Bill Clinton’s New Covenant is a different kettle of fish from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Whereas those previous slogans seemed to open a vista toward a better future, the dictionary defines covenant as a formal agreement between persons to do specified things.
Indeed, Clinton himself defined it as “a solemn commitment between the people and their government based on what all of us must give.” It appears that the specified thing that the American people are supposed to give is $150 billion in higher taxes.
Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was a very personal plea for national support. The only one he mentioned besides his mother and grandfather was his history professor at Georgetown University’s Foreign Service School, the late Carroll Quigley, whom Clinton credited with helping to form his political outlook.
The singling out of Dr. Quigley was curious. He was a liberal academic with a very identifiable world view. The Foreign Service School’s dean called Quigley “brilliant, charming and arrogant,” and he demonstrated this by regularly flunking a third of the students in his class.
A former student said that none of the best-known ploys for a better grade from Quigley was to remind him — often — of one’s activity in the Young Democrats. The student added that most of his peers, including the liberals, admitted that Quigley was “most in love with himself, his opinions and his ‘position’ in the Establishment.”
Beyond the circle of the 30 years of Georgetown freshmen who were required to take his history course, Quigley is known principally for his 1,338-page tome called Tragedy and Elope: A History of the World in our Times published in 1966. Those willing to wade through those tedious pages will be rewarded by a description of the powerful movers and shakers of our society.
Quigley wrote approvingly of the power, influence and activities of what he called “the network” that tries to rule the Western wor1d. He boasted: “I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records.”
Quigley asserted that he was personally acquainted with the dynastic families of the super-rich, and he traced their immense power and influence. For the most part, he was a fan of their goals and policies and said that, his chief difference with the “network” was that “it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”
The “Hope” in his book’s title represented the collectivist one-world society that will exist when the “network” achieves its goal of consolidating its rule. All who resist this man-made millennium represent the “Tragedy,” and Quigley asserted that it was too late for ordinary people to fight it.
It should be remembered that this book was written from the perspective of 1966. That was shortly after Big Media had smashed the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1964 with a smear campaign unprecedented for its virulence, and long before Ronald Reagan proved that grassroots conservatives could be victorious over the liberal Establishment.
Tragedy and Hope identified the members of the “network” as the “international bankers,” men who are “cosmopolitan and international… close to governments and particularly concerned with questions of government debts . . . equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life.”
The network always prefers Big Government, big federal spending, and the stability of a planned society rather than the uncertainties of the free market. One example of the power of the network is the way it has forced the American taxpayers to spend some $10 billion a year on foreign giveaways every year since World War II.
Quigley described the Council on Foreign Relations as one of several “front” organizations set up by the network for the purpose of advancing its internationalist schemes. Quigley was mightily impressed by the power and influence of Cecil Rhodes and his legacy, which “although not widely recognized, can hardly be exaggerated.”
Quigley described the conflict between grassroots Americans and the big financial interests as “the Midwest of Tom Sawyer against the cosmopolitan East.”
Bill Clinton may look like just a poor midwestern guy from Hope, Arkansas, but he is no Tom Sawyer. He learned a lot from his mentor about how things happen in America. When he became a Rhodes Scholar, he tied in with the power centers and learned how to tap into the country’s financial moguls.
If Bill Clinton is elected President, will the man from Hope, Arkansas make the “Hope” from Carroll Quigley’s book our national goals and policies?
