Secret Societies

Hat Tip to Old Dude for leading me to this article.

Here's a piece which sheds the Cape Cod Lighthouse beacon on the shadowy presence of secret societies in our midst. In this case it's known as The Family, and its C Street House in the DC area.

Many of its members are well known politicians and other assorted public figures. Some of them have had, and are having, important impact and influence on pending legislation, like the Stupak amendment to the health care bill.

This particular society is Christian Fundamentalist in nature, far right wing extremist in character and allegiance to big money in practice.

There have always been secrete societies, with a wide variety of tenets and goals, but usually fundamentalist and elitist in nature and character. A common thread is their obsession with keeping secret, and out of the limelight, the names of participants, as well as insistence on unwritten discussions, plans and agreements.

In Boston it's been known as The Vault. In Catholicism, it's Opus Dei.

In the 1970's Taylor Caldwell wrote a historical novel called "Captains and the Kings". Its plot was about a secret society of wealthy people around the world whose allegiance was to money, but no particular country, regardless of the source of their citizenship. It was an arms dealer cabal which supplied both sides of the Civil War. (By the way it's a great story, with a rather transparent inclusion of the Kennedy family's involvement in it, going back to the patriarch, Joseph Kennedy.)

This NPR interview reveals some rather striking similarities to the group Caldwell wrote about, including the inclusion in the cabal of people from all around the globe. It's the living proof that Follow the Money, especially when it's wrapped in Fundamentalist disguise, is the mother of all axioms, and truths.

I'd be most happy to receive a large and wide variety of comments on this post. Treat it as an open thread.

Lighthouse Keeper