RD said:I don't see any more information on this web
page other than a photo
of William S. Volker (1859-1947). This page seems
pretty useless to me
as is.
Me: the link worked fine for me, I clciked on straight
from your post here. There is supposed to be a ton of
text below the picture. Don't know what could be the
problem.
Mr. Anonymous
William Volker, alias "Mr. Anonymous," alias the
"First Citizen" of Kansas City, Missouri, "was an
extremely modest, enormously wealthy home-furnishings
tycoon. He became the unrecognized donor of thousands
of gifts, large and small."
Volker was born on April 1, 1859 into a prosperous
household in Hanover, Germany. At age 12, Volker's
family immigrated to Chicago. At 17 he went to work
for a picture frame manufacturer. With the death of
his employer in 1882, Volker bought out the company
and moved the enterprise to Kansas City. From there,
his "little window shade business" grew into a
national giant.
In 1911, 52 year old William Volker married. Returning
from his honeymoon, he announced he had put one
million dollars in his wife's name and, he said,
intended to give the rest of his enormous fortune
away. Over the next 36 years, he donated millions of
dollars, much of it anonymously. When Volker died at
age 88 on November 4, 1947, many schools, parks, and
public spaces were named for the furnishings tycoon.
So why pick on this guy?
The answer is that the overwhelming priority of
Volker's "philanthropy" was focused, not on public
spaces but on reactionary ideology. Dismayed by the
rise of Socialism in America and doubly dismayed by
what he saw as the evolution of government and
political thinking towards accommodation and a "new
liberalism", eventually personified by the widespread
adoption of the economic views of John Maynard Keynes
and the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt,
Volker set out to create a new and much more
reactionary "mainstream" ideology based loosely around
his own ideas of "laissez-faire" capitalism (i.e. a
largely unregulated economy) and social Darwinism (the
pseudo-scientific notion that in society, unhindered
competition would allow the "cream to rise to the
top").
In truth, Volker was no great scholar or thinker. The
ideology he set out to create was built upside down,
starting only with a set of foggy conclusions for
which he had a predisposition. From these conclusions,
it was the task of Volker's considerable fortune to
find a set of justifications, then an enabling
ideology or "theory" that gave it all perspective and
unity and, eventually, a true philosophical platform
from which to launch the whole. But if this task was
analogous to building the Great Pyramid, starting from
the top, Volker was undaunted. He may not have had a
brain but he had money... and he had a personal
connection to one of the most reactionary sections of
that most reactionary of organizations - the National
Association of Manufacturers. Volker's "associates",
who would all participate closely, included Jasper
Crane of DuPont, B. E. Hutchinson of Chrysler, Henry
Weaver of General Electric, Pierre Goodrich of B.F.
Goodrich, and Richard Earhart of White Star Oil (which
through many mergers and aquistions would eventually
become Mobil Oil). Moreover, Volker had "influence" at
the leading scholarly institution in his home town:
The University of Chicago, founded by none other than
John D. Rockefeller and created with a certain
ideological "bent".
In 1932 Volker established the William Volker Fund
and, with that, started on the road to becoming
perhaps the most significant anonymous asshole of our
times. In every way, William S. Volker was the true
"father" of Libertarianism and Modern Conservatism.
For the first dozen years, the fund largely
floundered. There is some evidence that Volker may
have flirted with Fascism. That ideology though, which
attracted such celebrities as Henry Ford and Charles
Lindbergh, was thought to have a limited future in
America. In the face of Keynesian economics,
widespread social spending, and the CIO, what was
really required was a return to pre-New Deal economic
policy and an anti-communist/anti-union social policy.
Eureka!
The breakthrough came in 1944, when Volker's nephew,
Harold Luhnow, took over, first the business and then
the Fund. In the same year, Friedrich Hayek's The Road
to Serfdom was published. The book was a product of
the "Austrian School" of economists, originating at
the University of Vienna and first coming to modest
prominence at the end of the 19th century in its
attacks on Marxist and Socialist economics. Hayek's
book was an almost mystical (and hysterical) defense
of laissez-faire capitalism and the "free market".
According to Hayek, market prices created a
"spontaneous order, or what is referred to as 'that
which is the result of human action but not of human
design'. Thus, Hayek put the price mechanism on the
same level as, for example, language." In turn, any
attempt at regulation would inevitably lead to
"totalitarianism" and in this, both Marxist and New
Deal "socialism" were essentially similar. The theory
was perfect . Volker and Luhnow had found their
ideology. The cash began to flow.
In short order, the Volker Fund and its larger network
arranged for the re-publication of Hayek's book by the
University of Chicago (a recurring and important
connection) despite the fact that it had been almost
universally rejected by the Economics establishment. A
year later, the book was published in serial form by
the ultra-reactionary Readers Digest not withstanding
the fact that it was supposed to be a "scholarly
text", ordinarily inappropriate for the readership of
the Digest, and despite the fact that it had also had
been panned by literary critics. In 1950, the Fund
arranged for Hayek to secure a position at the
University of Chicago and when the University only
granted an unpaid position, they arranged for the
Earhart Foundation to pay him a salary. Hayek was only
the first of a veritable flood of émigré, "scholars".
Recruiting the Homeless
Hayek's teacher in Vienna had been one Ludwig von
Mises who, in turn, had been the student of Eugen von
Boehm-Bawerk (who had gained fame for his attack on
Marxist Economics) and who, in his turn, had been the
student of Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian
school. Each of these had published several books that
were virulent attacks on Socialism and defended "pure
capitalism". It was all very good. Von Mises book was
called Socialism: An Economic and Sociological
Analysis and it too had been received with yawns when
it was published in English in 1936.
While von Mises really had "taught" at the University
of Vienna, his was an unpaid position. The University
had turned him down on four separate occasions for a
paid position. Not surprisingly, in 1940 the nearly
destitute von Mises had emigrated to the United
States. In 1945, an unpaid "visting professorship" was
obtained for him at NYU while his salary was paid by
"businessmen such as Lawrence Fertig". Fertig was an
associate of the Volker Fund and a friend of Henry
Hazlitt, the Fund's friendliest journalist. In all,
they would fund von Mises for 25 years and von Mises
never would need a "real job".
In fact, this was typical of the Fund's "bait and
switch" tactic for developing resumes. In the United
States, von Mises was the "famed economics professor
from the University of Vienna". In Europe, he would
become the "famous American economist from NYU".
Local Reinforcements
The economist Milton Friedman, during his fifteen
minutes of fame, took the opportunity of the
publication of his opus, Capitalism and Freedom to
decry the shabby treatment that the likes of Hayek and
Mises had received from the Economics "establishment".
On his own similar reception, he wrote in the 1982
preface of his book:
"Those of us who were deeply concerned about the
danger to freedom and prosperity from the growth of
government, from the triumph of welfare-state and
Keynesian ideas, were a small beleaguered minority
regarded as eccentrics by the great majority of our
fellow intellectuals.
Even seven years later, when this book was first
published, its views were so far out of the mainstream
that it was not reviewed by any major national
publication--not by the New York Times or the Herald
Tribune (then still being published in New York) or
the Chicago Tribune, or by Time or Newsweek or even
the Saturday Review--though it was reviewed by the
London Economist and by the major professional
journals. And this for a book directed at the general
public, written by a professor at a major U.S.
university, and destined to sell more than 400,000
copies in the next eighteen years."
It is attractive to believe that Friedman was really
this foolish and that his expertise in the "politics
of fame" was similar to his expertise in Monetary
Policy. In fact, his separate acknowledgements of the
importance of the Volker Fund belie this possibility.
In truth, the Fund and its progeny identified Friedman
early on, shepherded his career at the University of
Chicago, subsidized him through a paid lecture series
(which eventually were combined into Capitalism and
Freedom), paid his way to Mont Pelerin, arranged for
the serialization of his book by Reader's Digest, and
bought a signifcant number of the books that Friedman
was so proud of "selling".
Friedman was only one of dozens of such local
"scholars" who were suddenly "discovered" through the
efforts of the Fund.
The Fund also now began to recruit friendly young
"future-scholars" and subsidize their development. Not
only was the cause thus advanced, but a modest
intelligence network became a part of the "Libertarian
Movement". One such early recruit was Murray Rothbard,
later to become famous as the "father" of "Left
Libertarianism", "Libertarian anarchism", and
"anarco-capitalism". Later much castigated for his
"sellout to the Right-wing Republicans", Rothbard had,
from the first, been intimately wrapped up in
Anti-Communism, McCarthyism, the "Old Right", and the
right-wing ideology of the Volker Fund. It was through
the Fund that he became an associate of Ayn Rand and a
student of Mises.
"Rothbard began his consulting work for the Volker
Fund in 1951. This relationship lasted until 1962,
when the VF was dissolved. A major part of Rothbard's
work for the VF consisted of reading and evaluating
books, journal articles, and other materials. On the
basis of written reports by Rothbard and another
reader - Rose Wilder Lane - the VF's directors would
decide whether to undertake massive distribution of
particular works to public libraries.
The VF also asked Rothbard to submit reports on
particular questions, such as how to rank sundry
economists in terms of friendliness to the free
market, surveys of the literature on monopoly, Soviet
wage structures, etc., etc. Rothbard's memos number
several hundred, covering works in economics, history,
philosophy, and political science. The memos, which
range in length from one page to seventy pages,
provide a window into the scholarship of the period -
and Rothbard's views on that scholarship. They thereby
shed much light on Rothbard's emerging worldview and
his systematic defense of liberty."
They also shed "much light" on how the Fund decided
which "scholars" to promote, and which to attack.
Rothbard later called his work with the Volker Fund,
"the best job I've ever had in my life".
Multiplying Like Rabbits
In support of the imported scholars and the new
ideology, the Volker Fund also pioneered a process
which would become the hallmark of the "Libertarian
Movement". The Fund started to spin-off organizations
by the boatload, each intended, not just to serve
specific purposes but to give the appearance of many
"independent" efforts spawned by a "mass" appeal. The
list of "begats" is too numerous to chronicle but the
first set are illuminating.
Among the very first "front organizations" of the
Volker Fund was the "National Book Foundation". While
the Foundation's affiliation to the Volker Fund was
not hidden, it was circumspect enough to suggest, even
to most "Libertarians", that it was independent. The
fund began modestly enough by distributing free copies
Eugene Böhm-Bawerk's works to thousands of libraries
and universities across the country. As the Volker
efforts geared up, the Foundation began to distribute
millions of books from dozens of authors, all coming
from the Fund's stables. Many educational "incentives"
were initiated such as "teach a course on Hayek, get
10 (or 100) textbooks for free"...
The Foundation for Economic Education was spun out in
1946, under the leadership of Leonard Read, a leading
figure in the Chambers of Commerce. The grand-daddy of
all libertarian "think-tanks", the FEE initiated the
original Mont Pelerin Society meetings. Its own
publication, The Freeman, became the founding journal
of "Libertarianism". The rent was paid by Volker.
The Institute for Humane Studies was created by Floyd
"Baldy" Harper, the "ace recruiter" of the Volker
Fund, in 1961. The IHS identified and subsidized
"bright young students" and "promising scholars"
friendly to the new "Libertarian" doctrine. Not only
did the IHS fund thousands of "students", but it
spawned dozens of similar organizations throughout the
world. After the Volker Fund was finally closed,
subsidies for the IHS shifted to some of the most
reactionary organizations in America: The Scaife
Foundation, Koch Family Foundations, The Bradley
Foundation, and the Carthage Foundation.
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute was founded in
1953 to combat what they would eventually call
"political correctness" and "'left-bias" in colleges
and universities. The organization now consists of
50,000 college students and faculty and through its
lavish subsidies, sponsors dozens of programs
representing the entire spectrum of right-wing
"Libertarian" causes. The first president of the ISI
was a young William F. Buckley Jr.
The Earhart Foundation was created by and named for
Richard Earhart of White Star Oil, one of Volker's
original collaborators in the National Assosciation of
Manufacturers. This foundation was used to subsidize
various émigrés and not only financed Hayek but also
Eric Voegelin, yet another "Austrian". Through
Voeglin, the Earhardt Foundation became connected with
the infamous Leo Strauss and, since then, various
"projects" of not just a "libertarian" but of a
"neo-conservative" perspective have been beneficiaries
of the Foundation. In addition, The Earhart Foundation
helped to pioneer still another use of the
newly-emergent Libertarian think-tanks. As the network
of these think-tanks grew, they undertook not only to
promote ideology but also specific points of policy,
particularly in support of private corporations. The
culmination of the Foundation's efforts in this
direction came with the founding of the George C.
Marshall Institute in 1984. The Institute was
initially a foremost proponent of the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), heavily promoted by the
Defense Industry, and later became the leading
non-industry critic of "Climate Change". The CEO of
the Institute is currently a registered lobbysist for
ExxonMobil.
Through the list of organizations, above, the Volker
Fund's near-biblical "begats" encompass nearly every
single prominent individual and organization of the
"Libertarian" and "New Conservative" movements of
today.
The Not-So-Secret Society
Quote:
In 1947, 39 scholars, mostly economists, with some
historians and philosophers, were invited by Professor
Friedrich Hayek to meet at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland,
and discuss the state, and possible fate of classical
liberalism and to combat the "state ascendancy and
Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was] sweeping the
globe". Invitees included Henry Simons (who would
later train Milton Friedman, a future president of the
society, at the University of Chicago); the American
former-Fabian socialist Walter Lippmann; Viennese
Aristotelian Society leader Karl Popper; fellow
Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises; Sir John
Clapham, a senior official of the Bank of England who
from 1940-6 was the president of the British Royal
Society; Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne; and Max von Thurn und Taxis,
Bavaria-based head of the 400-year-old Venetian Thurn
und Taxis family.
If the above rings of "Bohemian Grove" and similar
fodder for conspiracies, it is because informal
"retreats" at out-of-the-way resorts are one of the
favorite methods by which the wealthy of many
countries formulate a common international policy.
What distinguishes the Mont Pelerin Society, however,
is that it did not consist primarily of the wealthy.
Instead, it was comprised of a majority of marginal,
thread-bare "scholars", united only by their common
hatred of "socialism" and Keynesianism (which were one
and the same for most of them) and sprinkled with only
a handful of rich patrons and journalists. In fact the
Mount Pelerin Society was organized as much by the
Volker Fund as by Hayek himself and the Foundation
paid the way for all 10 of the American
"participants".
Once in Switzerland, the "scholars" agreed on their
hatred of "socialism" but on little else except to
meet yearly to "facilitate an exchange of ideas
between like-minded scholars in the hope of
strengthening the principles and practice of a free
society and to study the workings, virtues, and
defects of market-oriented economic systems."
>From this not-so-secret-but-thoroughly-right-wing
society's more than humble beginnings, the phoenix of
laissez-faire capitalism would rise, propelled skyward
by unlimited funds. Over a dozen of the scholars who
could not previously get a job, a review, or a book
deal would go on to win the "Nobel Prize in Economics"
(this "epic" story will be told separately). More
importantly, the Mont Pelerin Society would itself
beget 500 foundations and organizations in nearly 80
countries... again with strategic contributions from
Mr. Anonymous. Once transformed into an "international
movement", there was no end to what was possible. One
example tells the story.
Initiated at Mont Pelerin and copying the FEE, the
Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was created in
London in 1955. Serving as a conduit for both cash and
"ideas", the IEA set about the task of "rejuvenating"
the dead and decaying British Tories. By 1985, the
"Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher, would positively gush
on the occasion of the Institute's 30th Anniversary:
"You created the atmosphere which made our victory
possible... May I say how thankful we are to those who
joined your great endeavor. They were the few, but
they were right, and they saved Britain." With that,
the IEA begat the Atlas Economic Research Foundation,
which in turn created a network of over 50
"think-tanks" in more than 30 countries.
And what were the scale of these efforts? John
Blundell, the head of the IEA, in a speech to the
Heritage Foundation, and Atlas in 1990, would identify
a rare failure in the Society's efforts. Shaking his
head at the abortive attempt to subsidize academic
"Chairs of Free Enterprise" in dozens of countries
throughout the world, Blundell complained about
wasting, "hundreds of millions, perhaps one billion
dollars". This was just one initiative among many.
Oceans of Cash
Aaron Director was a lawyer and Ukrainian émigré whose
sister had married Milton Friedman prior to the Second
World War. That then became the connection which led
to the Volker Fund's subsidy of Director and his
association with the University of Chicago. He was one
of the fund's "imports", alongside Von Mises.
Director's collaborator at the University was Edward
Levi who would eventually go on to become the
President of the University and then Attorney General
of the United States. Together, Director and Levi were
instrumental in the development of the Chicago School
of Economics, or the conquest by the Economics
department of the School of Business and the Law
School.
The Law School? What does law have to do with
economics? The answer was everything according to
Director, who developed a theory of "Law and
Economics" (called, without tongue-in-cheek, the L&E
"Movement'), stressing free-enterprise principles and
the primacy of property law as well as measuring legal
rulings with longer-term economic criteria. "He
founded the Journal of Law & Economics in 1958... that
helped to unite the fields of law and economics with
far-reaching influence." The journal was, of course,
funded in large part by what had now become a
substantial network of Volker affiliates. Despite the
fact that he himself wrote virtually nothing
throughout his career, "Director influenced a
generation of jurists, including Robert Bork, Richard
Posner, Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William
Rehnquist."
John M. Olin
One part of what made such a thing possible was not
just new territories in which to sell the tired old
"economic" ideas, but also new benefactors who spread
the message far and wide. In this case, perhaps the
most important new "convert" was the munitions
magnate, John M. Olin and his Foundation:
"...John M. Olin was disturbed by a building takeover
at his alma mater, Cornell University. At the age of
80, he decided that he must pour his time and
resources into preserving the free market system that
had allowed him to acquire his own wealth. The
Foundation is most notable for its early support and
funding of the law and economics movement, a
discipline that applies incentive-based thinking and
cost-benefit analysis to the field of legal theory.
Olin believed that law schools have a
disproportionately large impact on society given their
size and to this end decided to focus the majority of
his funding there."
Between 1969 and 2005, when the Foundation disbanded,
the John M. Olin Foundation disbursed no less than
$370 Million, "primarily to conservative think tanks,
media outlets, and law programs at influential
universities. The Foundation is most notable for its
early support and funding of the law and economics
movement."
But that was not the only thing that the Olin
foundation promoted. Through its contacts at the
University of Chicago, the Olin Fund ran into
political sciences professor Leo Strauss:
Quote:
Strauss taught that liberalism in its modern form
contained within it an intrinsic tendency towards
relativism, which in turn led to two types of nihilism
("Epilogue").[2] The first was a "brutal" nihilism,
expressed in Nazi and Marxist regimes. These
ideologies, both descendants of Enlightenment thought,
tried to destroy all traditions, history, ethics, and
moral standards and replace it by force with a supreme
authority under which nature and mankind are
subjugated and conquered.[4] The second type -- the
"gentle" nihilism expressed in Western liberal
democracies -- was a kind of value-free aimlessness
and hedonism, which he saw as permeating the fabric of
contemporary American society.[5] In the belief that
20th century relativism, scientism, historicism, and
nihilism were all implicated in the deterioration of
modern society and philosophy, Strauss sought to
uncover the philosophical pathways that had led to
this situation. The resultant study led him to revive
classical political philosophy as a source by which
political action could be judged.
Well, it was not exactly the same thing but it was
close enough... and, with its further evolution,
"neo-liberalism" would abandon the "classical
liberals" in favor of medieval scholars, thus coming
much closer to a "synergy". Meanwhile, for both,
"classical political philosophy" was, of course,
synonymous with political reaction. The unmentioned
irony was that the critique of Straussianism, that it
was "crudely anti-democratic, obsessed with secret
meanings and in love with white lies told by powerful
men to keep the rabble in line" applied neatly as a
summation of the "classical liberalism" or
"Libertarian" movement as a whole. In addition to its
Libertarian mission, The Olin Foundation became a
founder and one of the principal funding sources for
the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Extending their reach, the inheritors of Mr.
Anonymous' legacy, also set about creating umbrella
organizations for Libertarian funding sources
dedicated to funding the "counter-intelligentsia."
These extended from newly created, shadowy and
"anonymous" Foundations to the famous think-tanks
(such as Cato, Hoover, and Hudson) to the infamous
(such as the Scaife Foundation). As the network has
grown, the financing of "scholars" has been
supplemented by the adoption of campaigns, not just in
the name of "Capitalism", "Freedom", and "Liberty" in
general, but on behalf of individual capitalists in
particular. Today there is virtually no public
campaign, against anti-tobacco legislation, against
environmental legislation, rejecting climate change
theory, on behalf of HMOs and private health care,
against pharmaceutical regulation and so on - outside
of industry and trade associations - that does not
originate within the network created or touched by Mr.
Anonymous. Today the size of the cash flow is not
counted in millions or hundreds of millions or in
billions, but in tens of billions, and perhaps even
more.
But, what about "ideas"?
In our search for cash and connections without
parallel, it might be argued that we have missed the
"great ideas" of Libertarianism. The simple
explanation is that there are none. Beyond a pro forma
agreement on the evils of Marxism, Keynesianism, and
"big government" and a thoroughly mystical, near
religious belief in capitalism and "free-markets",
reduced to paper-thin slogans such as "Personal
Freedom" and "Individual Liberty", there is no other
point of consensus. Pressed beyond such platitudes,
the "theoreticians" of this "movement" have always
descended into the most bitter disagreements about the
most substantial of issues. Such might easily be
suspected of an "ideology" that embraces a political
spectrum which includes right-wing Republicans, and
neo conservatives and neo liberals and neo-Fascist Ayn
Randians, and "classical Liberals" and Libertarian
Party members, and "anarchists".
The economic historian, Jamie Peck, in setting out to
write a history of the theories of the Austrian
School, was dismayed to find that he could not find an
"Aha moment" in that history, nor could he see
substantial points of agreement between any of the
authors (beyond the obvious), nor could he detect a
coherent point-of-view that remained constant amongst
any one of them for long. "There was nothing
spontaneous about neo-liberalism; it was speculatively
planned, it was opportunistically built, and it has
been repeatedly reconstructed", wrote Peck.
We will deal with this subject in accompanying
material, but for the moment it should be said that
even the above misses the point. Beyond congenital
disagreements, the embrace of Libertarian Economics as
political slogan from the beginning meant that the
"science" (and it is only as "economic science" that
the ideology has ever had even nominal roots) was
still-born, no matter how miserable its stock in trade
may have turned out to be. Hayek said as much at the
time of his "Nobel Prize". He complained that Serfdom.
had ended his "career" as an "economist" and implied
that it began his life as an "ideologist". No matter
what illusions he may have harbored as to his own
"destiny", the comment passes down to us as the
complaints of a paid shill of the real Libertarian
"science" - the science of propoganda, a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Volker Fund - with Hayek only
counting as just another whiney paid-professional,
complaining about his job-title.
There is no evidence that the much larger irony ever
occurred to Hayek:
Tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars,
hundreds of millions of books, hundreds of journals,
dozens of universities, tens of thousands of people
and thousands of professorships, and so on in a
network touching virtually everyone in the "Western
Democracies" - all of it centrally planned, all of it
subsidized, none of it capable of existing by itself
in the commercial marketplace or in the "marketplace
of ideas" and all of it failing dozens of times until
hooked into the river of cash produced by the the
simple subsidies of the rich designed to derail the
"free" evolution of ideas as they were actually
proceeding... is there any such example in all of
human history of a "movement" so far at odds with its
own self-proclaimed "principles"? No problem, though,
for William S. Volker, for whom "belief" was always
optional. Mr. Anonymous got exactly what he paid for.
*****
For anyone who would attempt to understand class
societies, the unmediated slogans of those same
societies are the worst possible places to begin. For
feudal societies, slogans such as "Chivalry", "Honor",
"Fealty", "Chastity", "Virtue" and the like, underlay
a social fabric that was monstrous, arbitrary, and
treacherous. In most cases the slogans hid social
truths which were the exact opposite of their
rhetorical claims. The cruelty of the joke was not
fully apparent until the end times of feudalism itself
or, perhaps, even after.
In our own times, the slogans which have replaced
these are those of "Freedom", "Liberty", "Democracy",
"Enterprise", "Individuality", and so on. It is
impossible to know the meaning of these as given and
even more unlikely that one may make of them as one
may wish. In the present society, they are like virgin
forests that one may stumble upon while walking. No
matter how pristine and unfettered such may appear, in
our contemporary social system that forest is
inevitably someone's private property and is thus
absolutely resistant to any other appropriation.
So too, it is the same with "Freedom" and "Liberty".
No matter how one may "choose" to think of them, in
truth they have only one source and one meaning.
The current stakeholder for those terms is the
anonymous asshole above, William Volker. He mined the
ore, refined the technique, processed the product, and
merchandised the result; finally sending the finished
commodity out on rivers of cash, no less so than Henry
Ford did with his automobiles. As with all other
industrial Barons of his time, that he knew nothing of
the actual ideas, processes, and practices meant
nothing at all. He bought them, he paid for them, he
owned them, and in the process, he spawned the liberty
industry, a multi-billion dollar monopoly which today
owns "the marketplace of ideas". So too, just as with
Ford, the complete legacy of his "works" becomes
apparent only now.
Notes and a Postscript: This blog is accompanied by
several sidebars.
As far as a postscript goes, we end as we began - with
yet more fodder for conspiracy theorists. The William
S. Volker Fund closed up shop in 1974, secure in the
fact that it's "mission" had been taken up by others.
The last millions in the Fund were passed on to the
ultra-conservative Hoover Institution. What were not
passed on were the files of the Volker Fund, which
mysteriously disappeared. The entire paper trail
documenting where the money had come from, how it was
spent and who was "touched" by it, all of this
disappeared with a "poof". Three decades after he
died, Volker seems to have guaranteed his anonymity in
perpetuity and to this day nothing but the vague
outlines of this story are known. And so it goes...
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
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