Liars (10 page)

In December 1918, he began a tradition of presidential globetrotting, personally traveling to Europe to negotiate a peace treaty and secure his precious League. His imperious attitude won him few friends abroad (“
I could not bear him,” Britain's King George V complained), and his unwillingness to compromise won him few friends at home.

Returning from Versailles, Wilson refused to cooperate with Republicans
to secure Senate ratification of his treaty. He stooped to insults and threats instead, attacking opponents of his new world government as “blind and little provincial people” with “pygmy minds” who should be “
hanged on gibbets as high as heaven, but pointing in the opposite direction.”

“Any man,” Wilson proclaimed, “who resists the present tides that run in the world will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem as if he had been
separated from his human kind forever.”

Wilson, like a future acolyte named Barack Obama, was handsomely rewarded for his globalist efforts by winning the highest honor in the progressive, globalist land: the Nobel Peace Prize.

The U.S. Senate wisely rejected Wilson's plea to join the League, but the damage was already done. Two and a half decades later, Wilson's protégé Franklin Roosevelt picked up the world-government mantle by helping to create the United Nations, while across the pond, the European Union has forced progressive internationalism on an entire continent.

Although the progressive effort to place elites in charge of society and redefine world governance is incomplete, it is still very much under way. As Christine Legarde—head of the International Monetary Fund, a key component of the progressive world order—stated in a 2011 speech (fittingly held at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center):

More than anyone else, it was Woodrow Wilson who championed the cause of multilateralism and global fraternity. The seeds he planted bore fruit in the postwar milieu that produced the IMF and its sister organizations. For at the heart of our mandate lies a simple but powerful idea—that cooperation can bestow not only economic stability, but a better future for all.

Wilson's quest for top-down governance and globalism has not died with the passing of time. In April 2012, the Wilson Center bestowed its Award for Public Service on none other than Hillary Clinton. During the ceremony, Clinton sang the praises of the Wilson Center, but she did not once mention
the sordid chauvinism, elitism, and bigotry at the heart of Wilson's life and agenda.

Drawing on the progressive German influences of his studies at Johns Hopkins and his later writings that openly despised the Constitution, Wilson began the first wave of progressivism, a wave that would forever change the relationship between the federal government of the United States and its citizens.

In 1896, 1900, and 1908, Americans soundly rejected populist and progressive William Jennings Bryan for the White House, but by 1912, the public had become desensitized enough to elect Wilson president. (Wilson, in turn, appointed Bryan as secretary of State.)

No longer was progressivism confined to the universities and fringe candidates in American politics. It finally found a home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With sweeping constitutional amendments such as the Sixteenth, the Seventeenth (allowing direct election of senators), and the Eighteenth (banning the sale of alcohol), Wilson led a political revolution that forever changed Washington, D.C., and the ways it interacted with the daily lives of Americans.

In Washington, progressivism served as an ideal excuse for further seizing control of the nation. Leaders of both parties shrewdly embraced this new ideology as the best way to expand the federal government's authority (as well as their own, of course) under the guise of improving the lives of all citizens.

Progressive acolytes filled newsrooms, university faculty rosters, church pulpits, and newly opened government agencies and bureaus within walking distance from the White House. They proselytized with a missionary zeal that their movement could help the poor, end the scourge of alcohol, reform politics, remedy income inequality,
battle special interests, improve working conditions and living standards, and create a kind of heaven on earth—if only the right people were in power. They were Republicans and Democrats. They were members of the House and the Senate. They were judges and government lawyers. They were unelected government officials and administrators.

But they all shared a commitment to “progress.”

One of Wilson's greatest admirers was a tall, striking man with an irresistible smile and an infectious laugh. For years, he had labored in obscurity in the bowels of the Navy Department across the street from the White House. What the young man lacked in national prominence he would eventually make up for with his singular ambition and his already familiar last name: Roosevelt.

i
. Madeleine Astor would receive only five million dollars of her husband's huge estate. Sixty-nine million dollars would go to his son from his first marriage, Vincent, who would become one of Franklin Roosevelt's closest personal friends.

ii
. There's no demand, though, from modern progressives to rename a building just a few blocks away: the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, named for an ardent Stalinist.

iii
. In May 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that an 1894 income tax act violated Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 of the Constitution, a clause that prohibited direct federal taxes on individuals.

Trumbull County, Ohio

Circa 1885

Wayne Wheeler swung a newly sharpened scythe through the alfalfa grass that came up to his hips.

At five foot six and with a tidy mustache, he didn't very much look the part of an Ohio farmer. His father, Joseph, had insisted that his son become an educated man—go to college and become a lawyer or a doctor. Young Wayne had every intention on following through with his dad's wish—he loved his books—but he also loved the rough-and-tumble of farm life.

Every July, his father would summon him, his siblings, and a handful of farmhands from neighboring towns to the fields, where they would work days on end from sunup to sunset, cutting the season's supply of hay. Wayne liked the feel of calluses on his hand at the end of harvest season. He liked being around the farmhands who joked and cursed. Even now, as beads of sweat gathered on his upper lip in the sweltering Ohio sun, he found the musty, comforting smell of freshly cut grass wafting toward his nostrils intoxicating.

But with each passing summer, Wayne noticed something troubling about a number of the farmhands, a few tormented souls who staggered in each morning, eyes bloodshot and smelling of alcohol. They'd sneak sips of their favorite liquid from mason jars kept out of sight of his devout Congregationalist father.

One time, Wayne had been upstairs in his house when a drunken farmhand ran in from the fields in a maniacal rage, muttering
in long, slurred sentences, “I'm a kill you two ladies! But I ain't gonna do a hideous thang like that 'til I have my way with you two beauties!”

His mother and sister were screaming for help. “Joseph!” they cried out. “Joseph!”

Wayne cowered under his bed, covering his ears with the palms of his hands. He was paralyzed by fear.

He heard the front door slam open, then the sounds of fists pummeling flesh and bone, thumps and cracks audible through the floorboards. He never saw or heard from the farmhand again, nor was the subject ever spoken about in the Wheeler household.

And then there was “Old Soak,” the affable neighbor with a fondness for Kentucky bourbon and a knack for impressions of local town characters. As his nickname implied, Old Soak was harmless, even endearing, until he got hold of the bottle. Liquor made him belligerent and aggressive.

One drunken evening, Old Soak ambled up to the Wheelers' front porch to show off his impressions, but his kind face had transformed into a sneering picture of horror. Joseph Wheeler took the man's arm and walked him home. As Wayne watched the silhouette of his father and this pitiable, broken man amble off down the road, the young man promised himself he would never touch alcohol.

But none of those run-ins with drunkards compared to what happened one fateful July day.

Wayne had piled up bales of hay and was loading them into a wagon. The choreography of lifting a hundred-pound hay bale into the air and then onto a cart was something to behold. Wayne had worked out a fluid rhythm: his pitchfork plunged into the hay bale, up it went, and then it leaped forward in a graceful arc onto the back of the wagon. Once he got into a groove, Wayne could fork bales forever.

That was when he heard the voice. “Hey, boy!”

The call came from the other side of the wagon. He'd been so busy he hadn't noticed anyone approaching. Around the side staggered Hank, a new farmhand Wayne's father had hired for the season. Just a few years older than Wayne himself, Hank already had a deep, gravelly voice, a mustache, scraggly hair, and a deep tan earned from many seasons in the sun. Wayne knew he was one of the hands who drank, but he'd never caused any problems.

Wayne had never seen Hank drunk like this, though. He was staggering, leaning on his own pitchfork like a staff. Wayne could see the top of a glass flagon poking up from the pocket of Hank's coveralls. It swished and sloshed with every step the man took.

“Hey, boy!” Hank said again, advancing on Wayne. “Ol' man says we ga-go farster.”

Wayne couldn't understand. “What's that?” he asked.

“Ga-go farster!” Hank repeated. “Farster!”

Was he saying “faster”? Wayne could barely understand his drunken gibberish.

“Farster!” thundered Hank, almost shouting.

With that, he took his pitchfork and tore into Wayne's bales of hay, flinging them about in a desperate, frenzied attempt to throw more of them onto the wagon. He was making a bad job of it; strands of hay and larger chunks were flying every which way. Wayne's hard work was on the verge of being ruined.

“Hank, stop!” Wayne implored.

Hank's arms were moving like pistons, pumping up and down as he shoved the pitchfork into the hay and brought up again, pointing in the general direction of the wagon but instead scattering the hay into the low Ohio wind.

“Stop, Hank, stop!”

Hank stood straight for a moment, a wild look in his eye.

Wayne froze. He could hear Hank's grunting breaths and smell the stink of liquor from his lips.

Then Hank lunged forward once again, unsteady on his feet, seemingly aiming to grab another chunk of hay with the pitchfork. Instead, the sharp metal prongs plunged deep into Wayne's leg.

The pain blinded Wayne for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, surrounded by hay, the pitchfork still in his leg. Hank had backed away and was swaying where he stood, looking not at Wayne but around aimlessly at nothing in particular. Clearly, he had no conception of what he'd just done. And more important, he would be of no help.

Wayne looked toward the house and saw some figures running across the field, no doubt attracted by his scream. One of them looked to be a woman, her shawl trailing behind her in the breeze. His mother? His sister? He couldn't focus his reddened vision long enough to see. Closing his eyes to try to block some, any, measure of the pain, he began to crawl toward the house, his bleeding leg burning as the pitchfork tines shifted with every small movement.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Hank shuffling around the wagon, hands in his pockets, whistling an infuriating tune. The smell of liquor clung to the air.

It was a smell that would haunt Wayne Wheeler for the rest of his life.

•  •  •

By 1893, Reverend Howard Hyde Russell was one of the nation's leading crusaders against alcohol. He had founded the Anti-Saloon League, preaching against the perils of the demon drink, while a student at Oberlin College. Now, on a return visit to campus, he delivered a lecture on temperance that enthralled many of his
listeners but none more so than the student in his early twenties who found the abolition of alcohol to be a mission from God.

Wayne Wheeler, who had followed his father's wishes and entered college at Oberlin, sought out Russell after his speech. The reverend was so impressed by Wheeler's passion and zeal that he offered the young man a job on the spot. He believed he'd found a worthy apprentice. He was right. In fact, he'd found someone who would take the Anti-Saloon League to heights few had imagined.

Wheeler got right to work. As one of only a handful of permanent employees of the Anti-Saloon League, he rode his bike around Cleveland, evangelizing the masses during visits to churches and temperance meetings. He later enrolled in law school, knowing full well that his legal training could only help the cause.

Haunted by the memories of a childhood torment, Wheeler believed that only the full-scale abolition of alcohol across America could bring safety and comfort. Men could not be counted on to restrain themselves from their vices; the perfect world required absolute control. Besides, he wasn't going to let any other children cower in fear under their beds, loathing their own helplessness, while the devil's water turned men into demonic savages.

Turning the tide of public opinion against the powerful liquor industry was not going to be easy. And it wasn't going to be pretty. But it had to be done, regardless of the cost.