The online watchdog group Sourcewatch has pegged the Center of the American Experiment as a “right-wing pressure group” with ties to Wisconsin’s Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. This foundation, which has given the Center thousands of dollars in recent years, has its roots in a kind of ideological extremism once relegated to the fringes of American society.
Founder Harry Bradley, along with Fred Koch, patriarch of the Koch clan, was “one of the original charter members of the John Birch society,” according to Sourcewatch. The John Birch society is a far-right group that loomed large in the Cold War era, when routing out communists was all the rage. Jane Mayer covers this in her 2016 book Dark Money, in which she notes that Harry Bradley was also a “keen supporter of the Manion Forum.”