[Nguyen Kinh Doanh and his wife are out of the country and have asked me to provide an essay for our August 2009 editorial.  They will return in October.]

Conspiracy is Not Enough
by Sam Wells

The late Gary Allen, whose book None Dare Call It Conspiracy was the single best recruiting tool for the John Birch Society, popularized awareness of a conspiracy to whittle away at U.S. national independence and the role played by members of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and other such groups in promoting more government over our lives and the utopian vision of world governance. He never said that every single CFR member was a traitor or that CFR membership as such was the primary evil, but many seem to have come away with the idea that organizational membership per se is the main problem.

While membership in the CFR should certainly raise suspicion, it is not in and of itself proof that the person in question shares the beliefs and promotes the goals of socialism and one-world government. The late Admiral Chester Ward, who coauthored several books with conservative patriot Phyllis Schlaffly, was a staunch anticommunist and American patriot. He was not pro-socialist or a "liberal" and he did not support the false panacea of one-world government; yet he was a member of the CFR. (It is said that he later resigned in protest of the group's aims, but he had been a member for some time, probably as a result of having advanced to his high military rank. Many of those who are in the CFR have been invited to join because they had already risen to high levels of achievement in their chosen fields; they did not start out as CFR members.) Another example is CFR member Dick Cheney, former Vice President of the U.S. Cheney, though perhaps no "perfect" conservative and constrained by the political limitations of the office he held underneath that of President, has in both word and deed opposed socialism and has supported American independence and security interests against attempts to supercede them with a global superstate.

It should be clear then that although it should raise an eyebrow, CFR membership alone is not "all we need to know" to condemn a person as being opposed to U.S. sovereign independence or favoring the suppression of our freedoms by socialist tyranny.

Another problem with just talking "conspiracy" and CFR membership is that some people may come away with just enough information to make them vulnerable to getting involved or supporting such left-wing propaganda outfits as the various Lyndon Larouche front groups, which often speak of CFR and Trilateral Commission -- but advocate Big Government as the solution. It does no good to one's credibility to get associated in peoples' minds with crypto-Trotskyite fringe organizations and their distorted versions of conspiracy.

Exposing the facts of collusion between elitist corporate socialist interests and interventionist government programs is an important and very useful part of increasing public awareness of the games being played which encroach on their liberties. Certainly it is possible that even some on the Left, if they finally understand how they have been used by some of the very monopolistic interests they had previously thought they were combating. may begin to rethink their ideological assumptions. But showing the relationship between monopoly/oligopoly and interventionism/socialism is not enough. The antidote needs to be persuasively presented as well.

Conspiracy is not the entire problem; it is only part of the problem. After all, one does not have to belong to the CFR or be part of any conspiracy in order to support and promote a global socialist agenda. What difference does it make to a person to be shown CFR members in high policy-making offices if he shares their general beliefs and goals?

While exposing special-interest conspiracies and back-room deals can be a useful part of waking people up to the problems associated with positive political interventionism and the evils of socialism in general, "exposing conspiracy" alone is not enough. It does not solve the problem. I realize this statement will not endear me to some very good folks.

Again, I want to emphasize that understanding and exposing known and proven connections between Big Government and special interests in big business is very important and I do not disparage in any way those engaged in that effort. However, there are those who Gary Allen called "robots" who keep banging their heads against a brick wall rather than seeing opportunities for going over or around it.

Robert Welch once pointed out that, "What we are for must be more important than what we are against."

Even if you could get Congress to pass a law outlawing the existence of or banning membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, that would not solve the problem.Even if you could take all the members of the CFR, line them up and shoot them all dead (or imprison all of them, if you prefer), it would not solve the problem at all. As long as the apparatus of positive political interventionism remained in place, there would always be any number of opportunists waiting in the wings to take advantage of that system. As long as people continue to sanction the positive use of government power for any reason whatsoever, instead of constitutionally limiting the scope of government to a policy of laissez faire, there would always continue to be incentives and opportunities for some to use political pull and legal plunder to gain special privileges or monopoly power at the forced expense of others (always in the name of "the people" of course). Government is by its nature a coercive entity, and therefore --if it is not itself to be a threat to the rights of peaceful citizens -- it must be limited in the use of its coercive power to the negative function of fighting the initiation of the use of coercion (violence, fraud, or the threat thereof). Only by adherence to a policy of laissez faire -- with government generally limited to defending against and justly retaliating against criminality -- can a nation hope to break and escape the cycle of special-privileged cliques based on political pull or conspiracies of would-be monopolists and oligopolists.

But before a sufficiently influential consensus can emerge to restrict government constitutionally to its proper negative functions, the already-existing refutations of the most widespread myths about freedom and market capitalism have to be instilled in the minds of enough thought leaders in order for a sufficient number of people to give up their perceived need for positive government intervention or belief in the false god of socialism. Probably most Americans today see nothing wrong with having government positively intervene in peoples' private affairs and market relationships if it is for a "good" cause or if a majority votes for it in an election. That is the problem, the trap that makes all the rest possible and inevitable. Telling them that CFR members are pushing for more of the same will not likely change their attitudes or voting habits. They do not appreciate the need, as our founding fathers did, for constitutionally limiting the scope of government.

The popularization of the refutations of several anti-market fallacies and left-wing propaganda claims is the most important activity for peaceful citizens who truly desire less government intrusion in their private lives and businesses, more individual freedom and responsibility, and a better world.