Notes on "Tragedy and Hope"

I am currently reading Dr. Carroll Quigley’s landmark 1966 book, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time. This is a history book that covers the major events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until almost the time of the book’s publication. It is also a favored text for conspiracy researchers because a small portion of the book is devoted to the foundation of influential policy groups by major forces in the world of financial capitalism. The goal of these policy groups was, and is, nothing less than to manage the economies of every country in the world using the leverage of central banking.

            These revelations are really only a small portion of a very exhaustive (1348 pgs.) political history provided by an interpretative historian, but the discovery of the machinations of these financial scions is immensely valuable because Dr. Quigley discovered their objectives through exclusive access to primary documents. He was granted access to the complete records of the Council on Foreign Relations, which have now been made public, and the records of its even more secretive parent group The Round Table in the early 1960’s. This access was granted to him, no doubt, because he was an establishment intellectual who was writing a book that puts world government by bankers and technocrats in a mostly favorable light. Although Dr. Quigley disagrees with the secrecy and subterfuge employed by the global elite, it’s clear that he has no problem with world government controlled by experts, per se.

            Dr. Quigley’s research reveals the Council on Foreign Relations as a front group for the powerful Anglophile secret society known variously as the Round Table or the Milner group, after one of its founders, Lord Alfred Milner. This group was headed by various figures emanating from JP Morgan’s circle of influence and is described by Dr. Quigley as “cosmopolitan, Anglophile, internationalist, Ivy League, eastern seaboard, high Episcopalian, and European-culture conscious.” (937) In short, a secretive power bloc emanating from the WASP upper echelons much like the Order of Skull in Bones as researched by Dr. Antony Sutton.

            This group maintained members in editorial positions at some of America’s most prestigious magazines and newspapers including “The New York Times, New York’s Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Washington Post.” (953) Their members also headed the powerful Institute of Pacific Relations in the 1950’s, an influential, communist-leaning think tank that sent some of its members to important State Dept. appointments. Dr. Quigley reluctantly speculates that due to the IPR’s influence, the way was eased for the communists’ accession in China after the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek.

            Curiously, given his overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy headed by banking elites and their tax exempt foundations, Dr. Quigley dismisses the idea that these men have designs for world hegemony. He summarily dismisses these notions as the pabulum of paranoid, right-wing, “professional anti-communists.” He insists that these men are using their vast fortunes in good faith, and he lovingly describes them as merely “gracious and cultured gentlemen of somewhat limited social experience who were much concerned with the freedom of expression of minorities and the rule of law for all.” (954)

            This apologetic point-of-view is all the more confusing given Dr. Quigley’s grim outlook on the world’s future that reads today like prophecy. He writes that “in the twentieth century, the expert will replace the industrial tycoon in control of the economic system even as he will replace the democratic voter in control of the political system. . . (the private citizen’s) freedom of choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits.” (866)           

            The role of the Council on Foreign Relations in our present government cannot be overstated. Obama's White House is loaded with lifetime members of the organization including Susan Rice, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Stephen Flynn. In 2009, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had this to say about the opening of the CFR’s Washington office near the White House, “We get a lot of advice from the Council (on Foreign Relations), so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”

Dr. Carroll Quigley

            Private citizens should take a vigilant interest in the influence of tax exempt foundations, think tanks, and banking institutions on their government. Doing so may mean the difference between living as constitutionally protected, free individuals or as a numerical value to be taxed, controlled, and propagandized to by a shadowy technocratic oligarchy.