Lawrence Dennis

From Kaiserreich

Revision as of 14:51, 29 October 2007

Lawrence Dennis (December 25, 1893 - ) is an American author, economist, and politician.

Life

Dennis was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He was of mixed race, though this was a fact he concealed later on in life. Following a notable career as a child evangelist, he was sent to Phillips Exeter Academy and then to Harvard.

During the war scares of the Weltkrieg, Dennis took courses in first aid to prepare himself for combat, but America never entered the war. He graduated from Harvard in 1920 and entered foreign service.

The turning point of Dennis' life came when he served in Centroamerica. He resigned from the foreign service in disgust at the rise of syndicalism in Central America, which he blamed on previous American intervention in the region. He then became an advisor to the Latin American fund of the Seligman banking trust, but again made enemies when he wrote a series of exposes about their foreign bond enterprises in the books The New Republic and The Nation in 1930. These exposes propelled Dennis into a national public intellectual career, publishing his first book at the height of the German power in 1932, Is Democracy Doomed?. The book submitted that democracy was, and by all right should be, on it's death knell, but warned of the grave dangers of a world devoid of its positive legacy. Dennis' two later books detailed his thought of the system that was emerging to replace it, which he called Corporatism. The Coming American Corporatism in 1936, which gave a much needed intellectual foundation to Huey Long's bid for the Presidency, and The Dynamics Of War And Revolution in 1940, on the Second American Civil War.

He has served as an adviser to Huey Long on a variety of subjects including economics, foreign policy, and racial relations.

Accusation of Mixed Blood

Speaking at a press conference held by the American Progress, Major General George S. Patton mentioned that he had heard that Dennis was of Mixed-Heritage. Specifically that his "mother was a nigger." Long's paper made no mention of the incident, but the story was eventually leaked to the public. The American Progress ran a clarification stating that the General was merely bringing to light slander brought against Dennis. Still, the story has stuck largely due to Dennis's dark complexion, advocacy for abolishing the Poll tax, and poorly documented childhood.

Political Views

Most of Dennis's beliefs are detailed in Is Democracy Doomed? and The Coming American Corporatism. Dennis began writing the book in response to the seeming ability for authoritarian Germany to overcome the democracies of the world at every turn. According to his book, the Authoritarian system of Germany granted it certain advantages (political stability, economic rationalization) to overthrow the western democracies. However, he did not advocate imitating the German example, as he accused the Canadians of doing, saying their dispute with the Germans reminded him "of the Battle of Tippermuir in 1644, when the Knoxite Presbyterians fought the Cromwell religious fanatics, the two gangs being as much alike as two peas, under the banner proclaiming 'Jesus and No Quarter.'" Instead Dennis argued that it was necessary to wed authoritarianism greatest strength (a strong government), with democracy's greatest strength (meritocracy), under a system he described as corporatism. Unlike Ireland, National France or the Italian Federation, Lawrence advocated a secularly based Corporatism rather then a religiously inspired version.

Dennis predicted in his Second Book both the coming second weltkrieg and the germany stock market crash. He advocated that America should united with the fellow 'have not nations', specifically Japan, Russia, and France to tear down German world supremacy, and claim the western hemisphere as America's exclusive zone of interest, driving out Canadian Power.