ticket of Colin Powell and Bill Bradley: at last, a third party WallrnStreet and the Pentagon can love!)rn1should like to see, instead ofrnan America First Party, arncluster of 75 or 180 smaller entities:rna West Kansas First Party, a RhodernIsland First Party, a SouthernrnOregon First Party, and so on,rnrepresenting every nook andrncranny of all 48 states.rnThe post-Cold War populists—who are largely isolationist,rndecentralist, libertarian, ticked-off but sweetly naive in a FrankrnCapra way—know that the enemy is not a Nicaraguan Marxistrnor a Compton rapper but a regime represented by the likes ofrnWilliam Bennett and Robert Rubin. We will not find succor inrnthe Democracy—the party that effaced all regional distinctionsrnin constructing our national security state—and as for thernRepublicans, can anyone name a single instance when WallrnStreet and Main Street lined up on opposite sides of an importantrnissue and the GOP sided with Main Street? Don’t twornwords—^Wendell Willkie—say all that need ever be said aboutrnwho owns the party of Reconstruction, TR, and the Gulf War?rnOur forefather, William Jennings Bryan, had the varmints inrnhis sight in a speech at Springfield, Ohio, in the summer ofrn1896: “My friends, remember that relief cannot come to yournfrom those who have fastened this yoke upon you. You may gornto New York or Boston and find Bnanciers. . . that know morernabout Europe than they do about the United States. They gornoftener to London than to the great prairies of the West andrnSouth. If because of their more intimate acquaintance withrnforeigners they have exaggerated ideas of the necessity for foreignrnaid, you people who live between the Alleghenies and thernGolden Gate—you who are willing to trust your all upon thernRepublic and rise or fall with it—you have the power and thernright to take the reins of government into your own hands andrnadminister the law, not for foreign syndicates, but for the peoplernof the United States.”rnThe Wise Men who buried the republic were the children ofrnthose financiers. The fathers—robber barons and Wall Streetrnsharks—shipped the sons from the hearthstone to exclusivernboarding schools, where the}’ spent their youths playing thatrnepitome of boring internationalism, soccer, and learning a codernof conduct which evidently countenanced the mass slaughterrnof one’s countrymen in illegal wars, as long as the statesmen responsiblernknew which is the salad fork. The very best productsrnof the prep schools became the patrician radicals who arcrnamong the greatest American independents (and the palladiarnof American independence), but for every Edmund Wilson atrnthe Hill School there were fourscore Harrimans at Groton, bosrnstripped of attachments to particular American places or ancestorsrnor anything beyond the plunderbund.rnThey came to form a deracinated ruling class which entangledrnus in the most quotidian affairs of Europe because Londonrnand Paris were, to them, closer than Abilene or Green Bay.rnThere’s nothing very jolly about what Skull and Bones did tornm) country, Roger.rnYet to oppose them—to say that I lenry Stimson and DeanrnAchcson and their epigoni, George Bush and Strobe Talbott,rnare traitors who subverted an America of which they knowrnnothing—is so far outside the pale of acceptable speech thatrnmerely to make the observation is to invite the eavesdroppingrnof the ironically named Louis Freeh. (Who’d have guessedrnthat the first client of the Empowerment Agenda would be thernFBI?)rnAgain, I summon the shade of Bryan, “that I leaven-bornrnBryan / That I lomer Bryan, who sang from the West,” as VachelrnLindsay cried. In a campaign speech at Milwaukee, he said:rnI want to call your attention to what some one has saidrnabout the influence of foreign nations and foreign personagesrnin the affairs of our nation: ‘Against the insidiousrnwiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me,rnfellow citizens), the jealousy of a free people ought to bernconstantly awake, since history and experience prove thatrnforeign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republicanrngovernment.’ There is the language which Irndesire to press upon your memories. It is not my language.rnWhose language do you suppose it is? Whatrnman, ‘trying to stir up the passions of our people againstrnforeigners’; what demagogue ‘appealing to the mob tornjustify his course’; what anarchist do you suppose usedrnthose words? Those are the words of George Washington.rn. . . If it was true then, it is true now. My friends, Irnwarn you against entrusting the destinies of this nationrnto legislative bodies which are beyond your control.”rnNote that Bryan did not say “beyond your ken” or “beyond yourrnpower of recognition” but “beyond your control.” As AlexanderrnCockburn recently pointed out in the Nation, populists arernfools to huff and puff at chimerical shadows (Jewish bankers!rnThe Illuminati!) when the villains are hiding in plain sight.rnTheir creed was uttered a century and a half ago by DanielrnWebster, who said, “There are no Alleghenies in my politics.”rnThis was a fib—the only time Webster lived down to this mottornwas in his disgraceful promotion of the Compromise ofrn1850, when he abjured New England interests and forced a hatedrnFugitive Slave Act on his people. But the ignoble sentimentrnunderlying Webster’s aphorism is shared by every knave andrncommissar of the New World Order (no matter if wifey collectsrnfolk art).rnWe are too versicolored a country to be embraced by arnsingle American populism: our politics must be filledrnwith Alleghenies. (Those who in 1864 called themselves thernUnion Party sustained a brutal military occupation of theirrnSouthern brothers for another dozen years.) While patriots todayrnshare common foes—the whole New York Times-Heritagern18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn