Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

My intense hatred, I cannot honestly call it anything else, for John F. Kennedy was largely based upon the startling similarities between New Frontier economic policies and those propounded by Wesley Mouch, the antagonist in Atlas Shrugged whose actions in government office destroy the American economy.

In these early conversations at his house, Brother-in-law spoke to me frequently of Jesuits. What he said was easy to dismiss as typical Ku Klux Klan anti-Catholicism.

That the Jesuits deliberately persecute people in order to "test" their adherence to Christian virtues, from which they themselves seem exempt, was something upon which he insisted. He added that one Jesuit ruse was to tempt their victims into blasphemy, into calling themselves Christ, and then to slay them.

According to Peter Viereck in Metapolitics: Roots of the Nazi Mind : "Rosenberg reserves much of his most ferocious hate for the Jesuits and the Catholic hierarchy. Therefore his outline for the New Order consciously imitates Jesuit techniques and the Roman hierarchy."

In my mind's eye, that conjured up images of black-robed priests attacking unarmed victims with swords or daggers, and that seemed most improbable, but I held back from expressing doubt.

Sometimes when I appeared especially shocked by something Brother-in-law said, he would remind me that in the Vatican there is a Devil's Advocate whose job it is to present the arguments of Satan to the Pope, so the Pope can refute them. Then he would add that he himself was something of a Devil's advocate, in that he didn't adhere to all the ideas he was expressing.

Building secret societies that would employ some of the techniques of the Jesuits was an idea mentioned, perhaps conveyed from some other conspirator's discussions of plans in the manner of such an advocate, as Brother-in-law also warned, or promised, "The day will come when you will find yourself surrounded by Devil's advocates; if you answer all their arguments, you will become philosopher-king."

Gary said many times over again that the best government was that of the philosopher-king. At great length he would go on about the traits a philosopher-king should possess, such as being able to distinguish between coincidence and conspiracy. Another trait he mentioned was not punishing messengers for bringing bad news.

Surrounding a man with liars until he became so disgusted with lying that he would not tolerate an untruth was one of his ideas for preparing the philosopher-king for the job. On a separate occasion he told me that someday I would be surrounded by liars, and if I could find a way to make them tell me the truth I would become philosopher-king.

"Kerry, there are tribal secret societies that surround their king with beautiful women all his life and watch him make love to them, then they sacrifice him."

That sounded like a dubious honor.

"Kerry, do you think a philosopher-king should have a good enough memory to remember something for thirteen years?"

Of course.

"Rosenberg should not be accused of wanting dictatorship as a principle," Viereck tells us in Metapolitics , adding soon afterwards: "He follows the spirit of Wagner's complicated distinction between King and monarch. Rejecting alike government by parliament or by kaiser (monarch), Rosenberg demands the Volk-king, the hero-dictator risen from the ranks, whom Jahn and Wagner prophesied.

"The qualities and justification of the Volk-king are outlined in the Fuhrer section of the chapter on Wagner's metaphysics. This Wagnerian concept is basic to Nazism. Rosenberg says: 'We want to see in a German king a person like ourselves… But yet the incarnation of a hero myth.'…

"The gist of the Fuhrer myth is that the Fuhrer is (incarnates) the Volk, instead of ruling it detachedly like monarch or economic class or representing it like a democrat. The Fuhrer is an organic part of the Volk instead of a detached atom. This myth is absolutely basic to Hitler's rule today. Of course, it is only a myth… "

"Kerry, I think the philosopher-king should be a very gentle person, someone with the soul of a poet, but that he ought to be surrounded for protection by mad dogs, the worst and meanest badasses around." Though wondering what type of administration that would produce, I kept my speculations to myself.

"Kerry, you know at the end of the war Hitler came up on the radio and gave a speech calling for the werewolves of Germany to come to the aid of the Nazi cause."

"Yes, you have mentioned that before," was my response after the first telling.

"Do you believe the saying that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely?"

"Yes. It's like Ayn Rand says, 'Who will protect us from our protectors?' That's an old Roman saying, but it's in Latin."

"You've also heard the saying, 'Curiosity killed the cat."

"Yeah, that's a bunch of shit, though. More cats have been killed from lacking the curiosity to look both ways before crossing the street, probably, than by too much curiosity."

"You might just want to keep it in mind anyway. Someday you may find yourself in a situation where it is true."

"I doubt that very much."

"Well, just don't forget you could be wrong."

I was not inclined to persist in arguments with a man who might be both armed and dangerous, not to mention insane.

"Kerry," he once said, "one good way to construct the government of the philosopher-king would be to arrange it so that whoever was king didn't know it, and in such a way that he would be used for decision-making purposes while standing in line at the store and places like that."

So incomprehensible a notion seemed academic to me, but I saw no reason to say as much. A stupid idea anyhow, this philosopher-king jazz, because even if a dictator managed to rule benevolently, what was to guarantee an equally kind and wise successor? That objection expressed, Slim and Gary both answered, "Yes," and looked smug, as if they had already thought about that one and solved it.

As for our unwitting philosopher-king, Slim contributed something now about that idea: "As one good way to do it. Not the only way."

"Sure," I said, eyeing them both with a mixture of skepticism and boredom, "that sounds like one good way to have a philosopher-king."

"What do you think about the omnibudsmen they have in Scandinavian countries to help ordinary people gain access to government? What about having people like that in our nation? Do you think that would be a good idea?"

I did.

Once Brother-in-law also asked me if I didn't agree that the philosopher-king should also be someone who could keep "state secrets."

I routinely concurred.

E. Howard Hunt writes in Undercover that he once received a cable signed jointly by Richard Bissell and Tracy Barnes summoning him to headquarters:

"Bissell had succeeded Frank Wisner as chief of the Clandestine Services, and after hospitalization brought on by overwork Wisner had been assigned to the relatively relaxed post of London chief of station. As a special aide to Allen Dulles, Bissell had created the concept of the U-2 aircraft, then managed that successful program. I had held several perfunctionary meetings with Bissell during consultation periods in Washington and a lengthier one during a Latin American chiefs of station conference in Lima, Peru.

"As principal assistant to Bissell, Tracy Barnes told me, I was needed for a new project, much like the one on which I had worked for him in overthrowing Jacobo Arbenz. My job, Tracy told me, would be essentially the same as my earlier one, chief of political action for a project recommended by the National Security Council and just approved by President Eisenhower: to assist Cuban exiles in overthrowing Castro. Representative Cuban leaders were grouping in Florida and New York, and my responsibility would be to organize them into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, once Castro was disposed of, form a provisional government in Cuba…"