The Most Influential Man in American Politics, But Few
People Have Ever Heard of Him
By: David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher, Fort Fairfield Journal
He was the impetus for the creation of the Federal Reserve bank’s debt money ponzi scheme, the Social Security debacle, Medicare and our modern day welfare and food stamp programs that together are bankrupting the United States; yet, he was never elected to public office and perhaps only one in a thousand people alive today even know his name.
He was Edward Mandell House, puppet master of two of the most destructive U.S. Presidents of the 20th century—Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. His only real claim to fame was a political novel about the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and constitution in order to usher in by force a fairy tale, Utopian, socialist dream world.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto that wrecked the former Soviet Union; Adolph Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, whose policies ultimately destroyed the social and moral fabric of NAZI Germany; and in the United States, Edward House wrote Philip Dru: Administrator that laid the groundwork for the ultimate bankruptcy of the United States in 1933 and, today, a socialist-inspired $20 trillion national debt that is impossible to ever pay back.
The book jacket of the Robert Welsh University Press reprint of Dru states, “Philip Dru: Administrator is a political fantasy novel about a military overthrow of the United States government and its Constitution. Its significance rests upon the fact that the novel represents the ‘political and ethical faith’ of the most influential presidential advisor in American history, Edward Mandell House...Dru has had a greater impact on American government than the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf or any other tract of political extremism, yet by comparison, Dru is unknown...”
I don’t normally read fictional novels because there’s too much reality out there to deal with. However, I recently forced myself to slog through the toxic waste dump of socialist ideas that is Philip Dru: Administrator in order to read the work that had so inspired Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt. I tend to read books like this very slowly and make copious margin notes on the pages where I need to clarify the author’s points, or show how he is wrong.
What follows from here is a brief sketch of Mr. House’s socialist dream as outlined in his novel and my rebuttal to his points.
Monopolies of power
“‘Yes!’ continued Phillip, ‘from the dawn of the world until now, it has been the strong against the weak. At the first, in the Stone Age, it was brute strength that counted and controlled. Then those that ruled had leisure to grow intellectually, and it gradually came about that the many, by long centuries of oppression, thought that the intellectual few had God-given powers to rule, and to exact tribute from them to the extent of commanding every ounce of exertion of which their bodies were capable. It was here, Gloria, that society began to form itself wrongly, and the result is the miserable travesty of today. Selfishness became the keynote, and to physical and mental strength was conceded everything desirable in life. Later, this mockery of justice, was partly recognized, and it was acknowledged to be wrong for the physically strong to despoil and destroy the physically weak. Even so, the time is now measurably near when it will be just as reprehensible for the mentally strong to hold in subjection the mentally weak, and to force them to bear the grievous burdens which a misconceived civilization has imposed upon them.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 8
Here, Mr. House suggests that a monopoly of power among learned, private corporate chiefs is somehow inherently evil. At times it may be, but his solution—a monopoly of power in the hands of a large, bloated, malevolent government is by far much worse. Mr. House fails to see that point: that all socialist governments deteriorate into the exploitation machines he so vehemently detests here. This deterioration is due to the fact that socialist governments have been empowered by the weak to literally steal from the strong and redistribute that money to them. Whenever a society accepts that it’s okay to steal—for whatever reason—it has begun its deterioration until it finally falls and collapses into the dustbin of history.
Career Welfare Recipients
In this excerpt, Philip is discussing with his girlfriend, Gloria, the problem of what we term today, “career welfare recipients” who make it their life-long goal to live off of government welfare and food stamp programs. The author suggests that decent people would not do such a thing under his proposed plan:
“You are right, Gloria, said Philip. “I cannot live on a pension indefinitely. I cannot bring myself to believe that it is honest to become a mendicant upon the bounty of the country. If I had been injured in the performance of a duty, I would have no scruples in accepting support during an enforced idleness, but this disability arose from no fault of the Government, and the thought of accepting aid under such circumstances is too repugnant...The Government means no more to me than an individual, continued Philip, and it is to be as fairly dealt with. I never could understand how men with self-respect could accept undeserving pensions (i.e. welfare payments) from the Nation. To do so is not alone dishonest, but is unfair to those who need help and have a righteous claim to support. If the unworthy are refused, the deserving would be able to obtain that which they are entitled.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 21
Mr. House comes across here as giving kind, benevolent points on socialism and how decent people should not exploit government handouts. But, the reality is under socialism the “entitlement society” looks to such welfare benefits as a career, not as short-term assistance. This is what is bankrupting the U.S. today and few are the political leaders who are willing to actually fix the problem because the voting electorate will always vote for the politician who will continue to give them the most free money.
Government charity
In this section of the book, Philip and Gloria deal with the death of a friend named Zelda who died poor and destitute because after her husband, Len’s death she was unable to financially survive or thrive. House’s character then suggests the government should have stepped in to help her.
“In this instance Len Turner died a hero’s death, and when Mrs. Turner became incapacitated, society, the state, call it what you will, should have stepped in and thrown its protecting arms around her. It was never intended that she should lie there day after day, month after month, suffering, starving, and in agony of soul for her children’s future. She had the right to expect succor from the rich and strong.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 31
What Mr. House is describing here is essentially coerced charity. That is, the government confiscating wealth by threat of force, jail or death from the rich and strong in order to benefit the weak and misfortunate in society. The result of this grandiose idea turns out today that the poor people receiving government welfare are still living on a pittance while government’s “protecting arms” dominate and rule over their lives with bureaucratic paperwork, government demands and red tape to have to plow through on a continuing basis.
The Spirituality of Socialism
Here, Philip is discussing with his girlfriend’s wealthy father, Mr. Strawn, Strawn’s point that socialism’s confiscating of the wealth would lessen the efficiency and motivation of the producers from whom government is stealing.
“In the past, Mr. Strawn, your contention would be unanswerable, but the moral tone and thought of the world is changing. You take it for granted that man must have in sight some material reward in order to bring forth the best there is within him. I believe that mankind is awakening to the fact that material compensation is far less to be desired than spiritual compensation. This feeling will grow, it is growing, and when it comes to full fruition, the world will find but little difficulty in attaining a certain measure of altruism.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 35
Mr. House doesn’t seem to be aware that socialism and it’s bigger brother, communism, abhors spirituality because it requires all people to look to government as a god. This government/god then has to be the focal point of their spirituality, not the God of the Bible or any other metaphysical being. To acknowledge a power higher than itself, government feels it would be ceding its control over the masses to something superior to it and the number one mission of all governments is to perpetuate its own power at the expense of all other actors. The result we see today is a government that is hostile to the most charitable religion—Christianity—and seeks to stamp it out of existence whenever and wherever possible.
Organizing a socialist society
Here, Philip has taken a job writing editorials for a newspaper and begins to spew his socialist tripe by saying only government can organize charity and society.
“In a direct and forceful manner, he pointed out that our civilization was fundamentally wrong inasmuch as among other things, it restricted efficiency; that if society were properly organized, there would be non who were not sufficiently clothed and fed; that the laws, habits and ethical training in vogue were alike responsible for the inequalities in opportunity and the consequent wide difference between the few and the many; that result of such conditions was to render inefficient a large part of the population, the percentage differing in each country in the ratio that education and enlightened and unselfish laws bore to ignorance, bigotry and selfish laws. ..Humanity as a whole will then be able to do its share towards the conquest of the complex forces of nature, and there will be brought about an intellectual and spiritual quickening that will make our civilization of to-day seem as crude, as selfish and illogical as that of the dark ages seem to us now.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 46
A society organized by who? A bloated, inefficient government? That’s what Mr. House’s dream has spawned today and it is the worst and most inefficient form of “charitable” organization to be imagined.
Mr. House’s dream has been realized in full force by today’s U.S. government but there has been no “intellectual and spiritual quickening.” Indeed, the U.S. government has been making valiant strides to obtain the opposite attributes in its citizenry by dumbing them down in the public schools in order to keep them ignorant, dependent and subservient. An intellectual and spiritual people are very hard for governments to control.
Restoring Freedom
The civil war has begun and Philip Dru has amassed an army of 600,000 men to take on the U.S. government’s forces.
“The contestants, on the face of things, seemed not unevenly matched, but, as a matter of fact, the conscience of the great mass of the people, East and West, was on Dru’s side, for it was known that he was contending for those things which would permit the Nation to become again a land of freedom in its truest and highest sense, a land of equal opportunity, a land where justice would be meted out alike to the high and low with a steady and impartial hand.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p.99
This is a pipe dream and can never come true under the legalized theft of socialism. We have today the socialism House dreamed of and now are even more fractured and enslaved to money powers (who have co-opted government via the private, for profit Federal Reserve bank) than we were before the ideas promoted in this book were put into force. Socialism has no freedom, no justice and no opportunity for the people to excel and succeed. If you have wealth, it is confiscated, if you don’t have wealth there’s no incentive to obtain it if government is going to come along and steal it, anyway. As for freedom, once you begin accepting welfare ‘benefits’ from government you acquiesce your freedom to a more powerful actor—one that rules your life and tells you what to do and when to do it. That is not freedom.
Obliterating Selfishness
The civil war has ended and Dru’s side won. He appointed himself temporary acting dictator of the U.S. His girlfriend, Gloria is discussing with him abolishing selfishness in society.
“That, Philip, is because we are largely striving for the same purposes. We both want, I think, to take the selfish equation out of our social fabric. We want to take away the sting from poverty, and we want envy to have no place in the world of our making.”
- Philip Dru: Administrator, p. 128
This is a losing proposition. Trying to obliterate selfishness among a people by adopting selfishness and coveting in the socialist mechanics of legalized theft is no foundation on which to base the obliteration of selfishness.
I’ll stop here, but that is the gist of the book. I’m sure a lot of flip-flop-wearing socialist college professors are squirming in their seats with my rebuttals to Mr. House’s failed pipe dream, but that’s okay. I like making socialists squirm by showing them the folly of their failed political ideology.
If you want to read the book yourself, to see the skewed thinking of the socialists who run this country and how they would like to accomplish them via threat, duress and coercion, the ISBN number is: 1-892647-00-1.
