OpEdNews - Diary: The Powell Memorandum: Time To Put It Where The Sun Don't Shine

The US Chamber of Commerce recently celebrated a birthday. One of it's obnoxious offspring turned 9 ths week. It's the Federal minimum wage of $5.15. Cake, champagne, and balloons for the kiddies -- and a good time was had by all. Members in attendance -- as always -- refused to tip the hired help.

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35 years ago a lawyer working for the "Original Flat Earth Society" known as "Big Tobacco" had been driven to paranoia trying to defend the undefendable. The 60's were a great decade for NASA, not so good for the Department of Defense, but it was absolutely HORRIBLE for the tobacco companies. Had they been selling any other product, it would have been taken off the market by the Federal Trade Commission. But Big Tobacco meant Big Lobby and that lawyer -- Lewis Powell -- parlayed his "flat earth" legalese defense of cigarettes into a seat on the US Supreme Court. He was not your usual appointment. Most jurists realize they've reached a watershed in Federal Government with the nomination and approval. And it had total job security.. Still, most realized that their work on the highest bench would be what they were remembered for in history. Decisions they made, dissents they wrote, or -- in the case of at least five of the current members of the Court -- for the decisions they often didn't make. The rest of their biography was merely a footnote in history. Powell was different. He -- like everybody else associated with a tobacco company -- knew that it was only a matter of time before the roof caved in on their world-wide multibillion dollar enterprises. So Powell wrote a legal brief about the impossible. If you couldn't change the product, you could change the way people thought about it. That's not as easy as it sounds. It was like changing a light bulb by getting a guy to climb up a ladder, grab the bulb, and using a few billion people to corkscrew the planet beneath the ladder. It's come to be known as the Powell Memorandum. Many people who've read it say that the Powell Manifesto is a more apt description. To Powell, the tobacco "problem" was just a symptom of a "great nation gone terribly wrong." In fact, the nation was supposedly on the verge of collapsing into the kind of chaos later portrayed in "Blade Runner" "Escape From LA" or "The Running Man." America needed to save itself from itself. As for Powell, he didn't want to spend the rest of his life coping with denial. And just what was screwing up America in spades, you ask? The college campuses. Particularly, the professors, and the hippies that wrote the campus newspapers. As for the students -- the campus libraries were full of "anti-corporate" lies and propaganda, and critques of American corporate hegemony. The most influential critics of postwar American foreign policy, especially, were expousing that American foreign policy WAS corporate hegemony -- the backbone of the "free" world's fight against the Soviet Union and its puppet states. We were already going to lose the war in Vietnam thanks in part to the rabble who organized marches and rallies. Worse, it was the same rabble who were also demanding an actual role in the running of the colleges they were attending. They could be formidable when united in purpose. Beyond the Marxists and the "pinkos", there were black "extremists", the "fags" (not the English kind, obviously) and pacifists (wars sell a lot of cigarettes). Powell also spared no vitriol even when condemning people who jogged in "earth shoes." However, you could blame the chaos being wrought by these professors and campus radicals only so much. No wonder Big Tobacco was in such big trouble. If the American people were allowed to put limits on the corporations making all the money -- while the spiraling cost of health care was driving the country into the ground financially -- then the nation would eventually collapse. It also pissed Powell off that lawyers like William Kunstler were so popular on campuses. One look at Powell and you'd know why. Oratorily, he had the charisma of all the other corporate lawyers of his day. No-Doz was selling for $3 a hit outside most of his campus lectures. Powell eventually wrote a recipe for conservative victory in the memorandum he released in August 1971. [Actually titled "Confidential Memorandum: Attack of the Free Enterprise System."] The quotes below pertain to the dimensions, sources, and scope of the campus -- and media -- attack on corporate America. One big red flag for Big Tobacco had already spelled catastrophe for the industry: you couldn't sell cigarettes on TV or radio anymore. [The following are excerpts from the Memorandum -- with emphasis added.]: "You (the business community) must learn to fight in the streets, to revolt, to shoot guns. We will learn to do all of the things that property owners fear." "The New Leftists who heed Kunstler's advice increasingly are beginning to act -- not just against military recruiting offices and manufacturers of munitions, but against a variety of businesses: 'Since February, 1970, branches (of Bank of America) have been attacked 39 times, 22 times with explosive devices and 17 times with fire bombs or by arsonists.' Although New Leftist spokesmen are succeeding in radicalizing thousands of the young, the greater cause for concern is the hostility of respectable liberals and social reformers. It is the sum total of their views and influence which could indeed fatally weaken or destroy the system." "A chilling description of what is being taught on many of our campuses was written by (ultra-conservative columnist) Stewart Alsop: 'Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores of bright young men who are practitioners of 'the politics of despair.' These young men despise the American political and economic system . . . (their) minds seem to be wholly closed. They live, not by rational discussion, but by mindless slogans. A recent poll of students on 12 representative campuses reported that: 'Almost half the students favored socialization of basic U.S. industries.' " [Oh no!] "A visiting professor from England at Rockford (IL) College gave a series of lectures entitled "The Ideological War Against Western Society," in which he documents the extent to which members of the intellectual community are waging ideological warfare against the enterprise system and the values of western society. In a foreword to these lectures, famed Dr. Milton Friedman of (the University of) Chicago warned: 'It (is) crystal clear that the foundations of our free society are under wide-ranging and powerful attack -- not by Communist or any other conspiracy but by misguided individuals parroting one another and unwittingly serving ends they would never intentionally promote.'" [Scary stuff. Especially if parrots are involved. What next -- tarantulas?] Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who -- thanks largely to the media -- has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans. A recent article in Fortune (Magazine) speaks of Nader as follows: "The passion that rules in him -- and he is a passionate man -- is aimed at smashing utterly the target of his hatred, which is corporate power. He thinks, and says quite bluntly, that a great many corporate executives belong in prison -- for defrauding the consumer with shoddy merchandise, poisoning the food supply with chemical additives, and willfully manufacturing unsafe products that will maim or kill the buyer. He emphasizes that he is not talking just about 'fly-by-night hucksters' but the top management of blue chip business." "A frontal assault was made on our government, our system of justice, and the free enterprise system by Yale Professor Charles Reich in his widely publicized book: 'The Greening of America,' published last winter." [End excerpt. Emphasis added.] In other words, a "call to arms" had been issued by an English professor who taught briefly at a smallish city college. Except his lectures should be ranked right up there with Winston Churchill's famous 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech. I don't know how good the speech was but it must have been the war cry for corporate statism. Actually, Powell probably thought that the lecture series should rank higher on the Richter scale than Churchill's speech. While Churchill was indeed prescient, the wartime Prime Minister was more pissed off with Stalin's grip on Poland than anything else. After all -- Britain had gone to war on Poland's behalf. And Powell didn't let America's corporate "culturalists" of the hook, either. He saw too much "apathy and default" on their part: "What has been the response of business to this massive assault upon its fundamental economics, upon its philosophy, upon its right to continue to manage its own affairs, and indeed upon its integrity?" "The painfully sad truth is that business, including the boards of directors' and the top executives of corporations great and small and business organizations at all levels, often have responded -- if at all -- by appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem. There are, of course, many exceptions to this sweeping generalization. But the net effect of such response as has been made is scarcely visible. In all fairness, it must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it." The traditional role of business executives has been to manage, to produce, to sell, to create jobs, to make profits, to improve the standard of living, to be community leaders, to serve on charitable and educational boards, and generally to be good citizens. They have performed these tasks very well indeed. But they have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate. [In excerpted form. Emphasis added.] Powell's solution? The US Chamber of Commerce -- for starters. Powell was making a lot of sense here, from his perspective. And from mine, too. It was a great place to start to rally the troops. The local Chamber was often the most conservative organ in the community around the college campus. Many of its members were already serving on the University board. Many more were also alumni. And -- just as important -- The US C of C also had links to many other conservative groups and fraternities: The Rotarians, The Kiwanis's, Freemasonry, even the Knights of Columbus. These same businessman also hired and fired a lot of college graduates. But to Powell, every Chamber of Commerce could become the greatest asset of all for the corporate business community. It should be the local clearing house in establishing and funding conservative change on every college campus. Gee...nothing Orwellian about Powell's "call to arms" at all. First of all, corporate conservatives should start insisting on a basic American right no longer afforded to the country's contemporary media. Equal Time for their opposing viewpoints. It wasn't enough to start grooming effective speakers on campuses; they should insist on their day in court. This was also meant as a leverage ploy. Again, to quote from "Powell": "If the foregoing analysis is approximately sound, a priority task of business -- and organizations such as the Chamber -- is to address the campus origin of this hostility. Few things are more sanctified in American life than academic freedom. It would be fatal to attack this as a principle. But if academic freedom is to retain the qualities of "openness," "fairness" and "balance" -- which are essential to its intellectual significance -- there is a great opportunity for constructive action. The thrust of such action must be to restore the qualities just mentioned to the academic communities." [End excerpt. Emphasis added.] What this benign statement carried with it was the implicit goal of putting the "Marxist" professors and campus radicals in positions where they would have to either abandon the academic "freedom" they had campaigned so hard for in the 1960s. Or give in and allow the right-wingers to hold court on the campus. This was a brilliant scheme. That's why the conservatives -- and the mainstream media -- eventually eliminated this kind of academic freedom once the campuses and "Reaganomics" no longer needed leverage to speak on campuses. Conservatives -- as many have observed -- are far less concerned with doctrinal fair play. They're more dependent on money to get their point across. There was lots of that about. Money that buys the pols, too. Campuses also needed bedrock conservative organizations and focus groups. "Bedrock" means that hiring the people with MBAs and other advanced degrees would have to undergo conservative "rites of passage" before being accepted at practically every major business entity. The option to "join" was more like the option of "joining" the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. No -- American business wasn't THAT conservative -- but it was a mandatory career move to make it anywhere in the system. The local business community was the biggest outside source of revenue for many college MBA programs. In higher tech areas of the country they were the biggest outside contributors to science and information technology programs as well. Here the gloves would really come off. Via the US C of C -- and the other conservative groups soon to wield enormous power on campuses -- like the Federalist Society and the right-wing "think tanks" like the CATOs, The Heritage Foundation and the America Enterprise Institute. The corporate community could simply dictate college policy as education funds were eventually slashed by the Federal government within the following decade. These organizations were also well-connected in state capitals throughout the land. Why not control the physical and IT sciences, too? Powell championed "junk" science in the fight against the anti-tobacco lobby. Why not extend and extrapolate more "junk" science and philosophy to college science departments to counter any and all anti-corporate environmental issues? In fact, Why not start to monitor everything that happened on college campuses? This would mean extending influence to local newspapers, TV, radio, publications -- professional as well as public. Go to court if you have to -- to stop environmentalists and leftists from telling the truth. Appeal every anti-environmental tort brought against big polluters like the oil companies. Make them drag out for years. Then call the folks seeking compensation "frivolous." I could go through a litany of remedies Powell proposed but he couldn't have meant it more meanfully than in this quote: "This (media) monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts (textbooks) of adequate samples of programs. Complaints -- to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission -- should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate. Equal time should be demanded when appropriate. Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it." [End quote with emphasis added.] And this man was considered a "moderate" on the Supreme Court? He wouldn't have been a moderate on the Supreme Soviet. He merely would have been a not-so-humble Stalinist: "In the final analysis, the payoff -- short-of revolution -- is what government does. Business has been the favorite whipping-boy of many politicians for many years. But the measure of how far this has gone is perhaps best found in the anti-business views now being expressed by several leading candidates for President of the United States. It is still Marxist doctrine that the "capitalist" countries are controlled by big business. This doctrine, consistently a part of leftist propaganda all over the world, has a wide public following among Americans. Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. If one doubts this, let him undertake the role of "lobbyist" for the business point of view before Congressional committees. The same situation obtains in the legislative halls of most states and major cities. One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the "forgotten man." [End excerpt. Emphasis added.] Don't worry, Lewis. They're putting in revolving doors on all the buildings on K Street. I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of the Powell Manifesto. But I do know roller derby. Somebody went flying through the pack, then "called off the jam." You and I probably wound up in the 3rd or 4th row on the next turn. Get your roller skates out. It's going to be a "bumpy night." Excerpts from: Reclaim Democracy.org My thanks to them. Their website can be found at: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/