Masonic Power Myth

Tony Baldry
Current Member of Banbury Parliament
United Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England
Source 1 Source 2

Omar Bongo
Current president of Gabon. According to wikipaedia: "the world's longest serving ruler, excluding monarchies"
Source 1 Source 2

Jim Douglas
Current Governor of Vermont.
Grand Lodge of Vermont.
Source

Samuel Augustus Nunn, Jr
Current co-chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Source: Listed as a 33 degree Grand Cross mason on the "Supreme Temple Architects Hall of Honor"

Jesse Jackson
International activist. According to wikipaedia: "in February 2006, Jackson was voted "the most important black leader"
Harmony Lodge No. 88, Chicago, IL
Source 1 Source 2 Source 3

I've met your challenge. Now what?




[edit on 22-10-2008 by LordBucket]

Well, for starters you get a star from me!

The only guy I recognize is Jesse Jackson, but nice work there. (and thanks for the links)

Star and thanks indeed are in order. Now when people go off on nebulous terms about phantom powers, we can instead begin to speculate how Tony Baldry, Omar Bongo, James H. Douglas, Samuel Augustus Nun, Jr. and Jesse Jackson are running the world.

So yes, the challenge has been met, but if there are any other takers who wish to expand upon LordBucket's brigade I shall encourage such efforts.

reply to post by LordBucket

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Excellent work!

I think this is the first time I have seen a factual post with sources about masons in positions of 'power'.

I think you forgot one (tongue planted firmly in cheek):

Clark, Roy - Country-Western star and singer; member of the Grand Ole Opry



Sorry, I couldn't resist. Fine work though. A star for you!

I am, of course, familiar with both of the lists that MOFreemason and Sandalfon provided, but as noted, almost all on those lists are historical and not current.

While I haven't exhaustively explored both lists, I did come across one other name I'll toss in...

Dennis Archer - Currently serving on the board of trustees at Western Michigan University, and chairman of a large lawfirm in Detroit.

(I did say I'd be relaxed in people's definitions of "power", so I feel this one should be included... moreso than, say, Roy Clark or Michael Richards...)

reply to post by LordBucket

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1) Governors are at best local leaders. They have no power beyond their state's borders, which means little power unless its of a very large or critically positioned state. Further, Masonicinfo says this guy is a house of commons member. No different from being in the US house in terms of power, which means its not national.

2) Gabon is a small African country that is not even a regional power.

3) See above about governors

4) This is an appointed commission with no power except to do what commissions do, which is do investigations.

5) Jesse Jackson has no actual power but is more of a political lobbyist.

None of these have national power, and most of them have almost none (particularly 4 and 5). Now, where are these world leaders? If freemasons have so much power, surely someone could find a WORLD leader?

[edit on 22-10-2008 by LowLevelMason]

reply to post by LowLevelMason

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Now, to be fair, he did meet the requirements I described... and I set them so loose because you and I both know they're not going to find many (if any) Masons with global power.

My local sheriff is a member of my lodge. Yeah, I voted to re-elect him yesterday in early-voting. Not because he's a brother (he hasn't shown up to a meeting in years...) but because he's the incumbent and I'm fairly happy with the job he's done to date.

Power is relative. I'll say the sheriff of a large county wields at least a bit of local power. He still has to answer to non-Masons above him in the regional power structure, and to voters as well...

reply to post by JoshNorton

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Certainly. You did set it up so that anyone who knew about people like Jesse or the handful of congress persons would win. Frankly I could have met your challenged by listing Jesse and two Congressmen I'm aware of, but I wanted to see if any of the non-masons would

However, in terms of what this means for the masonic power myth, my point is that its still a myth. If Freemasons had the power others claim, it would not be so difficult and the most "powerful" leaders available would not be the leader of a regional African power and a state governor. Were the power myth true, I would expect half the US senate, the US Supreme Court, and the parliamentary equivalents across the world to be masons.

[edit on 22-10-2008 by LowLevelMason]

And I think there was a time, especially in the period between 50 and 100 years ago, that this was closer to the case -- senators, sovereigns, presidents, judges, and potentates were part of Masonic organizations.

And with all due respect to the reverend Mr. Jackson -- if he's now noted on a list of 'most powerful' Masons extant, there's been a (slight) shift from those earlier times of true organizational power and leadership.

(Gabon? Vermont? Oh my.)

Thus the perception of Masonic access to power -- which was originally (and factually) based on distinguished persons who were in significant leadership roles in the decades and centuries prior - continues today.



[edit on 10/22/0808 by Sandalfon]

reply to post by Sandalfon

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I'm not sure the majority or even 15% of politicians at any level or power type have EVER been members of organizations. Maybe 100 years ago, 10% - maybe a bit more.

However, as you point out, if we have to use Jesse Jackson as a "powerful mason" things are truly in a sad state of affairs.

Just to add a couple older members:
Berlusconi the current PM of Italy at least was a mason at some point
Also John McCain's father and grandfather were masons.

reply to post by Sandalfon

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Yeah, my own take on things is more or less as follows:

There were a lot more Masons in positions of power 40-60 years ago because there were more Masons 40-60 years ago. As membership numbers declined during the late 60s (with only slight upturns in some areas within the last few years) I would estimate that proportionally the number of men who held such positions decreased as well.

I've never seen it as a correlation of "if you want power, you've got to join this group" so much as "if x% of men are Masons then (x/10,000)% of men are Masons in politics" and as x has decreased, the results have been predictable.

P2 wasn't regular Freemasonry (and it dissolved more than 25 years ago).

Seeing as how both McCain's father and grandfather are dead, I don't necessarily consider them to be in positions of power today.

Thanks though.

[edit on 10/22/2008 by JoshNorton]

...I'm sorry...was that supposed to be sarcasm? You presented this as a challenge that "nobody in ten months" had been able to accomplish. All I did was spend twenty minutes on google. The reality is that nobody met your challenge up until now because they were lazy.



You asked for five, I gave you five. If you had asked for ten I would have given you ten. How many do you need? It's not like there's any shortage of them. Just look at what Lodge websites say.

Here's five more, according your criteria:

Prince Michael of Kent
Current Prince in the British Royal Family, Duke of Kent
Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons, Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Middlesex, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England
Source 1 Source 2 Source 3
(Gotta love this one)

Spencer Compton
Current Marque of Northhampton (like above, this is also english royalty)
Pro Grand Master, Ceres Lodge No.6977, Northampton
Source

David A. Patterson
Current Governor of New York
Boyer Lodge No. 1, Prince Hall Grand Lodge of New York
Source

Jeffrey Piccola
Current Pennsylvania Senator
Master Mason
Source
(Incidentally, if you read the article on this Lodge site, it claims that at the time the article was written, THIRTEEN (out of 50) Senators from Pennsylvania were masons. That's more than a quarter.

David Sentelle
Chief Justice of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Claims to be "A Mason" during a confirmation speech
Source

So now that I've doubled what you originally asked for, let's look at some other interesting facts, shall we?

For example, take a look at this. It's a news article on scottishrite.org which describes former US Representative Paul Gillmor introducing "House Resolution 33" to officially honor and recognize freemaons. Yes, it passed. Here's the bill on the Library of Congress website. Now...was Mr. Gillmor a mason? If you read the article on scottishrite, you'll see that they refer to him by the title "Brother." I don't see lodge or rank listed anywhere for him, but was a mason? I'm guessing he probably was.

Apparently it's quite common for members of our government to pass bills formally recognizing freemasonry. Here's another dot gov website with the Governor of Idahoissueing a Masonic Proclamation Look at the URL title. "Proc_masonic". Look at the text. "Proclamation" in big bold letters. Look at the part where he makes reference to "the Most Worshipful Grand Master". Think he's a mason?

Here's a link on gov.state.ak.us in which the Governor of Alaska formally declares several days in April as "Prince Hall Masonic Week" and encourages all citizens to "observe those days." Who's the Governor of Alaska, you ask? Does the name Sarah Palin ring a bell? Yep. Current Republican Vice Presidential Candidate. As a woman I'm not saying she's a mason, but do you understand how this must look?

Doesn't it also make you wonder how many masons in positions of power don't have their lodge affiliation listed conveniently on google? How many of those 13 Pennsylvania Senators do you think will come up if you do a google search for their name + "freemason"? And do you really think that Pennsylvania is unsual? I'm betting it probably isn't.

Just take a look at what some official Lodge websites have to say:

Here's the Grand Lodge of British Columbia. Go through the list and count how many of their Candian Presidents, Prime Minister and Premiers have been masons.

According to this biography J. Edgar Hoover, who was the Director of the FBI for 48 years, was a freemason. They cite Federal Lodge No. 1, Washington, DC. Wikipaedia claims that the FBI was formed in 1908. That means that for nearly half of the entire history of one of this country's intelligence services, it was run by a freemason. Quite possibly more than half, since we haven't checked how many other Directors were also freemasons.

The Grand Lodge of California claims that 35 US Supreme Court justices have been freemasons. According to this there have been a total of 110 justices in the entire history of our country. So a third of them were freemasons?

According to Hoffman Lodge 41215 out of 43 US Presidents have been freemasons.

Think about this. These are LODGES claiming that that a quarter of all Pennsylvania Senators are masons, that the FBI has been run by a freemason for half its history, that a third of all US Supreme Court Judges in history were masons. That more than a third of all our presidents have been masons.

You don't seriously think this isn't a large chunk of positions of power do you?


[edit on 22-10-2008 by LordBucket]

I'll have to check into that one further.

Historical. Not interesting unless you can cite the current director.

But none now.

And the last one left office 30 years ago. (And, not to quibble, but less than a third. It's generally believed that LBJ did not finish his degrees, thus lowering the total to 14/43.)

Seriously? No. I don't. 2 out of 50 governors? That's not a large chunk. Less than one third of all presidents in over 200 years? Not really evidence of us running things.

[edit on 10/22/2008 by JoshNorton]

It was an easy challenge, but the fact remains none of the people are world powers, which is the underlying point beyond asking anti-masons do to their research.



How about 1 world leader. By world leader I mean someone who exercises enough power to influence world events. That would be the executive leaders of any 1st world country, or the leaders of the legislative or judicial branches (also includes their parliamentary equivalents).

That is the point here, to force people to back up the claims that masons are somehow conspiring to rule the world. They can't do that if not even 1 world leader is a mason, and to make it likely you'd need quite a bit more than that. But I'd just like to see one.



This is the "patron" of UGLE freemasonry. Its a honorary office, and like most English royalty, this guy has no actual power.



Assuming this is true, ALSO just another English royal. There are lots of them..thousands, literally. Has no real power.


Yet again, not a world power. A governor.



As I've already pointed out, a handful of congress persons and a few senators are masons. Given the senate is a 100 person body and the house is 435, this isn't enough power to do anything and the nature of the office is STATE, not national.



Yet again, regional power. Not enough to carry out the lavish global quest for domination.



You provided what Josh asked for because he made the challenge lenient, but you haven't actually proved anything except that a small percentage of regional/state politicians are masons. This is not unusual, since a small percentage of the overall population are masons.



Wrong. This did not pass:



This goes against your point, since if masons were all powerful this should have been easy. Of course, as anyone who watches Congress knows, thousands of these resolutions "honoring" some group have been passed. They have no legal impact except make people feel good, and WE COULDN'T EVEN GET THIS PASSED. Its stuck permanently in committee.




Actually, its quite common for members of the government to recognize every group that is in their constituency. They also recognize the SPCA, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and countless thousands of other philanthropic or interest based groups. How surprising, a few masonry proclamations get thrown in too. Do you seriously believe that just because government leaders "recognize" every constituency group that asks them to, that they are a member of all these groups? The logic is baffling.



Your trying to take 1 state's history, which is unique, and generalize it to 50. There is no reason to believe this is true, especially since the popularity of masonry varies across regions.



Of course, your ignoring how many famous people have existed who were never masons. If you were to actually think about that, you'd see the percent is probably even smaller than the percent of the population that are masons.



You seriously didn't know lodges do this? Its one of the main things lodges do, we love talking about how many famous masons there have been. However, you notice NONE OF THEM ARE FROM THE PRESENT BECAUSE THE MEMBERSHIP RATE HAS DECLINED.




Given the number of people that are and have been world powers, nope, its quite the minority.

Of course, in the end all this assumes that because someone is a mason and in a position of power that it means something. Anti-masons have jumped the gun on this one, as the precept of the point has not been proven. Even if every world leader in history had been a mason, someone is going to have to provide evidence that being a mason either put them in that position or somehow was used to their advantage. No one has been able to do such.

JoshNorton:


It's "generally believed" that freemasons secretly rule the world. I'm not particularly interested in what "most people" believe, and I didn't think you were either. I quoted LODGES as sources. To write that off with "oh, but most people think..." is intellectually dishonest if you ask me. It's no different than the people you've been arguing with for the past ten months who make completely wild and random claims about freemasons being reptilian shapeshifters. If you're suddenly allowing "what most people think" into the discussion, there are a LOT of sites and figures I could throw at you. Let's not go there.

And, in any case, lowering the number of US presidents who were masons from 34 to 32 percent doesn't exactly change much.



You had to ignore a lot of what I wrote to give that response. I said "a quarter of Senators" "a third of judges" and "a third of presidents." Yes, I quoted two examples of freemason state Governors, but there's no reason to belive that's a complete list. Responding with "2 out of 50" would be like me saying that I have five cats in my house, and then assuming that that means there are only five cats in my entire neighborhood.



I'm not claiming that freemasons "run things." I'm claiming that there are an awfully large percentage of freemasons in positions of power.

The Masonic Service Association of North America estimated there were roughly 1,670,000 freemasons in North America in 2003. Please note that that includes Canada, so the number of freemasons in the US would be less than that. The US Census Bureau in 2003 there were 271.1 million people in the US of at least 5 years of age. Looking at those two numbers...that gives us a rough estimate that in 2003, approximately POINT SIX percent of the US population were freemasons.

And yet, according the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, TWENTY SIX percent of Pennsyvania Senators were freemasons.

Do you see a disparity?

reply to post by LordBucket

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To be fair, I have yet to see LordBucket come out and say anyting agqainst Masonry, only list (quite nicely I might add) people and sources. I am pretty sure masons are in no way close to taking over anything but a parade. Not that I concider that a bad thing, but the whold world domination thing kind of goes against what I learned in my degrees. I am happy just doing what we do and coming here to get the occasional laugh out of ignorance.

LordBucket, you did what none have done before you so I salute you sir.

Ya'll have a nice day.

LowLevelMason:


So we've gone from "Gee, we can't even name five" to "even if every world leader in history were a mason, it still wouldn't mean anything?"

There's not much I can say to that.

*shrug*

I guess I'll just ignore you and talk to the others then.

network dude:


Yes, thank you for noticing.

I understand what's going on, though. I've read some of the Mason vs. "Anti"-mason discussion in the past, and there's generally always a few "Anti"-masons screaming at the top of their lungs that masons are aliens and secretly rule the world, and stuff like that.

So...since you guys are so used to having to deal with that, I'm sure it's natural for the buried frustration to come out, sinply out of habit, even if I'm not a raving lunatic.

And to be fair...I did a bit of the same in my last post. LowLevelMason never said I couldn't come up with five example of masons in positions in power. It was JoshNorton's challenge. So it's not like LowLevelason was changing his position.



Meh. If we want I can talk about what I really think, but it might not be as exciting as your usual discussions.



Thank you. And to you as well.