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Title: America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones by Antony C. Sutton ISBN: 0-9720207-0-5 Publisher: Trine Day, LLC Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.55 (11 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Conspiracy Against God and Man at Yale?
Comment: Anthony Sutton identifies the Yale senior society, Skull and Bones, as "America's Secret Establishment." Numerous sons of the wealthy and influential, many of whom became wealthy and influential themselves (e.g., both Presidents Bush), have belonged to this secretive fraternity. As the old joke had a professor saying of his student's term paper, it can be said that Sutton's book contains much that is good and much that is original. Unfortunately, much of what is good is not original, and much of what is original is not good.
The best part of Sutton's book is the extensive reprinting of nineteenth-century exposés and criticisms of the Yale senior society, some based on a breaching of its "tomb" by members of "The Order of File and Claw." One of these docuents states that "Bones is a chapter of a corps in a German University... General R------ (Russell), its founder, was in Germany before Senior Year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member of a German society. He brought back with him to college, authority to found a chapter here. Thus was Bones founded."
Based on this, Sutton erects a wild superstructure of conspiracy theory beginning with that perennial bogey, the Bavarian Illuminati. Since this is the first in a series of many conclusions to which he jumps, it is worth some examination. There were (and are) many collegiate corps or societies (Burschenschaften) in Germany. Why must anything connected with Germany necessarily trace back to the short-lived creation of Weishaupt? Would not a reputable historian have investigated the German travels of Gen. Russell, perhaps found which universities he visited, and looked there for the origins of Skull and Bones?
The skull and crossbones is an age-old memento mori and not necessarily connected to the Illuminati at all. Skulls and skeletons were used in the ritualistic hugger-mugger of a number of fraternal orders. A German example was the proto-Rosicrucian Orden der Unzertrennlichen, founded in 1577. According to Christopher McIntosh ("The Rosicrucians"), "[i]n their meetings, a bible, skull, and hour glass stood on a table." From the Unzertrennlichen was conceivably descended (as McIntosh relates) the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, the most politically powerful of the eighteenth-century German secret societies (Wöllner and von Bischoffswerder, its leaders, were chief advisors to Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia, who was himself a member). In both the Unzertrennlichen and the Gold- und Rosenkreuz, the members took "decknamen," also a feature of Skull and Bones ritual. Ritual use of the skull is found in masonic Templarism, which is descended from von Hund's Strikte Observanz. The candidate's lying in a coffin is a familiar masonic theme. It is equally, if not more, likely that the content of Skull and Bones ritual was derived from one of these sources, than from the Illuminati. It is also likelier that the young Russell, a Protestant, spent time at one of the universities in the Protestant part of Germany, like Heidelberg or Göttingen, than at Ingolstadt in Catholic Bavaria, where Weishaupt held forth. These things attract no attention from Sutton, either out of ignorance, or more likely, because they do not press a hot button amongst conspiracy theorists the way any mention of the Illuminati will.
Large sections of Sutton's book deal with things like theories of educational psychology, or the manipulations and misdeeds of international financiers. While these details are interesting in themselves, Sutton's effort to tie all of them back to Skull and Bones, Hegelian philosophy, and Illuminism is unconvincing.
The liberal journalist Ron Rosenbaum has published a number of articles about Skull and Bones, amongst them one containing details, purportedly obtained by sophisticated electronic eavesdropping, of a recent initiation. If true, they reveal nothing more than the sort of crude and prank-like character associated with many college fraternities. In view of this, and also of the public personæ of the country's two most prominent Bonesmen, Bush père et fils, it is hard to imagine that the particular Yalies in question spend much time in rarefied discussion of Hegel's theory of history, or the psychology of Wilhelm Wundt.
It is interesting to contrast Skull and Bones, which Sutton attempts to portray as a devious and destructive conspiracy, with the Cambridge Apostles, a society which produced two documented traitors (Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt). Richard Deacon's book on the Apostles is a much more successful indictment of that society than Sutton's is of Skull and Bones. But even more tellingly, Deacon describes a group of men who were thoroughgoingly intellectual, and thus capable of being corrupted by ideas that were bad. One does not sense that Bonesmen are particularly interested in any ideas, nor that intellectuality is high on the list of criteria for selection of members (this is in some ways a comment on the difference between British and American universities!). If the conspiratorial, and indeed criminal or treasonable behavior alleged by Sutton has taken placer amongst members of Skull and Bones, it is more likely so merely because social élites naturally move mostly in their own restricted circles. Sutton's book appeals to the long-standing egalitarian distaste for élites that has been a feature of American society since the days when Aedanus Burke objected to the Society of the Cincinnati, or that sanctimonious old hypocrite John Quincy Adams lent his name to the Anti-masonic movement. So what else is new?
Rating: 4
Summary: Very detailed history of the Elite
Comment: Skull And Bones:The secret society imported from Germany. People like George Bush and his son George W. Bush were members of this Yale elitist club. When questioned on their membership they either wont comment (senior Bush) or they chuckle and question whether it is still in existence. Why don't they want to address this club? Could they be hiding something? They were in fact members! Read the book and you will know the secrets these and other men would prefer you not know!
Rating: 5
Summary: What a surprise!
Comment: Read the book from cover to cover and then tried to disprove the allegations. I couldn't. Money buys power and a whole lot more. This book definitely will affect my vote in November.
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