The Great Turning

by David C Korten

  19. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 150.

  20. Ralph et al., Western Civilizations, 711–14.

  Chapter 7: Modern Empire

  1. William Greider, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 35.

  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, deluxe ed. CD, s.v. “Colonialism.” This includes the territories in the Americas that by 1878 had won their independence from England, Spain, and Portugal.

  3. Ibid., s.v. “Hernando de Soto.”

  4. The Reader’s Companion to American History, s.v. “America in the British Empire” (by Richard S. Dunn), Houghton Mifflin College Division, online edition, http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_003000_americainthe.htm(accessed October 22, 2005).

  5. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, deluxe ed. CD, s.v. “Privateer.”

  6. Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 11, 14.

  7. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, deluxe ed. CD, s.v. “Morgan, Sir Henry.”

  8. Ibid., s.v. “Privateer.”

  9. Ron Harris, Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 41–42, 46–47.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Burns, Western Civilizations, 467; and Encyclopaedia Britannica 1998, CD, s.v. “British East India Company.”

  12. Encyclopaedia Britannica 1998, CD, s.v. “Opium Wars.”

  13. Mark Curtis, “The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945,” The Ecologist 26, no. 1 (January/February 1996): 5–12.

  14. Marjorie Kelly, The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001).

  15. Frances Moore Lappé, Democracy’s Edge (Jossey-Bass, 2005), 109–11.

  16. Curtis, “Ambiguities of Power.”

  17. See John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004), for an insider account of exactly how it worked.

  18. For detailed documentation on the real purpose and consequence of contemporary trade agreements, see Korten, When Corporations Rule the World; International Forum on Globalization, ed. John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander, Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2002); Lori Wallach and Patrick Woodall, Whose Trade Organization? Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (New York: New Press, 2003); and Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith eds., The Case against the Global Economy and for a Turn to the Local (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996).

  19. See Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 181–85, for further discussion of how money is created and manipulated.

  20. “Creative Finance,” Forbes, May 9, 2005, 46.

  Chapter 8: Athenian Experiment

  1. Lappé, Democracy’s Edge.

  2. Durant, Heroes of History, 80; and Ralph et al., Western Civilizations, 164.

  3. Durant, Heroes of History, 76.

  4. Burns, Western Civilizations, 152.

  5. Those persons of foreign birth who were granted citizenship under the administration of Cleisthenes were an exception. Aristotle, arguably the greatest of all the Greek philosophers, was ineligible to become a citizen of Athens and was for this reason denied appointment as the head of the Academy of Plato in Athens following Plato’s death.

  6. Eva Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). See also Riane Eisler, Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 104–7.

  7. Durant, Heroes of History, 80.

  8. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 85.

  9. Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 16–17.

  10. Cohen and Arato, Civil Society, 7.

  11. Burns, Western Civilizations, 569.

  PART III: America, the Unfinished Project

  Chapter 9: Inauspicious Beginning

  1. The Reader’s Companion to American History, s.v. “Southern Colonies” (by Peter H. Wood), Houghton Mifflin College Division, online edition, http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_080500_southerncolo.htm (accessed October 22, 2005).

  2. Donald S. Lutz, ed., Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), includes copies of the official documents spelling out the punishments designated for these and other crimes.

  3. Harvey Wasserman, America Born and Reborn (New York: Collier Books, 1983), 19.

  4. The Reader’s Companion to American History, s.v, “America in the British Empire” (see chap. 7, n. 4); and Paul Boyer, “Apocalypticism Explained: The Puritans,” Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/explanation/puritans.html.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), presents a detailed study of these early dynamics.

  7. John Cotton in “Letter to Lord Say and Sele,” 1636, http://www.skidmore.edu/~tkuroda/hi321/LordSay&Sele.htm.

  8. Lambert, Founding Fathers and Religion, 92.

  9. As quoted by Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States 1492–Present (New York: Harper-Perennial, 1995), 1, 3.

  10. Numerous such accounts are cited by Zinn, People’s History; Thom Hartmann, What Would Jefferson Do? A Return to Democracy (New York: Harmony Books, 2004); and Wasserman, America Born and Reborn.

  11. Zinn, People’s History, 21.

  12. Jack Weatherford, “The Untold Story of America’s Democracy,” YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring 2002, 14–17; and Hartmann, What Would Jefferson Do?

  13. Zinn, People’s History, 11.

  14. Ralph et al., Western Civilizations, 676–77.

  15. Zinn, People’s History, 13–16.

  16. Priscilla Murolo and A.G. Chitty, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend (New York: New Press, 2001), 6.

  17. Peter Kellman, “The Working Class History Test,” in Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy: A Book of History and Strategies, ed. Dean Ritz (New York: Apex, 2001), 46–48.

  18. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 21.

  19. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 19; Roger Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism (Boston: Beacon, 2001), 18–19; Zinn, People’s History, 39–42.

  20. Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow, 19–20.

  21. Wasserman, America Born and Reborn, 76.

  Chapter 10: People Power Rebellion

  1. In a letter to his friend Richard Rush, as quoted in Schell, Unconquerable World, 163 (see chap. 1, n. 8).

  2. Leo Huberman, We, the People: The Drama of America, rev. ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1947; Modern Reader, 1970), 43–44. Citations are to the Modern Reader edition.

  3. Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2002), 52–63; and Ted Nace, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), 41–45; Huberman, We, the People, 70.

  4. Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, deluxe ed. CD, s.v. “Continental Congress.” For a copy of the declaration see http://www.constitution.org/bcp/colright.htm.

  5. Schell, Unconquerable World, 160–63.

  6. Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow, 35–36.

  Chapter 11: Empire’s Victory

  1. As reported by CBS News, “Bush and Gore Do New York,” October 20, 2000, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/10/18/politics/main242210.shtml. President Bush was speaking at the Al Smith fund-raising dinner in New York City during the presidential campaign.

&n
bsp; 2. Wolff, Top Heavy, 3, 8 (see chap. 3, n. 35).

  3. Thomas R. Dye, Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NY: Prentice Hall, 2002), 204.

  4. Huberman, We, the People, 75–78.

  5. Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. A.A. Lip-scomb and Albert E. Bergh, 20 vols. (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association: Washington, DC, 1903-04), 15:39, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0600.htm.

  6. As quoted in Zinn, People’s History, 95.

  7. Zinn, People’s History, 95.

  8. Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow.

  9. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 42.

  10. Wasserman, America Born and Reborn, 53.

  11. Wilkins, Jefferson’s Pillow.

  12. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 43.

  13. Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 16–17 (see chap. 7, n. 6).

  14. John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), 73.

  15. Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 17; and William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (New York: Touchstone, 1989), 255.

  16. See Greider, Secrets of the Temple, for a detailed authoritative account of the Federal Reserve.

  17. Wasserman, America Born and Reborn, 56.

  18. Ibid., 57.

  19. Hartmann, What Would Jefferson Do?

  20. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 44–45.

  21. Ibid., 43.

  22. I am indebted to Professor Holly Youngbear-Tibbetts of the College of the Menomonee Nation for this characterization.

  23. Zinn, People’s History, 125–26.

  24. Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 116–20; Zinn, People’s History, 147–66; and Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003, deluxe ed. CD, s.v. “Alamo” and “History of Mexico.”

  25. See Nace, Gangs of America; and Hartmann, Unequal Protection.

  26. Zinn, People’s History, 290–91.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, a young scholar and lawyer later elected senator from Indiana, quoted in Stanley Karnow, In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), 109.

  29. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned, 150–52.

  30. Michael Parenti, Against Empire (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995), 38–39.

  31. Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, “Shaping a New World Order: The Council on Foreign Relations’ Blueprint for World Hegemony,” in Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, ed. Holly Sklar (Boston: South End, 1980), 140–49.

  32. As quoted in Noam Chomsky, What Uncle Sam Really Wants (Tucson, AZ: Odonian, 1992), 9–10.

  33. Shoup and Minter, “Shaping a New World Order,” 140–49.

  34. As compiled by Parenti, Against Empire, 37–38.

  35. Ibid.

  36. “A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions from Vietnam to the Balkans,” Frontline, PBS Online and WGBH/Frontline, 1999, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/etc/cron.html.

  37. Perkins, Economic Hit Man (see chap. 7, n. 17).

  Chapter 12: Struggle for Justice

  1. From the “I Had a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.

  2. See Zinn, People’s History, 167–205, for extended documentation of black resistance.

  3. Wasserman, America Born and Reborn, 78–80.

  4. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 94–95.

  5. Ibid., 247–49.

  6. Ibid., 250–52.

  7. Wasserman, America Born and Reborn, 74.

  8. Ibid., 75.

  9. Sheila Tobias, Faces of Feminism: An Activist’s Reflections on the Women’s Movement (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997), 22–25.

  10. Figures based on information in The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1997 (New York: St. Martin’s); and Geoffrey Barraclough, “The Making of the United States: Westward Expansion 1783 to 1890,” in The Times Atlas of World History, ed. Geoffrey Barraclough (London: Times Books, 1978), 220–21, http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/history/1979/79westwardexp.htm.

  11. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 256.

  12. Houghton Mifflin Encyclopedia of North American Indians, s.v. “Religious Rights” (by Irene S. Vernon) online edition, http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_032700_religiousrig.htm (accessed November 17, 2005).

  13. The rise and fall of the populist movement is documented in detail by Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  14. Zinn, People’s History, 279–89; and Goodwyn, Populist Moment.

  15. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 59–60.

  16. Ibid., 61–62.

  17. Ibid., 61–63.

  18. Ibid., 64–66.

  19. Huberman, We, the People, 207.

  20. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 104–8. A gallery of photos of damage to rail facilities in Pittsburgh from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 is maintained by the University of Pittsburgh at http://www.library.pitt.edu/labor_legacy/rrstrike1877.html.

  21. Ibid., 110–12.

  22. Huberman, We, the People, 235.

  23. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 111–12.

  24. Ibid., 110–12.

  25. Huberman, We, the People, 228.

  26. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 121–27.

  27. Huberman, We, the People, 231–32.

  28. Ibid., 233.

  29. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 150–51.

  30. Zinn, People’s History, 375–76; and Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 177–78.

  31. Murolo and Chitty, Folks Who Brought the Weekend, 181–84.

  32. Ibid., 186–93.

  33. Ibid., 216.

  34. The World Almanac 1997, 175.

  35. Wolff, Top Heavy, 8–16.

  Chapter 13: Wake-Up Call

  1. Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right: The “New Right” and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 4–5.

  2. As quoted in Francisco Goldman, “‘The Evil Was Very Grave…’ José Martí’s Description of Our 1884 Election Sounds Eerily Contemporary,” The American Prospect, August 2004, 18.

  3. Robert D. Putnam, “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Affairs,” The American Prospect, Spring 1993, 2; and Robert D. Putnam et al., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

  4. For an authoritative guide to the institutions of elite consensus building and collective lobbying, see George Draffan, The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution (New York: Apex, 2003).

  5. As quoted in Justice for Sale: Shortchanging the Public Interest for Private Gain (Washington, DC: Alliance for Justice, 1993), 10–11.

  6. Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 47.

  7. Frederick Clarkson “Takin’ It to the States: The Rise of Conservative State-Level Think Thanks,” The Public Eye 13, no. 2/3 (Summer/Fall 1999), http://www.publiceye.org/.

  8. Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment, 17; and Chip Berlet and Jean Hardisty, An Overview of the U.S. Political Right: Drifting Right and Going Wrong, on the Web site of Political Research Associates, http://www.publiceye.org/frontpage/overview.html.

  9. Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment, 47.

  10. Ibid., 48.

  11. Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle between Theocracy and Democracy (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1997), 20–22.

  12. As quoted in Joe Conason, “Taking On the Untouchables,”Salon, February 29, 2000, http://archive.salon.com/news/col/cona/2000/
02/29/right/index1.html.

  13. Clarkson, “Takin’ It to States.”

  14. Clarkson, Eternal Hostility, 77. This assertion regarding the deeper intent of the Christian Right is echoed as well by Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment.

  15. The early history of what was self-described as the New Right is documented in detail by Crawford (Thunder on the Right), a participant who became alarmed by what he considered to be its anticonserva-tive agenda.

  16. Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment, 32.

  17. Ibid., 39.

  18. Ibid., 19, 42.

  19. Ibid., 42.

  20. This is eloquently documented by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Susan Faludi in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

  21. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 305 (see chap. 4, n. 10).

  22. Michael Moore, Stupid White Men (New York: Regan Books, 2001), 209–11.

  23. Tom Curry, “Nixon: 30 Years,” MSNBC Interactive, August 9, 2004, available at http://www.other-net.info/index.php?p=250#more-250.

  24. Ian Christopher McCaleb and Matt Smith, “Bush, in First Address as President, Urges Citizenship over Spectatorship,” CNN.com, January 20, 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/20/bush.speech/.

  25. George W. Bush, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/inaugural-address.html.

  26. Richard W. Stevenson, “The Inauguration: The Agenda,” New York Times, January 21, 2001.

  27. David E. Sanger, “The New Administration: The Plan,” New York Times, January 24, 2001.

  28. Douglas Jehl with Andrew C. Revkin, “Bush, in Reversal, Won’t Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, “New York Times, March 14, 2001.

  29. The reality is spelled out by former Republican political strategist Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (New York: Viking, 2004).

  30. Roger Cohen, “Europe and Bush: Early Storm Clouds to Watch,” New York Times, March 26, 2001.

  31. The report Rebuilding America’s Defenses is publicly available on the PNAC Web site, http://www.newamericancentury.org/defensenationalsecurity.htm. The call for a Pax Americana is spelled out on page iv.