W. Cleon Skousen

Skousen was born on a dryland farm in Raymond, Alberta, Canada, the second of nine children of Royal Pratt Skousen and Margarita Bentley Skousen, who were U.S. citizens. He lived in Canada until he was ten years old, then moved with his family to California where his father supervised the paving of some of the original Route 66. In 1926, Skousen went to the Mormon colony, Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, for two years to help his seriously ill grandmother. While there, he attended the Juarez Academy and was employed for a time as a race horse jockey. Skousen then returned to California, graduating from high school in 1930. At the age of 17 he traveled to Great Britain as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). After completing his missionary service, Skousen attended San Bernardino Valley Jr. College, graduating in 1935. He married Jewel Pitcher in August 1936, and they raised eight children together. He graduated with an LL.B. from George Washington University Law School in June 1940 (the school updated his degree as Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1972 with its degree nomenclature). ==Professional life==

In June 1935, Skousen went to work for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a New Deal program to subsidize farmers. Soon thereafter, he found employment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working as a messenger while attending law school at night. In 1940, after passing the Washington, D.C., bar exam, he became an FBI Special Agent. In 1960, newly elected mayor J. Bracken Lee dismissed Skousen shortly after Skousen raided an illegal poker club where Lee was in attendance. National Review commentator Mark Hemingway characterized the gathering as "a friendly card game." and planting burning crosses on Lee's lawn. Lee characterized Skousen's strict enforcement of anti-gambling laws as Gestapo-like. Lee said that although Skousen was an anti-communist, he "ran the police department in exactly the same manner as the Communists in Russia operate their government." Time magazine reported in 1960 that Skousen's "real offense seemed to be that he had failed to show enough enthusiasm for Lee's determination to slash the police-department budget." Skousen continued his involvement in law enforcement issues by working as the editor of the police journal Law and Order for fifteen years. He also served as field director for the American Security Council, but an increasing perception of paranoia resulted in his abrupt termination in 1962. In 1967 he was hired as a BYU religion professor by Ernest L. Wilkinson, BYU's 7th president. Other professors in the religion department were very critical of his hiring, believing he was unqualified for the position and was only hired because of his conservative viewpoints. Dallin H. Oaks, Wilkinson's successor, attempted to separate politics from BYU in his dealings with Skousen. During the Oaks administration, Skousen claimed to have been authorized to teach a new course about "Priesthood and Righteous Government", which would be published clandestinely under the name "Gospel Principles and Practices". This course was intended to be for ultra-conservative students to inform them of what to do about communist infiltration. Upon learning of Skousen's intentions, Oaks informed the First Presidency that he would not be permitted to teach that course. Skousen was told to stop mixing church doctrine and politics and to stop activities associated with his educational politics-based organization called the Freemen Institute, now known as the National Center for Constitutional Studies. However, he largely ignored this instruction, and continued teaching his version of politically infused doctrine until his retirement from BYU in 1978. == Political life ==

After losing his police job, Skousen founded a group called the All-American Society, which Time magazine described in 1961 as an "exemplar of the far-right ultras." Throughout the 1960s, Skousen was also admired by members and leaders of the John Birch Society, although members of the more mainstream conservative movement and the American Security Council Skousen had support among many Latter-day Saints in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, by 1979, the First Presidency issued a letter against promoting Skousen in LDS wards and stakes by stating, "This instruction is not intended to express any disapproval of the right of the Freemen Institute and its lecturers to conduct such meetings or of the contents of the lectures. The only purpose is to make certain that neither Church facilities nor Church meetings are used to advertise such events and to avoid any implication that the Church endorses what is said during such lectures." Skousen's proposals with the group included a plan to convert the Social Security system to private retirement accounts as well as a plan that he claimed would completely wipe out the national debt. Skousen was a member of the Meadeau View Institute but resigned citing "irregularities" in management. While at the institute, he mentored Oliver DeMille, and his influence helped shape George Wythe University, a private, unaccredited university in Cedar City, Utah, which grew out of the Meadeau View, at one point used Skousen's books as texts, and closed in 2016. == Views ==

Skousen opposed all federal regulatory agencies and argued against the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. He also wanted to repeal the minimum wage, eliminate unions, nullify anti-discrimination laws, sell off public lands and national parks, end the direct election of senators, eliminate the income tax and the estate tax, remove the walls separating church and state, and end the Federal Reserve System. In 1987, Skousen was criticized for suggesting in one of his books that "American slave children were freer than white non-slaves." Skousen spoke against communism throughout his career. He agreed with John Birch Society co-founder Robert W. Welch Jr.'s contention that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist agent. He did not believe the U.S. should establish diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, claiming that the U.S. State Department was engaging in treason with respect to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's visit to "his old friend Mao Tse-tung." Skousen claimed that the Rockefeller family and Wall Street had conspired to elect Jimmy Carter president, Evan Mecham, Richard Mack, and Glenn Beck. ==Writings==

Skousen authored The Naked Communist and was the source of the "Current Communist Goals" that was read into the Congressional Record in 1963. In 1970, he wrote The Naked Capitalist based on the book Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley, which claimed that top Western merchant bankers, industrialists and related institutions were behind the rise of communism and fascism around the world. Skousen's aim was to summarize the ideas in Quigley's books and thus make them accessible to a wider audience; Skousen states in the work that the purpose of liberal internationalist groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, is to push "U.S. foreign policy toward the establishment of a world-wide collectivist society." The Naked Capitalist has been cited by many, including Cleon Skousen's nephew Joel Skousen, as proof of a "New World Order" strategy to create a One World Government. In So You Want to Raise a Boy? (1962), Skousen advocates spanking as an appropriate domestic disciplinary resource for parents of boys. In 1987, controversy erupted in California when the state briefly considered using Skousen's book, The Making of America, as a textbook for California schools. Statements in the book regarding slavery, and its use of the term pickaninny as a label for slave children engendered a heated debate as to whether the book was appropriate. The state commission's Executive Director, a former colleague of Skousen at the National Center for Constitutional Studies, asserted that these statements were "largely taken out of context" from a 1934 essay on slavery by the historian Fred Albert Shannon that Skousen had included in his book. Skousen highlights the global history of slavery as independent of color or race in The Making Of America claiming that "... the emancipation of human beings from slavery is an ongoing struggle. Slavery is not a racial problem. It is a human problem." Skousen began his research for his book The Five Thousand Year Leap in the 1930s while attending law school, combing archives in the Library of Congress for the original writings of such Founding Fathers as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and continued to work on the manuscript for the next 50 years, finally publishing it in 1981. ==Contemporary reception==

While Skousen was alive, many of his ideas were met with fierce criticism, while his pronouncements made him "a pariah among most conservative activists". In one instance, the constitutional scholar Jack Rakove, of Stanford University, inspected Skousen's books and seminars and pronounced them "a joke that no self-respecting scholar would think is worth a warm pitcher of spit." A 1971 review in the Mormon studies journal Dialogue described Skousen as "inventing fantastic ideas and making inferences that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary," and also of promoting concepts that were "perilously close" to Nazism. Moreover, in 1979 after Skousen described President Jimmy Carter as beholden to the Council on Foreign Relations and the wealthy and influential Rockefeller family, Spencer W. Kimball, then president of the LDS church, issued an order prohibiting announcements about Skousen's groups from official LDS meetings or publications. == Legacy ==

By Skousen's 2006 death, he remained fairly obscure except among "furthest-right Mormons." eulogized Skousen on the floor of the U.S. Senate, saying: Shortly before I announced that I would be running for the U.S. Senate in 1976 as a political novice and virtually unknown candidate—Cleon was one of the first people of political significance and substance who agreed to meet with me and discuss my candidacy. A few short years before this time, Cleon had organized a nonprofit educational foundation named "The Freemen Institute," to foster "constitutionalist" principles including a drastic reduction in the size and scope of the Federal Government, and a reverence for the true, unchanging nature of our Constitution. I knew that he had strongly held beliefs and I was very interested in what he had to say. We found in each other at that first meeting many areas of common ground and a shared love for the principles that make America the strongest bastion of freedom on Earth. Cleon quickly agreed to help, and throughout the coming months he became a true champion of my candidacy. [...] As we all know, Cleon was a prolific author and writer. His books The First 2000 Years, The Making of America, and The Five Thousand Year Leap have been used by foundations, and in forums across America for many years. [...] I loved an account I recently read in the Deseret News from the Rev. Donald Sills, a Baptist minister who became close friends over many years with Cleon. He spoke of his knowledge and study and recalled a time when he found Cleon sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. When he asked Cleon what he was doing just sitting there, Cleon's fitting response was, "I'm talking to Tom Jefferson." In September 2007, a year prior to the 2008 United States presidential election, Jan Mickelson of Iowa radio station WHO and Republican Iowa caucus presidential candidate Mitt Romney discussed Skousen in an off-the-air conversation during a break in Mickelson's broadcast, which Mickelson recorded. In the conversation, Mickelson touted Skousen's American Constitutionalism and Romney cited Skousen as an expert on Mormon theology. In commentary about this exchange, the National Reviews Mark Hemingway termed Skousen an "...all-around nutjob", and described The Naked Communist as "so irrational in its paranoia that it would have made Whittaker Chambers blush," adding, "to be fair, Skousen wrote on numerous topics with wildly varying degrees of intellectual sobriety. In fact, as the radio host in the YouTube video notes, Skousen's writings on original intent and the U.S. Constitution in The Making of America are compellingly argued, and to this day are often cited by conservatives unaware of Skousen's more checkered writings. Further, Skousen's scriptural commentaries are still very popular and well-regarded within the relatively unradical world of mainstream Mormonism." Leap argues that the U.S. Constitution is infused with Judeo-Christian virtues as well as Enlightenment philosophy. In a November 2010 article in Canada's National Post, Alexander Zaitchik, author of Common Nonsense (a book critical of Glenn Beck), described Skousen as a "whack job" with "decidedly dubious theories." After Beck began promoting Skousen's The 5,000 Year Leap in March 2009, it climbed at one point to number one in sales on the Amazon.com non-fiction list and stayed in the top 15 throughout the following summer. In September 2009, the book was being sold at meetings of Beck's 9-12 Project and was often used as source material for 9-12 Project speakers. Former Republican Party candidate for U.S. president Ben Carson's frequent claims that Democratic Party or liberal politicians have communist or fascist beliefs have led commentators to investigate his sources. Carson has "endorsed the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a conspiracy-minded author and supporter of the John Birch Society." "Mr. Carson views Mr. Skousen's work, especially The Naked Communist, as an interpretive key to America today." "He [Carson] recommends W. Cleon Skousen's The Naked Communist, a 1958 book by the former FBI special agent and favorite of the right who lays out the strategy communists would use to take control of the U.S." "There's also a book called The Naked Communist. It was written in 1958 by Cleon Skousen, the same guy who wrote The 5000 Year Leap. It lays out the whole progressive plan for fundamentally changing America. The only thing that's truly amazing is how quickly it's being done." Carson plagiarized Skousen's 5,000 Year Leap, among other works, in his own book America the Beautiful; Carson apologized in January 2015 after the plagiarism came to light. In an op-ed, Chris Zinda of The Independent points out a book co-published by Cliven Bundy, the central figure of a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management. According to Zinda, it lays out Bundy's motivations behind the standoff, which he describes as "a combination of LDS theology and Skousen constitutional theory". == Family ==

Skousen's son, Paul Skousen, is an author, and his nephews include Joel Skousen, a survivalist and political author; Royal Skousen, a Mormon studies scholar and BYU professor of linguistics and English; and Mark Skousen, a libertarian economist and author–commentator who runs FreedomFest, an annual convention sponsored by Charles G. Koch, among others. ==Selected works==

Political writing • • • • • • Religious • • • • • • • • • • • • • Discography • Building Balanced Children, Key Records KEY LP-770, 1961. • Instant Insanity Drugs, Key Records KLP-1101, 1968. • The Ten Commandments: A Timely Commentary by W. Cleon Skousen, Key Records KLP-2670. ==See also==