DIRECTED
HISTORY IS NOT CONSPIRACY THEORY
PART 4 of 4
By Professor
Steven Yates
March 17, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
But never mind all that; it’s beside the point. When you urge the creation of a global governing structure in the New York Times, you are not hiding. You are not “conspiring.” You are simply stating, for anyone paying attention, what “must be done.” These are just a few visible examples of open proposals for a new world order as the solution to many of the world’s problems, the most recent of course being the global financial crisis. A recounting of all such cases, including many remarks by Great Britain’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (both past presidents of the Fabian Society), would run to a dozen more pages. Also recently, David Rothkopf (once of Kissinger & Associates) authored Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (2008). Anxious to put distance between his conclusions and “conspiracy theory,” he nevertheless concedes that approximately 6,000 people essentially direct the world—operating primarily through economics and high finance, often moving with ease into cabinet positions in government and then back to the private sector! These are our superelite!
Some will complain that I equivocate with the phrase new world order—that these usages are not intended to reflect the kind of global totalitarianism feared by “conspiracy theorists,” but rather an idealistic sentiment with no fully developed policies behind it—and that those I cite have differences of opinion among themselves on what to do and so could not establish effective global rule. I don’t necessarily disagree with this last, but I do have two general replies. First is a suggestion to go back to the statements by Toynbee, Wells, Russell, Rockefeller, etc., and read them this time. Second, it should be clear to any thinking person: the kind of central planning necessary for any global governance strategy will be very bad for everyone it affects. Because of the immense diversity of the peoples of the world—religious, cultural, linguistic, technological—attempts even at regional governance require increasingly iron-fisted totalitarian measures or they face endless bureaucratic wrangling and eventual disintegration amidst squabbling and uncooperative locals. Europeans are learning this the hard way. Of course, it is very possible the European Union, the most advanced regional government, has been designed to fail, to force the national and regional players to take the next step of greater consolidation. This cannot be accomplished without ending whatever liberties are enjoyed by the common people (if any, by that point). It definitely means an end to the entitlement mentality which has served its purpose in the West, by creating a population dependent on the state. A new world order is by definition a world consolidated and centrally planned, its peoples surveyed, monitored, reduced to dependency, and controlled—even if the would-be new world orderlies do not yet have all their ducks in a row. It will also—as is evident from the suffering being presently endured by the Greek people—require impoverishment on a scale not seen for generations.
One might surmise that the superelite and those who expect to profit from their achievements have ceased hiding because whatever difficulties they still face they have much of the world pretty much where they want it. There is doubtless some truth to this, but I believe matters are a bit more complicated. To be sure, much of the West is a now jittery due to skyrocketing debt, trade imbalances, massive unemployment, and fears of more economic woes ahead. Fomented political instability has spread through the Middle East. Threats of war abound. Food and energy costs here and abroad are rising. Cynicism about our increasingly dysfunctional “democracy” (never intended to be such, of course) is evident. The next generation faces possible lifelong serfdom through the brand of debt-slavery created through massive student loan debt (the totality of student loan debt is nearing $1 trillion). Sadly, most Americans are kept content with a steady diet of sports or other entertainment: fruits of the “social science” research we noted above. Many of the politically aware are divided and fighting amongst themselves over such matters as whether women ought to receive free contraceptives. While I do not think such matters unimportant, they are of negligible importance to the superelite. They therefore distract from the larger picture the concept of directed history draws for us. It has become clear that for more than a generation now no one is to be nominated for the presidency of one of the major parties—two wings of a single bird of prey, one might say—who hasn’t been carefully vetted by members of the class above. Thus Carroll Quigley could write, in the most revealing of all our quotations, that:
The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy…. [E]ither party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of those things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies (Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, pp. 1247-48).
In one paragraph, we have the answer to why key Barack Obama policies (especially foreign and monetary) actually further what was in place under George W. Bush, who was in turn furthering key policies in place under Bill Clinton, who furthered trade policies begun during the Reagan-Bush years, and so on, for as many presidents as you want to count. Moreover despite their visible battles in Washington, Clinton and Newt Gingrich did not disagree over the perceived need for a World Trade Organization (WTO). Not a single president or major-party nominee or Speaker of the House since the 1960s has questioned the supremacy of the Federal Reserve in directing monetary policy in the U.S.; not a single president or nominee or Speaker has questioned the war machine or our “responsibility” to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations (very often, making enemies in the process). No one of the mainstream, not even libertarians, questions “free trade.” Today, of course, no one in the vetted mainstream questions the “war on terror” or the official account of the 9/11 attacks.
Every so often, a maverick breaks through and commands attention for a time. In the early 1960s, it was Barry Goldwater who actually received the GOP nomination—only to be destroyed by mainstream media. Following an orchestrated campaign of terror branding him as too extreme and suggesting that if elected he’d get the country into a nuclear war, he lost the 1964 election to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. Ronald Reagan began more independent-spirited than he ended up, but probably received the GOP nomination only after agreeing to position the superelite-approved Bush I as his VP. I believe he meant well, but the national debt escalated under his watch, crossing the $1 trillion threshold. He did not shut down the U.S. Department of Education after saying he would, possibly did not understand the trade policies being furthered at the time, appointed the disastrous Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve Chair, and in the end, probably did more long term harm than good even if his presidency presaged the end of the Soviet Union—which, in light of many Gorbachev remarks such as the one noted above, may also have been orchestrated.
H. Ross Perot came out of the private sector in the early 1990s to warn of the “giant sucking sound” NAFTA would bring about. I recall him actually leading both Bush and Clinton in major polls. He ran on the Reform Party ticket, received 19 million popular votes and no electoral votes. He ran again in 1996, but failed to make the same impact. After all, the economy was soaring on changing technology and Greenspan credit expansion; a message of doom and gloom no longer resonated. The Reform Party later self-destructed, as I once reported. Some believe it was sabotaged, though of course I can’t prove this. I merely witnessed its division into two groups back in 2000 that began furiously battling one another, turning their national convention into a three-ring circus that doomed their party to oblivion. What happened to the Reform Party exemplifies a sad truth: often there is no need to suppress “third parties” and independent movements. They shoot themselves in the foot.
Today, of course, the only visible candidate for high office in this country not owned by the superelite or its fellow travelers is Ron Paul. Ron Paul is obviously the best educated of the GOP candidates; he alone has some grasp of what the country is facing if it stays on its present road. He alone questions Federal Reserve money creation and our interventionist foreign policy of initiating wars against nations that pose no threat to us. He alone has spoken against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which opens the door to U.S. citizens being incarcerated in military facilities without charges, legal counsel, or trial, on an order from the President. It has become clear over the past several weeks, however: Dr. Paul will not receive the GOP nomination, although through sheer determination he and his supporters have has broken through mainstream media silence and forged a national movement. This movement has grown to sufficient size and influence, especially among the young, without shooting itself in the foot, that mainstream media have been forced to cover his activities or explain publicly why not. Ten years ago few Americans had heard of the Federal Reserve. The activities of the Fed are now scrutinized more closely than ever before. We can thank Ron Paul and organizations behind him such as Restore the Republic for this.
My prediction, however, is that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee. He is clearly the superelite favorite at present. If he is nominated, we will be treated to a dull-as-dishwater contest between superelite-vetted candidate A and superelite-vetted candidate B. Those so inclined can enjoy their illusion of choice. Obama’s health care reform bill was, after all, mostly modeled on Governor Romney’s Massachusetts version; the idea that a President Romney will repeal “Obama-care” if elected is simply laughable. The point is, what Quigley observed almost a half a century ago is true today: the need is to maintain essentially the same basic policies, while furthering the overall project intended to end in a global regime. Part of this project, in the wake of NAFTA, etc., has clearly been that the U.S. standard of living must fall while that of nations such as China rises. So far, all America’s masses have done is grumble, but that could conceivably change. If civil unrest erupts here it could conceivably be worse than elsewhere in the world; hence the police-state measures we have seen.
The assaults on Occupy protesters engaging in peaceful civil disobedience make it clear: we have entered a period in which law-abiding citizens exercising their Constitutional rights can be taken down with Tasers, pepper-sprayed, sent into intensive care wards by police batons, etc. Now, with the NDAA, protesters risk being arrested and incarcerated indefinitely. Recent statements by Attorney General Eric Holder defend the idea that the President can order U.S. citizens assassinated if they can be branded as aiding the enemies of the U.S., whatever this actually means (will criticizing U.S. foreign policy be interpreted as aiding the enemies of the U.S. by a future president?). This, too, is no idle “conspiracy theory”; it has already happened, with the drone killing of U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki along with a second American in Yemen. Does anyone really believe this couldn’t happen on U.S. soil if the person targeted had been named by the President (Obama or his successor) and sufficiently demonized in the controlled media.
As I complete this essay, the situation just got worse. A new bill entitled the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, just passed in the House, passed by the Senate unamended, and possibly signed by Obama by the time this appears, criminalizes protests in the presence of federal officials and foreign dignitaries conducting “government business or official functions” (whatever these vague phrases mean), threatening those who exercise their free speech rights with fines and imprisonment for up to ten years. Only three members of the House voted No to this bill. This fact alone speaks volumes about where our political class stands. Ron Paul was, of course, one of the three naysayers.
I will begin the difficult task of bringing this discussion to its close. Is there no hope? That isn’t an easy question. There are definite plusses, but also some major negatives. We have tools those who lived before us didn’t have, tools the superelite either did not anticipate or believed they could control: the Internet and social media. By 2000 the Internet had become a gold mine of free expression on which an ordinary person could learn about, for example, unconstitutional land-mine legislation—stealth measures hidden in omnibus bills dealing with different subjects—the CFR and the Trilateralists, NAFTA, and other manifestations of superelite activity.
One could study about money and its effects, locate sometimes colorful allegories explaining fractional reserve banking and its weaving a web of debt slavery and deception around us all, or learn about the real unemployment rate (around 22 percent; see Shadowstats.com). On the Internet, you can learn about virtually any topic you want. You can create a blog and express your ideas uncensored. Events, moreover, can be known all over the world in a matter of minutes if not seconds via social media. With phones now having built-in cameras, shenanigans by those with authority (police abuses, politicians’ frankness—a Nancy Pelosi responding to a question about the Constitutionality of government-mandated health insurance with, “Are you serious?” etc.) can be filmed and uploaded to YouTube.
Even if, as some claim, privacy is dead, it is far harder to hide power-motivated activities today even at or near the top of the political or economic food chain.
One might argue that the superelite is having a harder time moving forward than it looks from out here in the boonies. Some of this is due to exposure on the Internet; some of it is due to those being manipulated in less-powerful nations growing savvier. Consider: during the past decade specific agendas such as the FTAA have stalled. They have been exposed here at home. National political elites elsewhere in our hemisphere cannot agree on specifics and do not trust one another; they especially do not trust U.S.-based corporate elites (and with good reason if by some chance they’ve encountered John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2004). The same problem exists on a larger scale with global trade negotiations such as the Doha Development Round, also dead in the water for now.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America (SPP), allegedly directing the integration of the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union modeled on the European Union, has also been all but thwarted. The proposed “NAFTA Superhighway” has been radically diminished in scope, fought by residents of Texas whose communities it would have effectively destroyed. The SPP, meetings of which came to draw protests, was “officially” cancelled in 2009. Its website has been taken down.
To be sure, none of these ideas are dead and buried—new “security and prosperity” meetings were held last year, for example (a link to a February 4, 2011 initiative launched by Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Halper did not work). But every effort to carry them forward now meets with exposure and opposition. Agenda 21, the bible of the Sustainable Development movement, is being attacked in public meetings all across the country. Even in the case of the NDAA and other recent unconstitutional laws, one thing is for sure: thanks to the Internet and social media, large numbers of people know about them! Just as the REAL ID Act was effectively stonewalled at the state level, legislation to nullify the NDAA has passed in Virginia and is being considered in other states. I will even entertain the idea that when Barack Obama recently said he wouldn’t enforce the provision allowing the incarceration of U.S. citizens without charges, he was telling the truth: not out of altruistic motives, of course, but out of the realization that if visible people are scooped off the streets, the fact will be impossible to conceal even with a mainstream media blackout. Many of us, moreover, are sufficiently visible on social media that if we disappeared for as short a time as 24 hours, our “friends” would know immediately something was wrong.
In other words, opponents of superelitism haven’t done that badly considering their limited resources. The Internet has become the main outlet for free expression in the world. I believe a battle for control over the Internet is coming. The recent controversy over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is probably its opening skirmish. If today’s world is ever to be freed from the superelite, however improbable that sounds, education—much of it self-education—must be the starting point, and this includes maintaining a free Internet.
Now for the negatives. We aren’t making the best use of those resources we have. For starters, there are too many independent groups, and members of some who refuse to talk to members of others. We have organizations that will not support their own, and publications that throw former contributors to the wolves frivolously (dare I say, this has happened to me). Then there are people producing material online that is sloppily researched, inflammatory, or both. Some may well be agent provocateurs. There are people going down what frankly seem to me to be blind alleys. Some will differ, but I cannot get excited about Obama’s birth certificate, or whether he’s a closet Muslim. It is worth realizing that those with real power enjoy seeing us expend our time and energy on side issues. They enjoy a public divided into groups that fight over matters they couldn’t care less about, such as whether gays should be allowed to marry. Worse yet, there is the occasional scam artist who preys on people’s economic insecurities, makes valid observations about, e.g., the factors undermining the American middle class, then entices his audience into his multilevel marketing venture, or worse yet, into an out-and-out Ponzi scheme (this appears to have happened here in South Carolina). Such people do severe damage to the cause by convincing observers that anyone interested in such things is dishonest even if he isn’t a kook!
Contrary to Libertarians, this is not about unbridled self-interest or defending a free market absolutism that is no more rational than Communism. Private is not by definition good; nor is government by definition evil. Arguably, the repeal of an entirely appropriate and beneficial federal regulation on banks (Glass-Steagall, by Gramm-Beach-Bliley in 1999) triggered the chain of events and creation of financial instruments leading directly to the Meltdown of 2008. The superelite watched with approval, then took the bailout money.
This is not a game. It is not a “business opportunity.” We have to have each others’ backs, and know that we can trust one another or it’s game over!
We must, above all, conduct ourselves responsibly. I sometimes urge people not to verbally assault elected officials, whether in public meetings or online; under no circumstances should anyone say anything that an office-holder will take as a threat. Stick to issues, don’t dwell on personalities, and just speak the truth. Whatever is ahead might not be pretty; we are dealing with forces capable of sending the U.S. economy into a tailspin with a few phone calls, and even turning out our lights for weeks or months if they feel sufficiently threatened. I don’t doubt the capacity of at least some of their members, and probably members of our political class as well, to recruit conscienceless thugs who would break heads and murder their fellow citizens if their superiors commanded it. We are thus walking a tightrope here. We should do what we can to prevent such a calamity from ever happening if we can, short of compromising our principles. And we should remember that people have gone to jail and even been killed for their beliefs in the past. It could easily happen again.
In that light, it is useful to remember: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).
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Reminding oneself of our Christian presupposition that God is ultimately in charge in this universe and that He will be victorious in the end might be a good idea! Sadly, this really does come down to “us versus them”: us being those who stand for the God-given right of persons to direct their own lives, communities and destinies within God-given spheres of responsibility, and them being the directors of history whose partial vision of global power would deny us that right. While they are far from omnipotent and have committed some blunders over the years, we should have no illusions about who has the upper hand right now, in this world, and will probably continue to have it for the immediate future.
Rough times are probably ahead in any event. There are no guarantees that the Godly forces are destined to win out in our lifetimes. We thus conclude by recalling the words of the Letter to the Hebrews: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
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