Posted on 05/14/2007 11:11:38 AM PDT by John Galt 72
Created by Capitalists, Foundations Serve Left-Wing Agenda
By Matt Carrothers
May 14, 2007
Ford. Rockefeller. Carnegie. MacArthur. Pew. Hewlett. The names read like a roll call of American history’s industrial titans, financial wizards and innovators of technology. Most of them were politically conservative. All of them thrived in America’s free market economy.
These captains of capitalism share another legacy – the charitable foundations that bear their respective names. Today they would barely recognize the foundations they established, which are now the leading contributors to socialist, environmental and multicultural causes.
Author Phil Kent’s latest book, Foundations of Betrayal: How the Liberal Super-Rich Undermine America, documents the extreme left’s control of hundreds of the largest tax-exempt foundations, their immense war chests and considerable political influence. Kent’s meticulous research and clear prose reveals the “invisible government” of foundations that fund the world’s most radical political organizations.
Most of the foundations that bear the names of history’s corporate giants were designed for two purposes. The first was to shield earnings and protect family estates. Kent cites a report by the 1950s-era U.S. House Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations: “The Ford Foundation affords a good example of the use of a foundation to solve the death tax problem and, at the same time, the problem of how to retain control of a great enterprise in the hands of the family.”
The second purpose was to fund innocuous research in the fields of medicine, education, science and assisting the poor. By the 1950s and 1960s, however, the wealthiest foundations were funding liberal and anti-American organizations such as the Council of Foreign Relations, Alfred Kinsey’s sex studies and a horde of militant environmental groups. Kent notes that control of foundation resources at this time moved away from the founders, and into the hands of their often shiftless sons, daughters, grandchildren and liberal elites.
Kent’s book highlights a mind-boggling menagerie of leftist centers, guilds, committees, councils, societies and think tanks that depend on foundations to advance their causes. One popular recipient of foundation largesse is the environmental group Greenpeace. In 1970, Greenpeace activist Bob Hunter described his organization’s founding members: “We had the biggest concentration of tree-huggers…pot smokers and growers, aging Trotskyites…nudists, Buddhists, and anti-pollution marchers and picketers in the country, per capita, in the world.” According to Kent, donations to Greenpeace in 2000 totaled $143 million.
Liberal foundations particularly favor environmental groups. When King Broadcasting Company founder Dorothy Bullitt established her eponymous foundation, its mission was to “protect, restore and maintain the natural physical environment of the Pacific Northwest.” Current Bullitt Foundation president and Earth Day co-founder Denis Hayes has certainly expanded that original mission.
Hayes, whom Kent characterizes as “an unabashed opponent of capitalism,” believes that only increased government regulations will protect the environment. In Hayes’s view, “the richer the society, the more creatures it squeezes to the brink of extinction.”
One wonders if the irony of using free market-acquired resources to destroy free markets is lost on Hayes and his foundation counterparts. The foundations Kent exposes created private enterprise funding structures to support their pet socialist issues. It is only through capitalism and free markets that the foundations can generate the resources necessary to perpetuate them and the organizations they fund.
The liberal foundations’ subversion of America is profoundly evident in the case of hedge fund billionaire George Soros. Soros once wrote, “The main obstacle to a stable and just world is the United States.” His loyalty to the nation that freely allowed him to earn billions of dollars goes downhill from there.
Recipients of funding from Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) include the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, a group that defends Muslim suicide bombers. Soros supported Muslim guerrillas in Kosovo during their war against Christian Serbs. OSI recently took sides in the illegal immigration issue, sprinkling around $50 million to pro-amnesty and open-border groups.
Kent’s research finds that although liberals incessantly extol a “separation of church and state,” major foundations have already infiltrated leading religious organizations.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), funded in part by the Hewlett Foundation, has 60 member denominations and represents millions of congregants. Yet a key component of the NAE’s work is promotion of the leftist global warming agenda, a ministry it dubs “creation care.”
On April 22, 2007, NAE Vice President Rev. Richard Cizik joined Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean of the Washington National Cathedral, for the Cathedral’s Earth Day service. Rev. Lloyd stated: “The Earth coming alive is really a miracle; but today we have to face the fact that (the) miracle is terrifyingly fragile.” O ye of little faith.
Though the hundreds of wealthy liberal foundations enjoy tax-exempt status, their activities are clearly geared toward promotion of specific policy outcomes. The tax-exempt organizations that rely on foundation funds are similarly motivated by their policy agendas. The organizations’ policy agendas define their very existence. Kent advocates congressional foundation reform to end this transparent tax dodge.
Foundations of Betrayal carefully chronicles the largest foundations and the well-known organizations and causes that receive their funding. A subsequent book or companion website might delve deeper into the direct influence of liberal foundations on mainstream media outlets, policymakers and policy outcomes. To what extent is George Soros writing talking points for Katie Couric, Thomas Friedman and Harry Reid?
Phil Kent decisively proves in Foundations of Betrayal that capitalists are not the pigs their critics claim. Capitalists merely fill the trough.
© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
Tragedy and Hope by Carrol Quigley... ever read it?
Once any foundation, corporation, or influential organization is formed, the big government lovers work hard to get their controlled people in charge of it.
It has been thus for generations now on a global basis.
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