It was Lewis Powell who wrote the secret but now famous memorandum to the US. Chamber of Commerce calling on corporate America to become political and save the country from socialism.While he pointed to the things that needed to be done, to a large extent it has been the Charles and David Koch who have seen to its implementation.From establishing think tanks and university professorships to funding action groups like the Tea Party, these billionaire libertarians have helped to build the extreme Right that now bedevils the country.Historian Nancy MacLean has traced the connection between the Koch brothers money and the ideas of economist James Buchanan.It was Buchanan’s story that Nancy MacLean uncovered in her book Democracy In Chains about how his influential ideas were designed to prevent the popular will from restraining market forces.It is such popular restraints acting through government that we mean by democracy.And it is precisely democracy that Buchanan and the Kochs seek to prevent.Democracy is the threat to the wealth and power of capitalists.And they have the money to protect themselves.
We view a 35 min.video of Nancy MacLean speaking about the Koch’s stealth strategy to enchain democracy. Then philosopher David Schweickart elaborates on the Koch network, its well-funded alliance with the Evangelical (white) Right and gun-rights proponents that has given them a mass base, and its deep, sustained attack on “liberal” academia, which is, in their view, turning college students into socialists.