the black arts would forego
even for trivial purposes - can only be fully guaranteed if
this practice is fully upheld.
Countless numbers of influential persons, from Adolf Hitler
to Winston Churchill (the freemasons have lost his letter
of resignation from their order), have taken the protocols
seriously. The superstitious alarm and hysteria they have
generated however is out of proportion to world realities.
After all, irrespective of whether they are a product of
Tsarist black propaganda or Jewish intrigue, policies of
this or similar kinds are fairly common among secret
services. Sun Tzu preceded the protocols by over a thousand
years; the Machiavellian emphasis on greed and fear is
merely a transposition of Adam Smith's observations in
regard to economic motivation to the realm of politics.
Whether they have been put to the service of Jewish,
German, Austrian, British or Russian national interests all
three components of such policy could feasibly have been
pursued by any intelligence service, with the possible
exception of the first component, since this is related
both to the amount of wealth controlled by those executing
such a strategy and also their status in regard to the
requirements of plausible deniability.
When Metternich, until Hoover probably the most influential
conservative intelligence chief in world history, met to
discuss international affairs with Rothschild, director of
the most powerful business intelligence service in history,
it seems unlikely that conspiratorial issues would not have
been mentioned. The ambassadorial joke goes that Metternich
rushed excitedly up to Rothschild one day exclaiming 'we've
won, we've won!' Rothschild asked who exactly he was
referring to. Metternich replied that he had not decided
yet.
To summarise the question of freemasonry in its relation to
social development therefore, it may be concluded that this
institution perhaps more than any other gives visible
expression to the fact that one of the obstacles to
democratic progress is that aristocratic forces have sought
to exploit the transition to government by consent for
their own selfish purposes, most usually by hidden methods.
In that regard, this issue provides a demonstrative model
of the methods by which exploitation of the democratic
cause by aristocratic factions takes place. All, as it has
so far been presented to public scrutiny in regard to this
transition, is unlikely to be as it appears. When examining
political development on a general basis this consideration
should be taken into account, most especially in regard to
the manifest failure of all movements and regimes to
establish democratic government in a form consistent with
common sense understanding, despite the self evident nature
of its most basic truths.
Although therefore it is not possible to compile a detailed
analysis of the exact chronology and sequence of events by
which the exploitation and subversion of democratic
development for aristocratic purposes takes place, insights
may still be gained by maintaining a clear focus on the
basic truths of common sense in their relation to those
processes, issues and conflicts which are most closely
associated with and implicated in the failure of radicalism
to maintain steady progress in constructing a democratic
order in conformity with these truths. In this way an
appraisal of the role of and relation between the factors
impeding democratic progress cited above can be formulated
which can illustrate the perspective and standpoint of
common sense in regard to what has been the true course of
events in the transition from rule by force to government
by consent in the modern period.