Origin of the Project for a New American Century:

1932

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Fri Sep-09-05 12:01 AM
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Origin of the Project for a New American Century:

I'm reading Richard Parker's biography of John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith left the government to work for Henry Luce's Fortune Magazine in 1943. Luce was extremely conservative and hated Roosevelt until WW2 started, and then he loved Roosevelt, but only briefly. He published three magazines: Time, Life and Fortune.

Luce was a Skull & Bones Yale graduate who grew up in China where his father was a missionary.

Roosevelt hated Time Magaizine and Time hated Roosevelt in 1940. Luce invented Wendel Wilkie to run against Roosevelt. In fact, Wilkie was such a creation of the media that one of Luce's editors was the manager of Wilkie's campaign.

Roosevelt returned the favor by publicly accusing Luce of making a "notable contribution to Nazi propaganda." But after December 7, 1941, Luce told Roosevelt that "the waters of Pearl Harbor have closed over" their differences. They fought over threatened censorship during the war, but Luce soon began to focus on the post-war world.

In early 1941, Life published an article titled "The American Century." In it, Luce set forth his vision: the US would dominate the postwar world, leading others toward a better age of freedom, justice and prosperity. A year later he published an article titled "America's War and America's Peace" in which he declared, "Because America alone among nations of the earth was founded on ideas and ideals which transcend class and caste and racial and occupational diffrences, America alone can provide the pattern for the future."

People believed Luce was sincere. Rather than a power-hungry press magnate, he was seen as a devout missionary's son whose views were influneced by watching the decay of the Chinese empire. However, Democrats at the time criticized this vision as Kiplingesque imperialism. VP Henry Wallace was so rankled by Luce's vision he said to a cheering crowd, "Some have spoken of the American Century. I say the century into which we are entering -- the century that will come out of this war -- can and must be the century of the common man" (which Luce's wife called "globaloney" and the Naitonal Association of Manufacturers (the organization which told John Kerry not to put John Edwards on the ticket in 2004) said we're not fighting for "a quart of milk every day for every Hottentot, nor a TVA on the danube" -- they were fighting for their own personal wealth and greed and didn't care if impoverished people).

Ronald Niehbuhr, a theologian Luce respected greatly, was one of many public intellecutals who were very critical of the American Century. Luce said that Niehbuhr helped him see "the pitfalls and heresies" of his vision (although he never publicly recanted them).

So that's the origin of PNAC -- iit's a direct reference to the imperialist sentiments of wealthy republicans after WW2.

The rest of the Luce story is fascinating, and it's worth reading the book for it. Luce became a Keynsian because Keynes was half-way between laissez-faire capitalism (which any businessman with sense realized wasn't working) and socialist centralized control (which they feered). Luce hired a lot of liberals like Galbraith to sell Keynes to the public, and it worked. Although Luce's media empire wasn't the only place pumping Keynes in the mid-40s, there were still powerful voices against it (like the Wall St Journal). As a consequence of Luce's efforts in something like 3 years, business leaders flipped on their support for Keynes and rejection of laissez-faire capitalism from 3 to 1 against to 3 to 1 for Keynes.

Luce had a secret group of people within his organization called Q group and their job was to produce research, discuss ideas, and work towards a goal of using their media empire to convince Americans to pursue policies that matched their economic goals. Those goals? A United States of Europe, sponsored by Britiain, the US and Russia; a healthy prosperous Russia; China with US aid would experience a renaissance, with Mao quelled; a free United States of India, with British domination ended; and a Britain no longer burdened with colonies would become America's partner in creating a capatilist orderly trading system for the world.

Interesting, huh? Interesting that a powerful media organization (now, AOLTimeWarner) would use its influence to get America to embrace all those things, and that's pretty much what has almost happened.

Hey, and how about Wallace? Isn't it amazing that the Democratic party once criticized empire to cheering audiences?

And you know what happened to Wilkes? Discusted by Southern Democrats siding with Republicans (and forcing Wallace, a very liberal politicians off the ticket), FDR approached him about founding a new truly progressive party that would pursue progressive, non-racist, pro-worker, anti-concentrated wealth policies. Wilkes said he was interested, but died within a month and FDR was dead within four months and that was the end of that.