Miguel Bruno Duarte: Reviewing the Rhodes Legacy

Written by William F. Jasper

«Rules of the Game

The Rhodes scholarships, which provide at least two years of study at England's Oxford University in any field of the scholar's choice, are, arguably, the most prestigious and coveted prizes in all of academe. Established at the turn of the century in the last three of the fabulously wealthy Cecil Rhodes' seven wills, the scholarships were to be given without regard to race or creed. But they were limited to men - until, that is, the British Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 caused the Rhodes Scholarship Trust to change the will. Admission of "the fairer sex" as Rhodes scholars began in 1976. In 1992, women accounted for half of the 32 scholarships allotted annually to the United States.

The scholarships are given to students of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan. The United States and Germany are also included. Candidates from the U.S. must be American citizens 18 to 24 years of age, single, with at least junior standing in college. Scholastic achievement, character, leadership qualities, and physical vigor, usually exemplified by accomplishment in sports, are the winning attributes most often cited of the recipients. Cecil Rhodes' biographer Sarah G. Millin, cited other traits. Referring to the characteristics most desirable in Rhodes Scholars, Millin wrote that Rhodes "defines them with that defensive cynicism of the romantic, as: smugness, brutality, unctuous rectitude, and tact."

Frank Aydelotte, American secretary to the Rhodes trustees, wrote in American Rhodes Scholarships of the Americans selected for the great honor: "If he has the capacity for assimilation, if he can become a part of what he meets, he may return from Oxford to the United States a citizen of the world." But Aydelotte was writing to obfuscate and conceal, not to reveal. Rhodes was not interested in spending his fortune merely to promote slobbery sentimentalism about universal brotherhood. He had grander and more concrete aspirations. As biographer Millin put it: "The government of the world was Rhodes' simple desire."

Seeds of Socialism

That "simple desire" had been firmly implanted in Rhodes' bosom at Oxford by John Ruskin. Ensconced as the first Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford in 1870, Ruskin's influence reached to all corners of the earth and is still widely felt, though seldom recognized, today. "He hit Oxford like an earthquake," wrote historian Carroll Quigley, "not so much because he talked about fine arts, but because he talked also about the empire and England's downtrodden masses, and above all because he talked about all three of these things as moral issues." Tolstoy regarded him as one of the greatest minds of any time or nation. Gandhi carried his message to India. G.B. Shaw and his Fabian Socialist confreres popularized Ruskin's thought worldwide.

Wolfgang Kemp, in his acclaimed biography of Ruskin, The Desire of My Eyes, writes that "if we consider all the concrete reforms proposed by Ruskin which in fact were finally carried out, we may feel that he was one of the most successful social theorists of the nineteenth century. Government-run education, vocational training centers, fixed minimum wages, support and retraining for the unemployed, old-age pensions, government quality controls on goods, work-creation schemes...."

These statist fixtures — and more — are his legacy. He was indeed "successful" - in sowing the seeds of socialism with the help of some of the world's great fortunes.

Some of Ruskin's most revolutionary social and political writings are to be found in his self-published newsletter Fors Clavigera. In one issue he wrote: "For, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old school - reddest also of the red." Professor Wolfgang Kemp explains Ruskin's "old school communism" as "an agrarian communism of the kind advocated by Thomas More, from whose Utopia Ruskin liberally quotes - combined with authoritarian power structures."

Fors Clavigera, notes Kemp, "was also the circular letter of a utopian society, the Guild of St. George, which Ruskin had rounded to help him create this ideal system." Like the communes of Robert Owen and other utopians who had preceded him, Ruskin's "ideal" communes failed miserably. With an arrogance typical of his kind, however, he did not question the false dogmas and assumptions of his own faulty world view. Of course not; it was the world - society and civilization - that was all wrong. Ruskin's struggle in Fors Clavigera, says Kemp, "was the war of one against the world," the work of an author "who fought for a redistribution of society's wealth."

The Oxford seer's newsletter, says Kemp, "is also a chronicle of ongoing destruction. The skies are getting darker, the glaciers melting, and Scotland's rivers have so much oil in them that they can be set on fire." It seemed to Ruskin that everywhere he cast his eyes "the energies of mankind are devoted all around me to the pollution of skies and the desolation of fields."

Ruskin was one of the early ecological doomsdayers and technophobes who saw in the industrial revolution only evil. His pseudo-scientific meteorological study, The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century (1884), predicting cataclysmic environmental retribution for man's violation of Mother Nature, were appropriately dismissed by the press and the scientific world as the rantings of a bedlamite. They were, after all, written largely during the latter period of his life when he was lapsing in and out of bouts of insanity. Equally mad ravings today from Amory Lovins, Barry Commoner, Stephen Schneider, Al Gore, and a host of other Chicken Littles are met with hosannahs from a doting press.

In Ruskin we also see the forerunner of today's industry-bashing, pantheist, Gaia worshipping apocalyptics. "Fors [Clavigera] has been called Ruskin's Apocalypse," writes Kemp. "The form and content of Fors were dictated by the insight that hell is not the end but the perpetuation of the present - combined with the ancient belief that everything on earth is linked to everything else."

This profound insight Ruskin took not from an earlier incarnation of Shirley MacClaine, but from Rousseau, the great infidel philosopher of the French Revolution. "I know no one whom I more entirely resemble than Rousseau." Ruskin once said. A terrible admission intended, undoubtedly, as a self-serving compliment. But like Rousseau, who glorified "the noble savage," inveighed against property, civilization, Church and State, and urged a return to nature, Ruskin lived quite comfortably from the fruits of the system he condemned».

William F. Jasper («Bill Clinton: A "Rhodie" in the White House», in The New American, 25 January 1993).

Reviewing the Rhodes Legacy

The “idealism” typically held by Rhodes scholars will take America in the direction of total collectivism.

"In America, where idealism is the yardstick used to judge a generation's collective virtue, Rhodes scholars are its masters," says Rhodes scholar Peter Beinart. "They are chosen as much for their public-spiritedness as for their academic prowess. Not all want to run for elective office, but the bulk think their talents can be most fully realized through public service. Like Clinton, my peers believe earnestly in government. Above all, they believe in themselves in government."

Writing in the "My Turn" section of Newsweek's January 16th issue, Beinart, a 23-year-old student now in his second year at Oxford University, offers a perceptive critique of the "Rhodie" tendency to giddily embrace idealism as summum bonum. Beinart notes that "such idealism should be refreshing. Yet after a year at Oxford, it makes me uneasy. The commitment to government my colleagues express so passionately is rarely linked to a clear vision of what government should do.... I'm afraid that the idealism for which Rhodes scholars receive praise is less an antidote to the problems of American politics than a symptom of them."

"Lacking a vision of political service in pursuit of specific ends," observes Beinart, "the rhetoric of idealism allows Rhodes scholars to justify and celebrate political service per se. Idealism masks an ideological vacum.

Problem Idealism

On the pernicious potential of misdirected idealism Beinart scores some important points. However, it is not idealism per se, but a particular kind of idealism, of which Rhodies are typically imbued, that is the problem under consideration here. And it is certainly not an idealism proceeding from an "ideological vacuum." If that were the case, we would expect to see idealism manifested and expressed in a diversity of shapes and forms, as, for instance: Christian idealism versus humanist/pagan/atheist idealism, individualist versus collectivist idealism, libertarian versus totalitarian idealism, nationalist versus globalist idealism, etc.

The Oxonian idealism, however, seems to run almost invariably along the humanist/pagan/atheist, collectivist, totalitarian, globalist, elitist lines. Perhaps Beinart's peers do not explicitly subscribe to such a nasty idealism, but, apparently, it is implicit - at least in the formative stages - in their collective world view, and it is this which makes him "uneasy." As he says, they have a passionate "commitment to government," but, "above all, they believe in themselves in government." Which is exactly the kind of "idealism" British empire builder Cecil John Rhodes (shown above) intended to foster when he established the Rhodes scholarships at the turn of the century.

We have written previously about the baleful effects of Rhodes' bequest ("A 'Rhodie' in the White House," The New American, January 25, 1993). However, since the accession of Bill Clinton to the Oval Office, the Oxford influence in the Executive branch of the federal government has attained unprecedented heights. As Rhodes scholar Robert Rotberg noted in the Christian Science Monitor for December 7, 1992, the Clinton Presidency "fulfills Rhodes' deepest aspiration." Rotberg, author of The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power, wrote in his Monitor piece that "Rhodes believed that he had discovered an idea that could lead 'to the cessation of all wars and one language throughout the world.' Rhodes also specified fairly clearly the kinds of men who should receive the opportunity to go to Oxford. He had Clinton in mind" - an admission which, by itself, should severely diminish the prestige of the esteemed academic honors. Rhodes' men, said Rotberg, were a special breed: "They were to 'esteem the performance of public duties' as their highest aim. Rhodes wanted the best men for 'the World's fight.'... In the 90 years of scholarships, only Clinton has taken Rhodes' dream to the top."

Government of the World Indeed

Which is why we are grateful for the appearance of two recent studies on this important subject: Secret Records Revealed: The Men, the Money, and the Methods Behind the New World Order, by Dennis Laurence Cuddy (Plymouth Rock Foundation, P.O. Box 577, Marlborough, NH 02455); and The Rhodes Legacy: Are Its Agents Shaping America's Destiny? by Samuel L. Blumenfeld (The Blumenfeld Education Letter, P.O. Box 45161, Boise, Idaho 83711). As two of the most perceptive writers on education issues today, Dr. Cuddy and Mr. Blumenfeld are well qualified to tackle the Rhodesian menace to American academe, government, and society.

Quoting from Professor Carroll Quigley's monumental history, Tragedy and Hope, Blumenfeld recounts the "sensational impact" that socialist professor John Ruskin had on the young Cecil Rhodes while a student at Oxford. Later, "with support from Lord Rothschild and Alfred Beit, [Rhodes] was able to monopolize the diamond mines of South Africa" and put his enormous, illgotten fortune in diamonds and gold to work in his plan for world empire.

To accomplish this end, Rhodes confided to his intimate friend and executor, William T. Stead, it was necessary to (in Rhodes' own words) create "a society copied, as to organization, from the Jesuits." Unlike the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), however, Rhodes' society would be secret and decidedly un-Christian. Rhodes told Stead that it should be "a secret society, organized like Loyola's, supported by the accumulated wealth of those whose aspiration is to do something."

And this "something" that Rhodes had in mind for them to "do" with their wealth? Nothing less, said Rhodes, than "a scheme to take the government of the whole world." Thus, Rhodes biographer Sarah Millin noted, "The government of the world was Rhodes' simple desire." Simple, yes, though hardly lacking in ambitious grandiosity. Said Rhodes to Stead: "What scope! What a horizon of work for the next two centuries for the best energies of the best people in the world." And, averred the fabulously wealthy magnate, "The only thing feasible to carry out this idea is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world, to be devoted to this object."

These and other revealing statements are found in an important article on Cecil Rhodes in the New York Times of April 9, 1902, which Blumenfeld has reprinted in The Rhodes Legacy.

Stealthy Recruiting

The secret society of which Rhodes spoke was launched, notes Blumenfeld, on February 5, 1891. Forming the executive committee of this society were Rhodes, Stead, Lord Esher, and Alfred Milner. Below them was a "Circle of Initiates" comprised of Lord Balfour, Sir Harry Johnson, Lord Rothschild, Lord Grey, and other scions of Britain's financial and aristocratic elite. According to Professor Quigley, Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown University, "The scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his purpose." "The Rhodes Scholarships," Blumenfeld writes, "as outlined in Rhodes' will, became the main instrument whereby the most promising young people throughout the English-speaking world could be recruited to serve an idea that Rhodes thought would take 200 years to fulfill." And, says Blumenfeld:

Obviously, the way the secret society would recruit its future leaders from among the Rhodes scholars was to dangle before them the prospects of future advancement in whatever field they chose to pursue, be it education, politics, government, foundation work, finance, journalism, etc. Thus, if you understood the implicit message being given to you by your sponsors you might one day become president of Harvard, President of the United States, a Supreme Court judge, a U.S. senator, or president of the Carnegie Foundation. The road to fame and fortune was open as long as you played the game and obeyed the rules. The Association of American Rhodes Scholars has an alumni membership of about 1,600. They have become leading figures in the new ruling elite in America.

Rhodie Roll Call

For gaining an appreciation of just how influential the "leading figures" in this ruling elite have been, and are today, Dr. Cuddy's 50-page booklet, Secret Records Revealed, is of immense value. Utilizing the chronological format he has used in some of his previous studies, Cuddy begins with the year 1890 and traces the perfidious Rhodes influence to the present, outlining not only the "contributions" of Rhodes scholars, but those as well of prominent members in Rhodes' other fronts such as the Council on Foreign Relations.

The impact of this elect (but in most cases unelected) coterie has been nothing less than incredible. A roll call of the famous Rhodies who have advanced the founder's scheme reads like a Who's Who of American finance, business, academe, journalism, and politics: Whitney Shepardson, John K. Fairbank, Lester Thurow, Erwin D. Canham, Stringfellow Barr, Nicholas Katzenbach, Howard K. Smith, Harlan Cleveland, Carl Albert, J. William Fullbright, Dean Rusk, Hedley Donovan, Walt Rostow, Robert Roosa, Stansfield Turner, Richard Lugar, David Boren, Michael Kinsley, Daniel Boorstin, and many more. Among the more than 20 Rhodies in Clinton's retinue are Strobe Talbott, Robert Reich, James Woolsey, Ira Magaziner, George Stephanopoulos, Stephen Oxman, Sarah Sewall, Walter Slocombe, Joseph Nye, and Richard N. Gardner.

And what are the characteristics that the Rhodes scholarship selection committees were to look for in candidates and nurture in their scholars? According to Rhodes' own criteria, notes Cuddy, the traits most desired were (and are) "smugness, brutality, unctuous rectitude, and tact." Obviously, as Mr. Rotberg beamed above, Rhodes "had Clinton in mind." After all, his proteges were to be the "best men," the "best people," pursuing his vision of world government run by a socialist aristocratic elite. According to Rhodes' coconspirator Stead, it was expected that by 1920 there would be "between two and three thousand men in the prime of life scattered all over the world, each of whom, moreover, would have been specially - mathematically - selected toward the Founder's purposes."

Words and Works

Dr. Cuddy examines the writings, speeches, policies, and deeds of Rhodes scholars and other members of the Rhodes network over the past century, to reveal what is clearly the sinister nature of "the Founder's purposes." He shares the alarm expressed by Professor Quigley in his posthumously published exposé, The Anglo-American Establishment: "The picture is terrifying because such power, whatever the goals at which it is being directed, is too much to be entrusted to any group.... No country that values its safety should allow what the [Rhodes-Milner] group accomplished - that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such a power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period." (in The New American, Monday, 20 February 1995).