In a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, Lord Acton wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." We typically think of kings and military dictators when reading these words. But legislative assemblies are also centers of power, and hubs of corruption. Infused with a special arrogance all their own, legislators see themselves as representatives of the people. Never mind that "the people" are a nullity; people power is "absolute" under democracy, and therefore "people power" necessarily tends to corruption.
The corruptible character of today's legislator is amplified by a plebian pose, a calculated distance from nobility, a diminished sense of honor, and a readiness to appeal to the lowest common denominator. (e.g., "Vote for me and you'll get jobs or other goodies.") We may properly characterize parliamentary corruption by quoting Oliver Cromwell's speech at the dissolution of the Long Parliament in 1653: "It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice." According to Cromwell, the Long Parliament was "a factious crew, and enemies to all good government." He called them "a pack of mercenary wretches...." Then he asked, "Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?" Answering the question himself, he roared, "Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?"
Those who win election to office, be they legislators or presidents, more often than not follow the celebrated "Taoist" model of leadership, by finding the parade and getting in front of it. To say this is leadership is to utter an absurdity. Those who are the "first to follow" are not leaders. They are puppets who bounce up and down the political stage on somebody else's string. Mark Twain once wrote that fleas could be taught "nearly anything that a Congressman can." In one letter he described legislators as "the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes." Such minds, souls, and hearts are easily overcome and subjected because smallness and selfishness and cowardice are traits coincident with subservience. What is absurd, and often missed, is the fact that many legislatures throughout the world are subservient to what is low; more in sympathy with the criminal than the victim; ready to reward the malingerer and slacker at the expense of the dutiful and diligent; ready to appease enemies and abandon allies; militantly wasteful of taxpayer monies; confusing righteousness with perverse notions of universal equality.
Nobody as yet dares to tell the whole truth about the United States Congress, which presently dismantles the Republic. And though I exaggerate in this column for effect, what follows is hardly an exaggeration; for what description better serves when the currency is debased, industries driven overseas, indolence fostered, national defense sabotaged, the banks corrupted and finance irrationalized? There is more, and worse to come. To understand the dangerous implications of today's legislative corruption, the reader must consider what has happened in Eastern Europe.
An important analysis of the top political personalities in Ukrainian politics was recently published on the Internet by Boris Chykulay, a former Radio Liberty employee and political activist. Chykulay examined the biographies of 909 people from the presidential administration to the prime minister and cabinet ministers and their deputies, as well as members of parliament, the directors of the National Bank of Ukraine, and members of the Central Electoral Commission. According to Chykulay, four percent of these people openly state in their biographies that they worked for the KGB in the past. About 27 percent are "highly likely" KGB agents, based on their affiliation with KGB-run institutes, or KGB sub-organizations which they were members of, or failed attempts to hide past KGB involvement. There is, in addition, another 20 percent who are "likely" KGB operatives, based on membership in the Communist Party elite, close family members in the Communist elite, or within the Communist Youth organization (Comsomol), or who are currently members of the Communist Party of Ukraine, or Socialist Party of Ukraine (which currently cooperate with the Russian special services).
This means that only 49 percent of Ukraine's top politicians have no known KGB or Communist Party affiliation. It is not that they are clean. It merely means that the public record does not reflect past or ongoing collaboration with Communist structures.
The result of Chykulay's research may be compared to the findings of Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who made a similar study of the top political personalities in Russia (see An Anatomy of Russian Elite). According to Kryshtanovskaya, who looked at 1,016 leading political figures in Russia, an astounding 78 percent had links to KGB/FSB (secret police). She wrote: "If in the Soviet period and the first post-Soviet period, the KGB and FSB people were mainly involved in security issues, now half are still involved in security but the other half are involved in business, political parties, NGOs, regional governments, even culture.... They started to use all political institutions."
It is only natural that an international organization, originating in Russia and dominating Eastern Europe through secret KGB and party structures, should have infiltrated parliaments and governments throughout the entire world. That rare combination of "friendly" persuasion, extortion, blackmail and murder always worked for the KGB at home. Why would we expect it to fail abroad? As Al Capone famously said, "You can get much farther with a smile, a kind word and a gun than you can with a smile and a kind word." So the legislative reality, under the corrupt pedestrian surface, is something most people haven't fully grasped. It is not only the legislatures of the former Warsaw Pact countries that face hidden Soviet-era structures, amplified by the usual tendencies to corruption. The United States Congress was targeted by Russia a long time ago, and the level of KGB success may be measured by the total and absolute failure to detect activity that could not have failed to take place.
The KGB presently dominates Russia and Eastern Europe by exploiting corruption in business and politics. Here is a den of iniquity, and a breeding ground for mischief. In all of this, Moscow need not rely on the good will of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and its "strong, progressive agenda." It is more useful to recognize that here, as in 1653, a horse has more religion than a legislative body. The KGB has long possessed the wherewithal to penetrate such a body, corrupt its members, and divert its course. Operations of this kind, to be sure, are always false flag operations. A KGB agent catches a Congressman in a honey trap. The blackmail, however, is not overtly done on behalf of Moscow. The KGB tells its victim that he is being blackmailed by agents of the Mossad -- or some other friendly power. If you think this hasn't happened, then you haven't been paying attention.
The current leveling program of the United States Congress isn't going to pull the country out of the economic mire. Instead, the United States Congress promises to sink the economy and thereby damn itself. I will finish this column by quoting Dr. Adrian Rogers on the manner in which legislatures may pass their corruption onto the people at large. In a 1996 book titled Ten Secrets for a Successful Family he wrote: "You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else."
