You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
--William Jennings Bryan, 1896

Bryan ran for President against McKinley in 1896 and again in 1900 on the silver standard platform. He was a youthful 36 in 1896.

UA List Discussion

Original points from Chris Tatro...

• Congressman from Nebraska, but born in Illinois, served as State Attorney in Tennesee. So which is "Bryan Country"?
• Cross of Gold speech was a fight against the gold standard - does that mean we'll have to break into Ft Knox before all this is over??
  • nb: Bryan was fighting against the gold standard on behalf of the Silverites. GoldVsSilver, the burning political issue of the late nineteenth century in a way that's really hard to explain today. [Rob]
  • see also Coronado's CrossOfGold [Rob]
• Bryan became very rich in the real estate boom in Florida. Haven't we seen this before?
  • Heh heh. Something I never got a chance to point out in NewOrleans was that the original French settlement of New Orleans was, like Florida, predicated on a Pyramid scam, though it took place about 200 years earlier. America is in many ways a Pyramid Scheme. [Rob]
• Led the prosecution of the Scopes Trial, and pushed legislation banning teaching Darwinism in FL. Huh, never made that connection before with him
  • And died just five days after winning the Scopes Trial. [Rob]
• Freemason? Check. :)
• ooh, here's an article on "The Wizard of Oz as Allegory" in which Bryan is cast as the CowardlyLion. All things considered, I think I want to read this article more closely.
  • Yeah, that's worth a read. :) But you might also want to check this out: "Oz as Theosophy" (The American Theosophical Society has a whole set of pages on L. Frank Baum) http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/oz/ozandkansas/index.html [Rob]
  • And if you can stomach that, how about this beauty? "WIZARD OF OZ and the ILLUMINATI MIND CONTROL" http://www.apfn.org/apfn/oz.htm [Rob][MONARCH]
  • Speaking of which, here's another Oz mind control link: http://www.trance-formation.com/book_excerpts/dorothy.htm
  • "Gerald Bryan (no relation to WJB?) was an I AM [IAm] Student in the 1930s. He became concerned about the Ballards as he started to discern their inconsistencies, their arrogant manner in dismissing criticism, and the teaching's destructive effects on many followers. During the 1930s, he wrote a series of pamphlets revealing these problems, which he published as a book, "Psychic Dictatorship in America," in 1940." [Rob]
  • http://www.home.gil.com.au/~perovich/Ballards/ [Rob]
  • There is also apparently a CIA researcher involved in brainwashing/mind contorl/programming with the same name. Searches for Bryan and Mason turn up an interesting mix :) [BillBryanIII]