John Taylor Gatto Fact Check #12: Congress Investigated the Secret Puppet Masters Part II: The Cox/Reece Committee

Part I of Congress Investigated the Secret Puppet Masters confirmed that the Commission on Industrial Relation’s 1916 report found evidence that the leading American philanthropic foundations were using their funds to gain control over American citizens, with the takeover of public education being only one means of achieving this larger goal.

Part II will examine the published findings of Norman Dodd, the research director for the Reece Committee.

The Dodd Report

The Dodd Report, published in 1954, presented the findings of the Reece Committee that continued the investigative work that was begun by the Cox Committee in 1952.

The Dodd Report offered the following conclusions about the leading nonprofit foundations [Bullet points paraphrased]:

From Pages 6-7:

∙The takeover of American educational institutions by the foundations in the early 20th century conditioned the American to the extent that they were not unduly alarmed when the Executive Branch of the Federal Government made its power grab during the 1930s.

∙Many of the responsibilities of providing public education were centralized, limiting the oversight of local communities.

From Page 10:

∙ The leading nonprofit foundations achieved a concentration of influence and power through their shared interests.

∙ One shared goal of the foundations was to gain control of key aspects of American life through the Federal Government and education.

From Page 11:

∙ The foundations pushed to recast education as a product for uniform mass consumption (and indoctrination), breaking from the traditional view of education as a means of supporting freedom of the individual as the cornerstone of our social structure.

From Page 12:

∙ The foundations created a national “public” system of education without troubling to ask for input from the American public.  To compound the problem, the new system of education was shaped to conform to the ideologies of social scientists.

 

∙ “Social Engineers”  will, as their title reveals, seek out control techniques to reshape the public mind.

From Page 14:

∙ The Ford Foundation’s open dedication to “problem solving” on a “world scale” is reason to be concerned about the power that it has to pull unseen levers that could operate as controls over an unsuspecting American public.

 

From Page 15:

∙ Dodd concluded his report by stating that America’s fortune-created foundations were actively promoting ideologies that were hostile toward the Constitution.

 

Reflection:

Speaking as one of the conditioned, the warnings from the 1950s seem like quaint alarmism.  How could dangers that have gone unnoticed for so long be so bad?  It’s easier to laugh them off or ignore them than it is to try to come to terms with the reality of an unseen prison.