Funding for the culture war.

A cultural war for the hearts and minds of Americans has been raging for at least two decades. James Dobson, the right,wing leader of Focus on the Family, in his book Children at Risk, promotes the idea of a "civil war" and says, "Bloody battles are being fought on a thousand fronts both inside and outside the government." The funding for this war comes largely from private foundations started by wealthy families and from corporations able to get tax write-offs for their contributions.

Leon Howell, the former editor of the defunct Christianity and Crisis, recently prepared a 65-page report for the United Church of Christ Board of Homeland Ministries entitled "Funding the War of Ideas." Prior to Howell's report, Russ Bellant's important book The Coors Connection and some articles in the alternative press were the few sources of information on who finances the far right.

The chief financiers are 12 to 15 foundations funded by wealthy families or large corporate interests. A number of corporations also contribute directly to right,wing groups. This means that a relatively small group of wealthy donors is able to finance hundreds of ultra,right and conservative organizations, thus creating the illusion that the far right is a diverse and growing group of Americans devoted to turning the clock of history back to the 1930s or beyond.

The funding of right,wing ideology has been so successful that it largely determines the political agenda in Washington, shapes many news reports, and has created a significant right,wing following on university campuses.

One of the major right-wing donors is the Coors family, which owns the Adolph Coors Company and its subsidiaries, the Coors Brewing Company, the Coors Technology companies, and the Coors Porcelain Company. One person whose projects have been heavily funded by Coors is Paul Weyrich, the leading strategist of both the secular and religious right. A devout Catholic, Weyrich is described by Catholics for a Free Choice as having "views rooted in a kind of populist nativism which often verges on racism' and as having "hired convicted Nazi collaborator Laszlo Pastor to staff the Free Congress Foundation-based Coalition for America."

At the instigation of Weyrich, in 1973 Joseph Coors provided $250,000 in seed money for the Heritage Foundation, probably the most influential "think tank" in the United States. No less a power than Newt Gingrich has described the Heritage Foundation as without question the most far-reaching conservative organization in the country in the war of ideas."

The Heritage Foundation was important in shaping the policies of the Reagan administration, and it includes among its staff such former Reagan-Bush administration figures as Richard Allen (who is credited with proposing the North American Free Trade Agreement), Edwin Meese, William Bennett, and Jack Kemp. Joe Coors himself was not only a member of Reagans "kitchen cabinet" but also assisted in funding the construction of Heritage's headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

Heritage now claims over 200,000 donors; its 1993 income was $22.9 million, of which 25 percent came from foundations. According to Russ Bellant:

Heritage has produced a vast collection

of materials on behalf of

business interests in areas of deregulation,

environment, taxation,

anti-trust law, and the trade and

industrial unions.... Its proposals

go out to over 7,000 Congressional

and Administration officials

and staff, journalists, and

major donors.

Another influential right,wing "think tank" is the American Enterprise Institute, which dates back to 1943. The AEI is also pro-business and includes among its current staff Robert Bork, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Lynn Cheney, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Charles Murray of Beli Curve notoriety, Michael Novak, and Norman Ornstein.

A group of foundations--Bradley, Olin, Smith Richardson, and Scaife--generally give to the same right-wing organizations and are sometimes referred to as "the four sisters" According to Leon Howell, "the four sisters" gave a collective $3.8 million in 1993 to the Heritage Foundation and $3.4 million to the American Enterprise Institute.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is the largest of the "four sisters," with assets in 1993 of $425 million. The second largest is Smith Richardson, with assets of $367 million in 1993. H. Smith Richardson is the son of the founder of Vicks Chemical Company. The third largest in 1993, with assets of $208 minion, is the Sarah Scaife Foundation, started by the grand, daughter of Andrew Mellon but now controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife. Richard Scaife, the vice,chair of the Heritage Foundation, has provided money from other entities, such as the Sarah Scaife's Grandchildren's Trust, to various right,wing groups. A comprehensive article about him in the July/August 1981 Columbia Journalism Review reported, "Since 1973, Scaife entities have provided seed money to as many as two dozen New Right organizations," which at the time of their organization was "of more value than millions later on."

The last of the "four sisters," with assets of $139 million in 1994, is the John M. Ohn Foundation, whose parent company, Olin Chemical, owns Winchester Rifles, among other enterprises. Needless to say, these four foundations are largely unknown to the general public, as is the vast influence they wield.

Besides Heritage and the AEI, the "four sisters" contributed $895,000 to the Free Congress Foundation, which was launched by Paul Weyrich after he had served a year as president of the Heritage Foundation. The Free Congress Foundation is an outgrowth of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, which was also organized by Weyrich and funded by joe Coors in 1974. The CSFC engaged in electoral politics, recruiting and supporting right, wing candidates. Jeffrey Coors became chair of the Free Congress Foundation, and the Coors family continued as the largest single founder of it.

One of the most significant recent creations of Weyrich and his Free Congress Foundation is National Empowerment Television, which calls itself "C-SPAN with an attitude." Leon Howell writes:

Each week Newt Gingrich, the

National Rifle Association, Accuracy

in Media, and the Cato

Institute, among others, trek to

NET's studios. They spend an

hour presenting their point of

view to the television audience

and taking viewer cause. . . . The

third Tuesday of every month the

Christian Coalition trucks the set

for its show from its Chesapeake,

Virginia, headquarters. Daily at

6:00 PM Paul Weyrich interviews

conservative newsmakers and

does a five-minute commentary.

The "four sisters" and their right, wing relations have also been a significant source of money for the far right's print media. An article by Beth Schulman in the March/April 1995 issue of Extra, the publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, said that right-wing periodicals have for years

been systematically subsidized

with millions of dollars in foundation

grants from the John M. Olin 

Foundation, the Carthage Foundation,

the Sarah Scaife Foundation,

the Lynde and Harry Bradley

Foundation, the Smith Richardson

Fund, the Adolph Coors

Foundation, and several others.

Schulman found "more than $2.7 million in foundation grants between 1990 and 1992" going to four magazines: the American Spectator, the National Interest, the Public Interest, and the New Criterion. During the same period, "only $269,500 in combined grants from private foundations" were given to the Nation, Mother Jones, the Progressive, and In These Times, "the four leading progressive publications" Schulman points out that the grants to right,wing periodicals enable them to send free copies of every issue to key staff members on Capitol Hill . . . to public and university libraries," and to build relationships with opted page editors, talk show hosts, and broadcast producers," whereas the progressive periodicals cannot afford to do so.

Right-wing foundations have also needed a number of groups that attack public television and radio, such as the Committee for Media Integrity, the Media Research Center, and the Media Institute. According to Russ Bellant, these pressure groups, along with Reed Irvine's Accuracy in Media, evolved in an attempt to bludgeon national print and electronic media into a rightist posture. Coors became a funder of a number of them, including Morality in Media, the Media Institute, and Accuracy in Media, as did the four sisters."

Another Coors project is the Institute for Educational Affairs, which helps students in scores of US. colleges and universities to begin and continue publication of right,wing campus newspapers and magazines through what is called the Collegiate Network. The IEA concentrates on Ivy League institutions such as Dartmouth and Yale, state universities, and other prominent colleges. The IEA not only oversees the conduct of these papers via on,site inspections but has set up a national program to sell advertising space in them. The IEA board includes Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner, Robert Bork, and William Bennett.

Finally, it is worth noting that a number of foundations have entered the legal field, which at one time was dominated by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons Legal Defense Fund. Today there are more than 20 far right legal foundations or firms, including Pat Robertsons American Center for Law and Justice, whose acronym, ACLU, is an obvious and deliberate echo of tbe ACLU The Washington Legal Foundation, the Center for Individual Fights, and the Pacific Legal Foundation are other prominent right-wing legal organizations which have received funds from Bradley, Ohn, Scaife, and Smith Richardson.

The story does not end here, since there are also anti,environmental groups, rightwing religious groups, and others who might not exist if they were not funded by foundations. We can only conclude that many of the numerous right,wing organizations in the United States are maintained by funds from corporate interests, their families, and their heirs. Such money not only "talks," it changes the political landscape.

John M. Swomley is an emeritus professor of social ethics at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. He is also president of Americans for Religious Liberty and serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union.