Precis by Vic, 1/6/2015
In 1971, before his nomination as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, Lewis Powell prepared a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in which he characterized the campus protests and criticisms that developed in the late 1960s as a broad attack on the U.S. government and on the American free enterprise system. He lamented the weak response from the business community and outlined a strategy by which business and the Chamber of Commerce could counter this attack. He cited the campus, especially social science faculties, as the “single most dynamic source” of the “assault”. Many of the “bright young men” who are influenced by these faculties, said Powell, enter mainstream society and “quickly discover the fallacies of what they have been taught”, but others may obtain positions of influence and “authority over the business system they do not believe in.”
Powell’s strategy includes establishment by the Chamber of a staff of “highly qualified scholars in the social sciences who do believe in the system” and provision of incentives to induce more ‘publishing” and lecturing by similarly-minded independent scholars. The staff of scholars would evaluate social science textbooks on a continuing basis, so that publishers “know that they will be subjected -- honestly, fairly and thoroughly -- to review and critique by eminent scholars who believe in the American system ...” The fundamental imbalance of the faculties on many campuses should be addressed by writing and speaking with boards of trustees, alumni associations, and other groups about basic concepts of “balance, fairness and truth”. Actions are recommended for addressing high schools, monitoring television programming (“which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system” that leads to the “graduate erosion of confidence in ‘business’ and free enterprise”). , and using radio, print media, books and paid advertisements as ways to “enlighten public thinking”.
Powell recommends a more “vigorous role in the political arena” for the Chamber of Commerce and business in general, and notes that greater resort to the courts is a “vast area of opportunity”. Business must become much more aggressive in attacking those who “openly seek destruction of the system” and neither hesitate to “press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system.” nor “be reluctant to penalize politically those who oppose it.”.
The Powell memorandum proposes an explicit plan of how the business community can change the tenor of academic, public, and political discourse to build support for the American free enterprise system. The plan illustrates how public opinion is shaped and how well-resourced individuals and organizations can translate money into opinion and institutional practices that affect public health.