Conspiracies

RJ Rushdoony:
The important question to ask is this: What makes a
conspiracy work? Let us suppose that a number of us
conspired together to turn the United States into a
monarchy, and ourselves into its nobility; let us
further suppose that we could command millions from our
own to achieve this goal. Or, let us suppose that, with
equal numbers and money we conspired to enforce Hindu
vegetarianism on the country. In either case, we would
have then, not a conspiracy, but a joke. A successful
conspiracy is one which is so in tune with the faith
and aspirations of its day that it offers to men the
fulfillment of the ideals of the age. It is an illusion
to believe that dangerous or successful conspiracies
represent no more than a small, hidden circle of
diabolical men who are manipulating the world into
ruin. Such groups often exist, but they only exist and
succeed because their plan and hope is closely tied to
the public dream and the faith of the age. If the
threat were only from small circles of hidden men, then
our problem would be easy. Then, as Burton Blumert has
observed, "if we only unmasked the conspiracy, all our
problems would be solved, but if the trouble is in all
of us, then we really are in trouble." ("Conspiracies,"
April 2) The Chalcedon Report from 1969