by John Dalmas
He stood quiet for several seconds; the chamber was utterly still.
"Because the biggest trouble with the one we have is that we allowed it to be corrupted, partly by 'gimmeism,' which I've talked about before, partly by a legal system that put too much power in the hands of a legally knowledgeable elite, and partly by"—
Once more he paused. "I hate to say it, but partly by conspiracy. Last winter we uncovered a long-standing, deliberate conspiracy that we kept quiet about until the investigation could be completed."
Haugen stopped there and looked his audience over carefully. "Conspiracy. A loaded word. Let's unload it before I give the particulars. Usually conspiracy implies illegal acts, criminal acts. But drawing up the Declaration of Independence was a criminal act within the British Empire, and Paul Revere was a conspirator when he rode to warn the minutemen. So there are conspiracies we've admired.
"The conspiracy I refer to here, however, the conspiracy that helped corrupt our democracy, was not illegal. The men who conspired acted within their rights, though against ours. They called themselves the Archons. The term Archons was originally applied to the ruling aristocrats in Athens before the Athenian democracy. Later, in the early Christian church, the term 'archons' was applied to a theoretical kind of spiritual beings who were higher than the angels.
"So we see how our American archons viewed themselves. Originally there were six of them, and their names were from the who's who in American finance in the late eighteen hundreds. Their heirs were with us till this year. I'd like to read to you what they were up to, in the words of their founder, the man they acknowledged as their leader."
Haugen held up a looseleaf folder. "The original to this photocopy has been sent to the National Museum," he said, then opening it, began to read aloud. "The title page reads, 'Opening Address to the 1928 Meeting of the Archon Fellowship,' and it is signed John Simmons Massey.' " Haugen turned a page. "Copies will be available; I'll give you some excerpts. These are Massey's own words. They start out:
The recent book Holism and Evolution, by General Jan Christian Smuts of the South African Union, has given us perspective and a comprehensive framework for a refinement and reaffirmation of our initial Statement of Principles as written and agreed upon in 1880.
Haugen looked up. "Eighteen eighty. We're not dealing with something new here." He looked down at the booklet again. "Massey goes on to say:
Given that the Peoples of the World are, for better or for worse, its mutually dependent Co-Inhabitants; and that the average Citizen of whatever Nation is neither rational nor gifted with suitable Intelligence or Foresight; and that there are those of us who are so gifted, as witness our general Competencies and Successes and the breadth and boldness of our Reach, as reflected in our accrual of Wealth, Power and Honours; it therefore behooves us to assume the Helm and steer the Species of Man toward a new and higher Condition and Polity and then to rule it. It is our Destiny and the Destiny of our Species that we do this. And it is Time.
Again Haugen looked up. "It is desirable and usual that men of competence, able men, dominate government. The more competent, the better. The question is, how much power should they have? And subject to what popular control? I'll look at that with you shortly, but just now I want to get back to the words of John Simmons Massey."
He picked up the binder again.
Since we agreed upon that wording, 48 years ago in April of 1880, many things have changed, including in large part our membership, but the truth of those words is more evident than ever.
And during the nearly five decades since that concordat was signed, we have made much progress. Indeed we have created, or seen to the creation of, a broadly functioning foundation for the attainment of our goal. Furthermore, within a decade we can expect to see very major progress following the unprecedented economic depression that will soon strike this nation.
It has been a matter of establishing, or of directly or indirectly gaining control of, appropriate institutions; of selecting, encouraging, and supporting the right people; and of course of indoctrinating with our principles more and more people who are or will be executives, professionals, or otherwise influential and powerful people.
And as far as possible getting others to do our work for us. Of letting those people, those offices, those institutions, forward our programs on their own.
And most particularly, appointing the right people to key chairmanships in prestigious universities. For it is from those universities that our most influential leaders will come. And not only do those chairmen influence bright young minds from their lecterns. They hold the keys to appointments! And advancement! And curricula! And to who sits on what committees!
To be sure, this manner of operation has meant that our control has been extremely loose, and efficiency undeniably low. But close control has not been available to us. And efficiency has been low only in a narrow sense, for our progress has been steady, while our investments of time and money have not been extreme, and have often been profitable even in the short run.
Our victories have not been cheered, of course, or even noticed, but it is necessary that we be surreptitious. We cannot afford that our goals be known.
And in time—in good time—we will take our rightful seats as government, perhaps not in our present lifetime, surely not in mine, but in a later one unquestionably. Meanwhile, for years yet to come, those whose actions we depend on must operate on their own determination, with their own energy and whatever wisdom they have, stumbling and sometimes turning aside, with mostly loose and often indirect guidance from ourselves.
Haugen stopped to sip water, then looked up. "I'm going to skip ahead now. Massey went on to say:
I mentioned General Smuts, whom I had the pleasure of meeting during his recent tenure as Prime Minister. Like some others, Smuts, with his doctrine of Holism, advanced our work without even knowing of it. For those of you not familiar with it, it takes the position that the universe itself is a vast developing organism moving step by step through a sequence of increasing integration.
Unfortunately Herr Smuts did not discuss the human fraction of that organism beyond the individual human being. But the kernel is there in his work. We may regard the entire human species as a sort of poorly developed, scarcely integrated organism with individual human beings as its cells. The roles of tissues then are filled by the trades and professions. And the destiny of man is to be an advanced organism, finely coordinated, ruled by a "brain" in the form of rational and absolute government.
Ex-president Arne Haugen looked up from the binder. "So there you have it—the philosophy of the Archons as expressed by their founder, John Simmons Massey. And it is also the philosophy behind the Holist Council. Because the Archon Fellowship is, or until recently was, the ruling body, the executive board, of the Holist Council. Now let me read to you what Massey had to say about the operating principles of the Archons:
It is obvious that when government is ours, we will need to be heavy-handed at times, particularly in the early years. But a man coerced, threatened, forced to do the right thing beneath the whip or at gunpoint, will seldom perform as well as the willing worker doing his duties because he believes in them.
On the other hand, a man who does his duties neither believing nor disbelieving, but simply because they are his duties, is even more to be desired. Because he does not question or decide, but simply obeys. So we must continue to entice, to nudge, to tempt the professions of psychology and psychiatry and pharmacology, and indeed science as a whole, to develop the roots of knowledge which can produce that kind of unquestioning human cell.
Not that we want such citizens yet, of course. We do not want an obedient public until we are the government. But it is appropriate to develop and test the theories and techniques...
Haugen stopped reading, stood unmoving for a moment, then closed the notebook and looked up. "Those are the words of John Simmons Massey, then the world's richest and most influential man, spoken and written
down on Anhinga Island, Georgia, April 19, 1928. He died three years later, to be succeeded by his grandson Charles and later by his great-grandson, the late Paul Willard Randolph Massey.
"As for the actions of the Archons—before the turn of the century, that small group of extremely rich men began to establish chairs of philosophy and medicine, of pharmacology and psychology, of journalism and economics and law, in a number of our universities. And of course, their financial power allowed the Archons to dictate who should hold those chairs—who the chairmen should be that developed and controlled curricula, appointed professors, granted awards, influenced who got advanced degrees and honors, and so forth.
"And they filled many of those positions with men of good will and good intelligence, but who held certain viewpoints and could be influenced. They depended heavily on people of good will, people well known for their good will, though they preferred men of ill will in certain positions of power.
"In time they would expand by forming what came to be called the Holist Council, made up of scores of able and often prominent men. And very few of those men knew there was such a thing as the Archon Fellowship, or what kind of overall program their projects were the pieces of.
"And out of all this grew important aspects of our society, our government, our law."
Haugen leaned his forearms on the lectern, looking not at all like an Old Testament prophet; looking instead, just now, both intimate and mild. "I'll admit this has sounded more like a prosecutor's oration than a keynote address, but let me take it a little further and tell you what the Archons have been up to recently.
"Up till now I've stressed those Archon activities that were legal. But not all of them were. Not many months ago we had a psychotic, Dr. Carlton Blackburn, as head of the CIA. Having worked his way there through Covert Operations. Investigation found him guilty of a gruesome pattern of sadism and murders, and he suicided rather than face trial. Under the pseudonym Dr. William Merriman, Blackburn had secretly set up a private weekend psychiatric practice in Connecticut, where he did pain-drug-hypnosis conditioning for the victims of his private clients. He was also the brain behind several murders disguised as natural deaths. Notably for the late Paul Willard Massey, who until last winter was the head of the Archons and the chairman of the Holist Council. Massey, as you recall from the news coverage, committed suicide last January after murdering his long-time executive secretary for Holist affairs.
"Four others of the Archons were arrested for insider trading and other financial crimes. One suicided before he could be tried. Three are in prison. Two have talked freely to the FBI, filling holes in our evidence.
"And now we come to terrorist violence. The kingpin in the terrorist group that nuked the Calvert Cliffs power plant was arrested by the FBI last January and told us who he got the bomb from. We kept this confidential, to give the FBI an opportunity to follow the track of the bomb, which in fact was a 203 mm artillery shell stolen from a French army ordnance bunker. The shell was then put on the market, and the successful bid was from—" He looked around. "Paul Willard Massey's executive secretary through a short series of vias that were not hard to verify, once we'd questioned Massey's confederates.
"Well. Enough of that. You now have some insights into the people and the intentions behind the Holist constitution.
"I want to point out to you that there will always be people with what we may call the Archon attitude; persons who consider it only proper to enslave their fellow man. And—people have a right to think like that. And they have a right to meet, and to plan, and to carry out the kind of legal acts that the Archons carried out! If they don't have those rights, then liberty is dead in America.
"Most of what they did was to nurture and spread and channel traits and weaknesses already present and operating in human beings. Including greed and arrogance and fear and irresponsibility. But also their opposites—decency, the desire to help, willingness to do things for others. They made use of all of these, bad and good, bending them to their purposes. And we cannot legislate against having a philosophical and political program that operates within reasonable laws; not and retain any meaningful human liberties. We cannot outlaw people like the Archons, we can only beware of them.
"The Archons, in failing, have reminded and warned us of what we can expect and what we need to watch for. And the best protection against people like them is a strong public respect for freedom, opportunity, and justice, and a rejection of 'gimme,' and 'it's all your fault,' or 'it's all their fault.' You and I are as responsible for what happened as they were.
"In this universe, freedom cannot be separated from responsibility. To try to have it otherwise is ultimately to fail. And that includes not only freedom without responsibility. It also includes demanding responsibility without granting the freedom to carry it out.
"I hope very much that the joint constitution committee, and the congressional deliberations that will follow it, will keep that in mind.
"Because the people, to carry out their responsibilities, must have the freedom to carry them out. Thus I urge that this committee and this Congress will establish a clause or constitutional amendment providing for national referenda in which the citizens of these United States can express their will directly into law.
"I hope this committee and this Congress will reject elitism, even benevolent elitism, and see to it that opportunity and accountability are assured to all the people.
"Incidentally, the basic definition of elite is 'those who are the most skilled. The best.' Elite is a great thing to be. The baseball elite plays in the All Star game; the elite of that elite will be voted into the Hall of Fame.
"Elitists, on the other hand, are those who believe in elitism. And elitism is rule or domination by an elite group, or a supposedly elite group, or the belief that such a group has the right to rule. And elitism is a dangerous road for at least two reasons: Elitists, even if they are truly elite, overrate themselves. They consider their own opinions to be correct and that others should abide by them. There will then become standard ways to think and act, and the nation will stultify, decay, and come apart.
"The key to a successful future for mankind, I'm convinced, is a pluralistic society, a nation that allows as many ways of doing things as feasible, within the limits necessary to keep people from trampling each other's rights. A multiform society that is tolerant of differences, protective of differences, that even encourages differences. And a creative society, one that encourages new developments, in science, in art, in technology. A society that encourages man to explore outward into the galaxy, and inward into whatever we might find there.
"As your president, I tried to start things in that direction. But now it is up to you the Congress and you the People to either carry it through or reject it."
Arne Haugen paused and looked thoughtfully into the cameras in front of him. "And that, my fellow human beings, my fellow Americans, is all I have to say today, except to wish you all well. And to make it clear now, in case it hasn't been apparent, that it was an incredible adventure to serve as your president. I loved it; I ate it up; and I wish for each of you something that will mean as much to you as being your president meant to me."
***
Afterward there was a reception, and to the anxiety of their Secret Service detail, the ex-president and first lady mingled with the crowd for nearly an hour before leaving.
Again the executive jet flew them, and their bodyguards, to Duluth. It was home, and summer had come there. They would rest a few days, two or three, because their health was slipping, then polish up the Haugen presidential memoirs—it was not a large book—and turn them back to the editors.
Arne had already assigned authority to his attorney and to Ed Ruud to handle any problems in publication if he wasn't able to himself.
FIFTY-SIX
It was 0950 on a sunny, late September morning. At the sound of the door chimes, agent Frank Shapiro put down his magazine and stood up, not to answer, but be ready.
A minute later, John Zale came into the room from an inner hall, carrying a package. "The galley proofs for the chief's book," he said, holding it up. "The courier's here to get them."
Shapiro nodded, but he stayed on his feet, going to a window from which he could see the courier's parked car. The Haugens had been staying pretty much secluded. When they'd first arrived back in Duluth, the ex-president had granted an interview to a local TV station, and another to the newspaper, but since then, nothing.
Shapiro had been aware that something was wrong with Haugen's health, but he hadn't known what until he'd overheard Haugen's daughter talking with her daughter. Lou Gehrig's disease. He'd looked it up then. Arne was going to get weaker and weaker, bit by bit losing control of his body, dying slowly. Shapiro wasn't looking forward to the next couple of years, especially the last one.
Although Arne still looked pretty good. He'd shrunk a bit, as if he'd been cutting down on the calories, but he no longer swam, or worked out at all as far as Shapiro knew. And he'd lost his old vigor, and that hard, strong look the White House detail had commented on to each other when he'd first come to Washington.
It was Lois who'd lost ground conspicuously. The world knew of her cancer now, had known since they'd gone to Maui. She'd been in the hospital again, two weeks earlier, for another brief round of therapy. Just before that, she'd sent off her own manuscript—the story of the White House domestic staffs, she'd told him, dating back to Jefferson.