Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

Sharing a building with the Mercatus Center was the heavily Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies, chaired by Charles Koch. The IHS was founded by F. A. “Baldy” Harper, a free-market fundamentalist who had been a trustee at the Freedom School, where he had written essays for The Freeman, calling taxes “theft,” welfare “immoral,” and labor unions “slavery” and opposing court-ordered remedies to racial segregation. Charles Koch had eulogized Harper glowingly, saying, “Of all the teachers of liberty, none was as well-beloved as Baldy, for it was he who taught the teachers and, in teaching, taught them humility and gentleness.” The aim of the IHS was to cultivate and subsidize a farm team of the next generation’s libertarian scholars. Anxious at one point that the war of ideas was proceeding too slowly, Charles reportedly demanded better metrics with which to monitor students’ political views. To the dismay of some faculty members, applicants’ essays had to be run through computers in order to count the number of times they mentioned the free-market icons Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Students were tested at the beginning and the end of each week for ideological improvement. The institute also housed the Charles G. Koch summer internship program, a paid fellowship placing students who shared the Kochs’ views in like-minded nonprofit groups, where they could join the libertarian network.