The House of Truth

Political salon: a cultural hub, for the upper middle class and aristocracy usually at the home of the host; a center for intellectual exploration.

Discreetly nestled within the historic Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington D.C., seemingly lost forever within the late 19th century Queen Anne row house revival, and now rendered nearly indistinguishable to the 21st century passerby … stands the answer to an enigma. Reluctant to tell her secrets willingly, she has stood here waiting for her historian, for over one hundred years, and while fame flashed for less than a minute, her historical significance continues to appreciate by the second. Standing today as a proud Statesman, long ago dismissed of her diplomatic duties into the back pages of history she has disappeared, to little fanfare. Her existence almost entirely unbeknownst to the general public and if pressed for comment will, like any credible intelligence asset, deny its own existence.  And herein lies the mystery.

How, from out of this otherwise unremarkable middle-class suburban Washington home, does such extraordinary history remain suppressed? From this one house, it is not hyperbole to say, came the very society and culture we are living in today. Not only does American Progressivism originate from the House of Truth’s living room, but so too the field of Scientific Management and everything we know of modern American journalism – three major pillars of American life. It renders one incredulous at first and speechless at last to see how influential this political salon has been on much of what we think, how we think, and especially how we see ourselves within the larger world.

 Self-evident history shows that much of this reformation of society was accomplished through the Progressive Movement and its radical experimentation of Constitutional law at the beginning of the twentieth century by deliberately using social inequality as their thesis, government sponsored social reform as their reaction as we today bear both the weight of witness and the burden of proof for their short-sighted, self-serving solutions. What we witness today is a society in many ways sadly removed from its source and wholly subservient not to free and open discussion or variety of opinion, but by what Eisenhower warned of more than forty years too late – a scientific, technological elite.

Today the original redbrick front façade fails to live up to the heady reputation that precedes it. Located at 1727 19th Street, the House, like the story it has long denied us, has been completely whitewashed, covered over, almost as if intentional. Nevertheless, there she still stands, defiant, daring us to ask questions the answers of which she dares not speak. Herein an attempt will be made to tell the incredible, virtually untold story of how, for nearly a decade, all roads in Washington led to this mysterious place just one mile northwest of the White House, and for nearly a decade, everyone who was anyone gravitated there. It is during this epoch that worlds collided, and for that brief moment this non-descript house in NW Washington was more than just a home, it was more than a casual flophouse for Phi Beta Kappa Harvard Law grads – it was a Progressive Political Salon, and for one resonating moment in history, it was known as the House of Truth.

 “Almost everybody who was interesting in Washington … sooner or later passed through that house.” – Felix Frankfurter

 From Humble Beginnings Comes Imperious Ends

“Ideas first tested at the dinner table often blossomed into articles for the magazine, and many of the residents and visitors, including Frankfurter, became regular contributors.” (1)

 The House of Truth was owned by Robert Grosvenor Valentine, Bachelor of Arts, class of 1896 Harvard Law. It is Valentine who invited Felix Frankfurter, Harvard Law, Class of 1906, and Winfred Denison, a friend and former Harvard classmate of Valentine’s to stay at the house beginning in 1911. In the years prior, Valentine was a member of the Taft administration and had resigned his position as Commissioner of Indian Affairs just after everyone started arriving. All three of these men knew each other from their time under another Harvard Law grad, Henry L. Stimson at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, placed there on the recommendation of his former law partner, Taft’s Secretary of State, and Phi Beta Kappa, Elihu Root.(2)(3)

Valentine is most known for being one of, along with Frederick Winslow Taylor, the pioneers of ‘scientific management’ – a term describing the economic efficiency of labor within industrial relations – the term coined by another central figure of the House, mentor to Frankfurter, the activist attorney, Louis Brandeis – pronounced Brandise.

Valentine was the subject of a June 17, 1915 Harper’s Weekly article entitled, The Human Audit, in which Child referred to Valentine and his goal, “the undeveloped side of American industry … the scientific knowledge of human beings”, further adding, “And yet until three years ago, when Robert G. Valentine, formerly Indian Commissioner of the United States, became the pioneer, the profession of labor auditing was unknown.” (4)

American Magazine, in June of 1916, named Valentine the country’s “First Expert in Industrial Relations” and the “only man in America who is a whole profession all by himself.” (5)

Over the next four years Valentine, with help of Brandeis, Taylor, and Frankfurter, would turn his theories on industrial relations into a discipline, and that discipline eventually would become an American institution. And with American entry into the war looming Valentine and his cohorts knew the integral role in winning the war industrial relations would play. Valentine writing to Loring C. Christie, “You’ll think for a minute – but not longer – that I’ve gone crazy over my idea of what there is to be done in industrial relations … when I say that it is building right relationships in industry out of which is to come a vigorous affirmative, manly, and womanly peace of the world.” (6) Following the sinking of the Lusitania in May of 1915 and war seemingly imminent, Valentine wrote in the New Republic to the importance of American industry implementing his theories of scientific management. He saw at least preparation for war as an opportunity.

 “Valentine had succeeded in creating a new business of industrial counseling and in establishing himself as one of the nations foremost labor relations experts”. (7)

 Valentine, Brandeis and Frankfurter would all communicate often with Taylor who had published his, The Principles of Scientific Management coincidentally in the same year they all moved into the House. It was in fact Brandeis who coined the term ‘scientific management’ and it was Brandeis who introduced Taylor’s ideas to the world, promoting Taylor’s ideas during his highly publicized investigations into the efficiency of Trusts. Today, Frederick Winslow Taylor remains the preeminent figure in the industry, scientific management now more widely known simply as Taylorism. In 2001, the Fellows of the Academy of Management voted The Principles of Scientific Management the most influential management book of the twentieth century. And Brandeis, Frankfurter, and Valentine were instrumental in its application into society. (8)(9)(10) To which Taylor gratefully thanked Brandeis in a letter afterwards,

“I have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this one.” (11)(12)

 In June of 1903, Taylor published a work entitled, Shop Management and at least one historian called it “one of the key documents shaping modern industrialization”.  Shop Management would propel Taylor to the head of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1906.(13)

 Besides Valentine, Frankfurter, and Denison two other prominent progressive leaders called the House home, Walter Lippmann and Herbert Croly. While Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. were both frequent and often honored house guests. Interesting to know then that these men all just so happen to be major “father figures” of the central tenets of Progressivism – more specifically known as the Efficiency Movement. Herbert Croly wrote what many consider to be the Progressive Manifesto, The Promise of American Life, in 1909, Frankfurter calling it, “the most powerful single contribution to progressive thinking” while Lippmann championed Croly as the “first important [American] political philosopher”.  Theodore Roosevelt publicly identified Croly’s book as being the impetus for his 1912 progressive campaign platform, New Nationalism – a strong patriotic State built on an efficient labor force and military preparedness. (14) Croly continued to write in support of strong central government, labour unions, and the nationalization of corporations in his 1914 book, Progressive Democracy. Herbert Croly the spiritual force behind the soon to be created progressive special interest rag, the New Republic.

 While Brandeis and Frankfurter spearheaded the anti-trust investigations into big business, they were also setting the foundations for Industrial Relations, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, and the nationally adopted and Brandeis invented, Savings Bank Life Insurance Program. Brandeis especially, was a key, personal advisor to president Woodrow Wilson during this time, was instrumental in the coordination and drafting process of much of the government overhaul and considered widely as an unofficial member of the Wilson administration.

 

The Young Radical

At 22, Walter Lippmann was the House’s youngest resident, arriving less than two years removed from graduating BA, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Law in 1909. (15) Lippmann’s early life, including his early years at the House, were defined by his socialist friendships and his associations with radical groups like the New York Socialist Party, the Greenwich Village social clubs, and his first employer, the socialist rag Boston Common. In 1914, while living together at the House, Lippmann and Frankfurter partnered with Herbert Croly and another progressive leading figure, and frequent House guest, Walter Weyl. Together they founded the voice of American progressivism, The New Republic. The project was supported financially from its onset by Dorothy Payne Whitney and the House of Morgan, through Whitney’s husband Willard Straight. (16)

 “We shall be socialistic in direction but not in method, in phrase, or allegiance. If there is any word to cover our ideal, I suppose it is humanist.” Walter Lippmann (17)

Croly described the proposed publication as “radically progressive”. (18)

Although a central mainstream argument surrounding Lippmann’s professional legacy is whether a journalist as close to his sources as Lippmann could abstain from the seduction of privilege himself. Often-debated mainstream historians ask – was Walter Lippmann an insider or an outsider? History proves this argument to be irrelevant distraction in that Lippmann succumbed to his temptations at birth. Born to an affluent Jewish family, Walter was quickly immersed in New York’s German-Jewish upper high-society, attending Sachs School for Boys, founded by Julius Sachs, of Goldman Sachs banking fame.   Lippmann grew up an only child in what bio author Ronald Steel called “a gilded Jewish ghetto”, Steel adding:

“Virtually everyone he [Lippmann] knew was wealthy, Jewish and of German background … [Lippmann and his friends] thought of themselves as part of a cultural and social elite.”(19)

Throughout his career, Lippmann rarely mentioned that he was a Jew, yet overtly continued his elitist ways throughout his career and was a member of several gentlemen’s clubs in New York including the Metropolitan Club. (20) As were many of the men involved in this story, members of the same secret societies: the Century Club, the Lotus Club, the Cosmos Club, or the Pilgrims Society.  And Lippmann frequented more than one. It is not an understatement to suggest Lippmann was a central force in the shaping of what American journalism would be for the remainder of the 20^th century. It merely being documented historical fact Lippmann is regarded generally as one of the most important journalists of the 20th century, many even considering Lippmann the very “father of modern American journalism” and his most famous work, Public Opinion, regarded as “the founding book on modern journalism”, as well as “the founding book in American media studies”. (21)(22)(23)(24)

Lippmann would play a key role in the initial development of The Inquiry, first setting up headquarters at the New York Public Library with fellow Harvard alum, summa cum laude, Master of Arts, and future US president Archibald Cary Coolidge; and professor of History at  Columbia University, BA, PhD, managing editor of the infamous 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, President Emeritus Carnegie Endowment, and one hell of a model Canadian, James Thomson Shotwell; and Colonel House’s Jewish brother-in-law, BS, BA, MA, Harvard, Century Club member, Director of The Inquiry, and president of City College of New York, Sidney Mezes. CCNY especially noted during these years for its proclivity to accept Jews on campus when other Universities, like Harvard, were applying strict quotas. Lippmann and these men would go on to play leading roles in Paris peace talks in 1919.

“For Frankfurter and his friends, the House was a place to gather information, to influence policy, and to try out new ideas.” (25)

The Kochleffel / The Cooking Spoon

Felix Frankfurter entered The House at the age of 29, having already established himself within the U.S. Attorney’s office during Taft’s presidency (William Howard Taft himself a Century Club member, Phi Beta Kappa and the very son of Alphonse, the founder of Skull and Bones. Frankfurter serving as assistant at the USAO to another Phi Beta Kappa, Century member and Bonesman, Secretary of War, Henry Stimson). Chief prosecutor for the Federal government, Stimson, with the help of Frankfurter, prosecuted several high- profile cases protecting the government from the American Sugar Refining Company’s attempt to defraud the government of sugar import fees. Frankfurter would continue to defend the State through the years 1909 and 1910. Frankfurter saw himself as a kochleffel, a Yiddish term meaning ‘cooking spoon’, used to describe someone who stirs up trouble, a meddler or busy body. It was one of his favourite words. Frankfurter then it would seem perfect counsel for an overzealous State.

Frankfurter had certainly come a long way himself.  Born in Vienna, arriving on Ellis Island as a twelve year old Jewish émigré young Felix apparently hit the ground running, his family first settling in the Lower East Side in 1896, but by 1902, only six short years later, Frankfurter already had gained his BA, magna cum laude and tapped Phi Beta Kappa at City College of New York. And, by 1906, ten years after first stepping foot on American soil, Frankfurter graduated top of his class, magna cum laude, Harvard Law, and was working in the US Attorney’s office. And, by 1910, Frankfurter was a close, personal campaign aide to his old boss Henry Stimson during Stimson’s New York gubernatorial bid to which Stimson gratefully proclaimed his appreciation for his assistants but above all, Frankfurter, at the Grand Music Hall on the Lower East Side while performing a campaign speech:

“If there was one of my assistants in the District Attorney’s office to whom I owe personal gratitude … Felix Frankfurter is that man.” Henry Stimson

In 1914 Frankfurter would temporarily depart the House for a full professorship at Harvard Law School where he would also edit the Harvard Law Review. Frankfurter funded during these years at Harvard Law by a contingent of Internationals dominated by Jewish financiers, starting with his very close friend and mentor Louis Brandeis, the activist judge who donated $1000 a year for five years and through Julian Mack and Eugene Meyers brother, Walter, secured $1000 pledges from Sears Roebuck owner and philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald and legendary bankers Felix and Paul Warburg along with $500 pledges each from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Phi Beta Kappa, New York District Attorney, and close personal friend of the House, Learned Hand – amounting to a total of nearly a quarter of a million dollars today.(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) These connections would later serve Frankfurter very well, only on a far larger international stage, while at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he was a integral member of the Zionist Delegation.

The Sage Advisor

Born, Louis David Brandeis, Louis was raised in Louisville Kentucky, to a middle-class Jewish family. According to Frankfurter, Brandeis was “the sage advisor of all”.(31) When the House opened in 1911, Brandeis had just entered the public consciousness as counsel in the Ballinger – Pinchot Affair, a case of national public interest and despite the loss in the court of law, Brandeis had won over the court of public opinion, the Court now fertile ground for the precedent changing reform to follow. By 1911, Brandeis had entered the Zionist sphere, having been introduced to the political ideology by Jacob deHaas.(32) By 1914, he was the undisputed leader of the American Zionist Organization. Brandeis taking over leadership one day after Frankfurter left for his professorship at Harvard. With both Frankfurter and Brandeis now in Boston, it allowed more intimate and frequent communications between the two. And after the Ballinger – Pinchot case, Brandeis was well on his way to cementing his public reputation as ‘the People’s Attorney’. In 1916, Brandeis was nominated, seemingly out of nowhere, as the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice by his friend, fellow Phi Beta Kappa and Cosmos Club member, Woodrow Wilson.

Brandeis changed his middle name from David to Dembitz in honour of his Frankist, radical uncle Naphtali Dembitz. His uncle in fact largely the inspiration for Brandeis choosing law as a profession.  Frankism a somewhat degenerate form of Sabbatean Judaism in which they heavily endorse immorality of all types, a rejection of the Torah, and the insignificance of all law. The Sabbatean ideology considered by Jewish historian, Gershom Shalom as the natural ancestor to Zionism. A strange belief system indeed for a member of the US Supreme Court and at least part of the reason Brandeis was considered a reformist judge even by his friends and a radical activist attorney by many. The International Zionist Brandeis admirer of Sabbateanism was speech writer, close confidante, and political aide of Woodrow Wilson.

“I need Brandeis everywhere.” Woodrow Wilson

While arguing the 1908 US Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon, Brandeis the reformer created the ‘Brandeis Brief’, marking a new method of defense emphasizing social scientific evidence. Frankfurter, writing in the Harvard Law Review in 1916 called the Muller v. Oregon ruling “epoch making”. The purpose was to have the Court rely more on scientific information and the social sciences than on legal citations, principles or opinion from experience. And he looked at the Constitution and the Supreme Court as the biggest obstacles to his ends.

The Muller v Oregon was a landmark decision and set precedent. Many progressives applauded the outcome for this very reason yet, as over one hundred years has passed since, we see a very different reality from the ideal then presented. We see Brandeis’ stereotyping of women actually amplify the social inequality he at least publicly, intended to ameliorate. His introduction of subjectivity into jurisprudence through the Brandeis Brief has proven over time to be one of the more damaging documents ever presented in the history of American law. The Encyclopedia Britannica going so far in its description of Muller v Oregon to say, “although it appeared to promote the health and welfare of female workers, in fact led to additional protective legislation that was detrimental to equality in the workplace for years to come”, even calling the brief a “document outlining quasiscientific data on the negative effects of long working hours on both woman and men.”

Frankfurter could not have been more pleased, “the Muller case is ‘epoch making,’ not because of its decision, but because of the authoritative recognition by the Supreme Court that the way in which Mr. Brandeis presented the case – the support of legislation by an array of facts which established the reasonableness of the legislative action … “ Felix Frankfurter (33)

Brandeis wrote to Frankfurter regarding the decision on February 27, 1911:

“The Commission did, I think, quite as much as they could, and rather more than I thought they would with the efficiency argument. They accepted the fundamental principles that improvements in economy and management were possible, and that they must be made before the need would be recognized. Scientific management will follow that inevitably.”

In many ways, Brandeis surveyed the path and Frankfurter paved it. Brandeis serving as a mentor, Frankfurter followed in the footsteps of Brandeis. And they had a lot in common. Both men were Jewish. Both were nonpracticing Jews until later in life becoming radical attorneys. Both were magna cum laude graduates of the prestigious Ivy League institution, Harvard Law School, both were tapped Phi Beta Kappa Society, both wrote for the Harvard Law Review, and both of their appointments to the highest Court were highly contentious. Both were considered pioneers of progressive liberal policies and both men were staunch political proponents of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. And in Paris 1919 they would be primarily responsible for the creation of Israel.

It is around this cause their intimacy would deepen even further as the Jewish Question became a major concerted directive and a considerable amount of both of their lives in the latter days of the House were dedicated to a new home in Palestine. By now their relationship had far-reaching roots, Brandeis considering Frankfurter ‘half brother, half-son’. (34) . For twenty years Brandeis had Frankfurter on retainer, extra curricular activities of an activist judge hidden behind the blind of his personal emissary.(35) And in another act of serendipity, Frankfurter would be nominated to the Court one year after Brandeis retired from it. 

The Devil’s Agent, Mephistopheles

“The House of Truth is happier every time Mephistopheles crosses its threshold”

Winfred Denison to Oliver Wendell Holmes, March 3, 1913

Both Frankfurter and Brandeis worked their shared friendship with Oliver Wendell Holmes to help facilitate the necessary legislative changes that would help ensure success of their Efficiency Movement. The two sectarian Jews turned international Zionists had identified Holmes as the one judge on the Supreme Court with whom they felt was sympathetic to their cause. Brandeis, Frankfurter and Holmes approached Constitutional law similarly, with an open mind. For Holmes, if experimentation was necessary in an ever-evolving, evermore complex world then he will help pave the road while, to Brandeis, Frankfurter and the rest of the House, the Supreme Court was the biggest obstacle to their dream of a government run by experts and their dream of industrial democracy.  And, Oliver Wendell Holmes would be their most important facilitating agent, Holmes was their Mephistopheles as they all stood at the crossroads of history.

They saw Holmes “as their only hope on an otherwise reactionary Court.” (36) Frankfurter especially heaped praise on Holmes commissioning a bust of Holmes in his court robes and through the pages of the Harvard Law Review and the New Republic, Frankfurter applauded Holmes every chance we could, as an American treasure and put forth to America the aging Justice as an icon, a representative symbol of American tradition worthy of wide veneration. “What drew Frankfurter and Denison to Holmes was his personality and open-mindedness. Holmes did not subscribe to their ideas, but he was willing to listen to them. They admired his intellectual curiosity, conversational skills, and sense of fun. Mephistopheles, as Holmes often referred to himself, admired their ambition, intelligence, and optimism about the future.” (37)(38)(39)(40) 

“[Holmes] was neither Liberal or Conservative but simply believed that the government should be allowed to experiment with socioeconomic legislation. Holmes’s philosophy, therefore, led to outcomes that pleased his friends – especially in cases involving organized labor.” (41)

An excerpt borrowed from, The House of Truth: Home of the Young Frankfurter and Lippmann:

“Holmes’s affection for his youthful friends also shows in a letter written to diplomat Lewis Einstein shortly after Holmes’ seventy-fifth birthday. While the Justice received many accolades on that day, he was especially thrilled by the party arranged for him by his wife. Mrs. Holmes invited a group of young people for dinner and punch, and they stayed late into the evening. Holmes related: “We giggled and made giggle, as Cowper says, until after midnight, and I was really touched and pleased. . .I like the young, and these, at least, seem to be fond of me. We encourage each other.” In turn, Holmes earned the awed respect of the young progressives by his ruthless willingness to re-examine tradition and long-held assumptions about American law and society.” (42)

“Holmes loved flattery, and Frankfurter and Denison were expert flatterers” (43)

Frankfurter, who didn’t miss an opportunity to praise or flatter Holmes often surprised the Justice with extravagant gifts on several of his birthdays that played to Holmes’ more ego based sensibilities while Brandeis would dine often at the Justice’s home.  Together, Brandeis and Frankfurter flanked Holmes and controlled him. Lippmann, Croly, Harold Laski and other good friends of the House would also write articles commemorating Holmes and Holmes reciprocated the affection heaped on him by the young group of intellects, as evidenced in a letter Holmes wrote to Frankfurter on March 8, 1912 following a rousing evening in Holmes’ honour:

“It will be many years before you have the occasion to know the happiness and encouragement that comes to an old man from the sympathy of the young.” (44)(45)

“At the Harvard Law School and in the pages of the New Republic and the Harvard Law Review, Frankfurter made it his mission for the rest of the country to recognize the greatness of … Justice Holmes” (46)

“Frankfurter and his friends were not simply praising Holmes for Holmes’s sake. They were trying to remove the Court as an obstacle to socioeconomic legislation. They were laying one of the foundations of American Liberalism, a belief in government’s role in regulating the nation’s economic life, in managing labor-management relations, and in recognizing the rights of unions … The Court was the only thing standing in the way of industrial democracy.” (47)

Note that, ‘Liberal’ in the context of the late 19th and early 20th century, stressed the importance of increased individual liberty and minimal government interference. The House definition, now shockingly the norm in the 21st century, is a complete 180 degree reversal of the original, with an emphasis on increased government oversight and a top-down, centralized control of society. The common good over individual good. A Government built to protect its people. Similarly reversed through this reformation of American values has been the definition of the US Constitution. Previously thought to be a document written to protect the negative rights of the people against State overreach, the men of the House targeted the central document of American liberty as public enemy number one. The American Constitution, the greatest enabler of individual liberty had now become its greatest obstacle. 

“I have little doubt that the country loves it … and if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them … it’s my job” Oliver Wendell Holmes (48)(49)

 

A House of Truth Homecoming

The Progressive Movement was the key Brandeis and Frankfurter needed to open the door to Constitutional experimentation through appealing to Americas liberal sentimentalities. The deliberate coercion of traditional Western institutions through the social sciences. A profound change in America took place during this time, the beginnings of which coincide with the rise and fall of the House of Truth, signifying a national social reordering of society so comprehensive as to require a splitting of history into a before and after. The Progressive Movement perhaps the largest reformation of Western values ever seen before or since. The drifting definitions of our institutions, the deliberate degradation of our values, and the near total disappearance of our traditions, go beyond the measure of this text. Taylorism played a huge part in the Progressive Movement, later serving as the inspiration for the Technocracy movement. This next technocratic step of the totalitarian tiptoe was first promoted and instituted, maybe not to the surprise of some, during the Roosevelt administration twenty years later.

The friendships, networks and circle of influences forged in the early years of the House would later expand out into a larger international sphere. The Peace Conference in 1919 was littered with this handful of former residents and honoured guests of the House. The same progressive movement that was such a catalyst for social change in the United States, Canada and Britain, was now going global. And, former House of Truth roommates were all well positioned in Paris, all having the ear of the most influential figures of the Conference. Frankfurter and Lippmann arriving months early working with Colonel House to help facilitate a deeper Anglo-American bond between Britain and the United States prior to the Conference. In many ways, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was a House of Truth homecoming.

Lippmann, Frankfurter, and Brandeis were all intimately involved in the drafting of Wilson’s Fourteen Points Speech, the Balfour Declaration and the very creation of Israel. Lord Eustace Percy, an original House resident, serving as an assistant to British Foreign Secretary Robert Cecil participated intimately in the creation of the League of Nations Covenant in Paris. Percy worked directly with Lord Balfour and Philip Kerr (another British resident of the House), as secretary of the Rhodes Trust, overseeing the administering of the Rhodes scholarship program. In Paris, Percy who helped push forward the very Anglo-American ideology that prevailed in Paris was private secretary to British Prime Minister – one of the ‘Big Four’ – David Lloyd George. Loring C. Christie, the Canadian resident of the House, was in Paris standing right next to Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden the entire time and can be seen in Orpen’s, The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors painting. Fitting name indeed. Lippmann working for Wilson, Frankfurter for the Zionist delegation, were all at Paris 1919.  And Frankfurter, the natural extrovert, was right at home with friends he considered family and according to his personal secretary Ella Winter, fittingly, “had a foothold, or at least a toe-hold, it seemed, in every delegation.” (50) The consummate kochleffel.

 Evaluating the decisions made then, with the assistance of over one hundred years of hindsight now, we see what results in the absence of Eisenhower’s “alert and knowledgeable citizenry”, we see what happens when public accountability is absent, we see a clearly dependent society unable to properly mesh “the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals”. (51) A repugnant statement from the very  beginning, we are now the possessors of a military preparedness not yet seen in the recorded history of Man. A man-made machine monolith able to kill from good safe distances long ago perfected and a society now generations removed from itself through an over-reliance on material ease, comfort, and endless distraction.

From Taylorism comes the principles of division of labour and the assembly line made so famous by Henry Ford and others like him. It cannot be overstated here the stepping from one’s own arable land onto the factory floor being an important violation of the individual. From the Efficiency Movement first promoted by Taylor, Valentine, Brandeis and Frankfurter, comes society wide radical reform. From the Preparedness Movement, which was largely created and directed by favourite friends of the House, all Century Club members Theodore Roosevelt, Henry L. Stimson, and Elihu Root. We see what is possible when government is left to its own imagination, for over a century, free from the restraints of public purview. It is anything but free and open and having flipped the definition of liberalism on its head, the resultant society we see today is representative of nothing classic liberal. What we see is the culmination of blindly trusting the scientific expert combined with excessive Progressive social reform – a nearly perfected, and soon to be fully aware, Welfare State.

Follow the author at Bulletproof Publishing, YouTube, Facebook, and Minds,   Twitter and elsewhere @TriviumMethod.

 

 

Footnotes

1. From dinner table to articles in the The New Republic. https://themorningnews.org/article/the-house-of-truth
2. Elihu Root Phi Beta Kappa https://web.archive.org/web/20090709093431/http://pbk.rutgers.edu/history.shtml
3. Brad Snyder, The House of Truth pg.
4. Harper’s Weekly, The Human Audit, Richard Washburn Child; https://books.google.ca/books?id=uvjKj7q2mtYC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=the+human+audit+richard+washburn+child&source=bl&ots=Z3ZVcxmRqT&sig=ACfU3U2EA23xs_SRc_zhliBxMxcbFNi7uw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwialICQ9pr0AhVUHTQIHageCpoQ6AF6BAgPEAM#v=onepage&q&f=true
5. American Magazine, Moses Could Have Used This Man, Bruce Barton January 1916 page 52
6. Brad Snyder, House of Truth, page 110.
7. Felix Frankfurter to Alfred Mitchell – Innes, 11/7/1914, pg 3; RGV to WTD 7/27/1914 pg 1 – 2,RGV Papers, Carton 9, Folder 41.
8. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management most influential of 20th century see https://faculty.lsu.edu/bedeian/files/most-influential-management-books-of-the-20th-century.pdf
9. “FREDERICK TAYLOR was the most influential management guru of the early 20th century.” “and Vladimir Lenin, who regarded scientific management as on of the building blocks of socialism” The Economist Sept, 10, 2015 https://www.economist.com/business/2015/09/10/digital-taylorism
10. https://hbr.org/1988/11/the-same-old-principles-in-the-new-manufacturing
11. FWT letter to LDB https://www.theivybookshop.com/book/9781494812751
12. FWT letter to LDB https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/business-leaders/frederick-winslow-taylor
13. Martha Banta is author of Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford, published University of Chicago; professor emeritus English at the University of California, Los Angeles. PhD and bachelors degree Illinois University; She was awarded the Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies in 2002 for her lifetime of achievement and service within the field; see also, https://www.wiareport.com/2020/05/in-memoriam-martha-banta-1928-2020/; see also, https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/2020/05/22/in-memoriam-martha-banta/
14. Croly’s The Promise of American Life the single most important contribution to progressive thought and Croly as the most important American political philosopher. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/crolys-progressive-america
15. Lippmann biography https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Lippmann
16. Funding from Whitney and Morgan Snyder, Brad, The House of Truth, A Political Salon pg.90
17. Snyder, Brad, The House of Truth pg 91; see also Walter Lippmann to Van Wyck Brooks, 2/5/1914 PPWL, pg 17
18. Brad Snyder The House of Truth, page 114 Frankfurter and his friends
19. Lippmann gilded Jewish ghetto Walter Lippmann and the American Century; see https://archive.org/details/walterlippmanna00stee/mode/1up?q=gilded+jewish+ghetto&view=theater
20. Metropolitan Club, The Writings of Walter Lippmann June 2, 2002 c-span
21. Foreign Affairs, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, Henry C. McPherson, Jr., Fall 1980 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/walter-lippmann-and-american-century?utm_medium=promo_email&utm_source=lo_flows&utm_campaign=registered_user_welcome&utm_term=email_1&utm_content=20211109
22. Snow, Nancy, Information War, page 32. https://books.google.ca/books?id=IcD3aKhU8fYC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=walter+lippmann+father+of+modern+journalism&source=bl&ots=xBxwz_dBvW&sig=fjtO7x2vXyJ78jx5c18Iqdd0icw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=McuYT4biIIa08AS4o-TuBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=true
23. Blumenthal, Sydney (October 31, 2007). “Walter Lippmann and American journalism today”.
24. Lippmann and Public Opinion ‘foundational’ Carey, James W. (March 1987). “The Press and the Public Discourse”. The Center Magazine. 20.
25. Brad Snyder, The House of Truth pg.
26. The House of Truth pg 76 Brad Snyder; see also FF to Thayer, 7/ 30/1913, Harvard Law School Dean’s Office, Box 1, Folder “Felix Frankfurter”;LDB to Ezra Thayer, 11/4/1913. Id
27. Felix Warburg to Thayer 11/17/1913, id.;
28. Walter Meyer to Thayer, 11/7/1913, id.;
29. Mack to Thayer, 11/29/1913, id. (Rosenwald);
30. Thayer to Meyer, 12/3/1913, id.
31. Brad Snyder House of Truth page 177; see also, FF to KL, 9/6/1917, at 6-8, id. See Barnard, The Forging of an American Jew, page 209.
32. Brad Snyder, House of Truth, page 110.
33. Felix Frankfurter Hours of Labor and Realism in Constitutional Law, 353,373 Harvard Law Review pg 365; see also https://www.jstor.org/stable/1326686?seq=13#metadata_info_tab_contents
34. Brandeis-Frankfurter Connection: Bruce Allen Murphy page 15.
35. New York Times archives; Brandeis had Frankfurter on retainer for twenty years.
36. Brad Snyder, House of Truth pg113 Holmes their only hope
37. Brad Snyder, House of Truth, page 25 Mephistopheles
38. Holmes, “Law and the Court,” in Collected Legal Papers 295 (1921) (Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles.”); see also, https://archive.org/details/collectedlegalpa027872mbp/page/n303/mode/2up?view=theater
39. Francis Biddle, Mr. Justice Holmes 124 (1942) (“[Holmes] knew he himself had something of Mephistopheles.”); see also, archive Mr. Justice Holmes page 123, 124 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.239713/page/n139/mode/2up?view=theater.
40. OWH to NG, 10/23/101-, at 1, OWHP, Reel 23, Page 506, Box 32, Folder 5 (“I am much pleased with my secretary, Olds. … I don’t quite know how far to introduce him to Mephistopheles. …”).
41. Brad Snyder The House of Truth
42. The House of Truth: Home of the Young Frankfurter and Lippmann by Jeffrey O’Connell and Nancy Dart Catholic University Law Review Volume 35 Issue 1 Fall 1985 Article 5); see also primary, HOLMES-EINSTEIN LETTERS, supra note 41, at 124.
43. Brad Snyder, House of Truth, page 70.
44. OWH to FF “sympathy from the young” letter. See Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912 – 1934, by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter; edited by Robert M. Mennel and Christine L. Compston xiii; https://books.google.ca/books?id=nJAXIYZKyFUC&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=The+House+of+Truth:+Home+of+the+Young+Frankfurter+and+Lippmann+by+Jeffrey+O%E2%80%99Connell+and+Nancy+Dart+Catholic+University+Law&source=bl&ots=C1OX8GdsLL&sig=ACfU3U2ruLiZTi1_mxbB69FBripnGAT-JQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj10MaG25X0AhWSJTQIHWU1AUcQ6AF6BAgEEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20House%20of%20Truth%3A%20Home%20of%20the%20Young%20Frankfurter%20and%20Lippmann%20by%20Jeffrey%20O%E2%80%99Connell%20and%20Nancy%20Dart%20Catholic%20University%20Law&f=false;
45. Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912 -1934 xiii “I am all alone except for some of the young fellows, especially Frankfurter who you introduced to me.” Holmes to John Chipman Gray, May 10, 1914, Boxx 33, folder 25, OWHP, Harvard Law School Library.
46. Snyder, Brad, The House of Truth page 113.
47. Brad Snyder The House of Truth, page 114 Frankfurter and his friends
48. Brad Snyder, The House of Truth, page 25.
49. OWH to FF, H-FF Corr., 3/24/1914, at 19 (“a law should be called good if it reflects the will of the dominant forces of the community even if it will take us to hell”)
50. Brad Snyder, The House of Truth, page 249.
51. Eisenhower Farewell Address https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript; see also; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU&t=865s