Conspiracy in Philadelphia

Samuel Adams did not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia because he "smelt a rat". The American Covenanters identified the rat & boycotted the new Constitution.

One of them, the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie of Philadelphia, wrote Two Sons of Oil to chronicle the U.S. Constitution's offenses against Christ and His laws. It took more than a century for someone to detail the conspiratorial coup that produced the nation's foundational legal document.

In 2004, Gary North republished the last third of his Political Polytheism under the title Conspiracy in Philadelphia. Here is a brief excerpt giving the author's rationale:

This book is my attempt to explain this historical anomaly: a significant break in history that did not seem to be a break at the time. It still doesn’t. I explain it in a way that Dr. Dreisbach does not. He defends the traditional view of Protestant Christians in the United States. They have believed, from 1788 onward, that the United States has been a Christian nation under its Constitution. This is an odd belief on the face of it, since the United States Constitution’s sole reference to God is indirect: the words, “the year of our Lord,” referring to 1787. If this is the sole judicial basis of the Christian American national civil covenant, then the case for America as a Christian civil order rests on a very weak reed.

You download a free .pdf copy of the book by clicking on this link:
Conspiracy in Philadelphia

Tragedy and Hope: The Conspirators Exposed

In 1966, a professor at Georgetown University published a long, scholarly tome entitled Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. This 1300 page volume would have been destined to collect dust on the shelves of university libraries but for one thing.

It seems that this Establishment scholar who trained aspiring foreign service appointees claimed that a secret international society played a large part in shaping the events of recent history. He claimed firsthand knowledge of the secret group, and he detailed its founding and organizational structure.

Here is a key passage that appeared in the books, pamphlets and newsletters of conspiratologists in the late 1960's and early 1970's:

There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.

That era produced two influential right wing books that quoted extensively from Quigley's work: None Dare Call It Conspiracy (NDCC) by Gary Allen and The Naked Capitalist by W. Cleon Skousen. The strength of these books lay in their exposure of the inner workings of the power elite in America.

Knowledge alone will not defeat an adversary that wields unimaginable power and wealth. That knowledge must lead to the right kind of action.

The weakness of these books lay in their call to political action that pretty much confined itself to writing letters to congressmen and voting the rascals out. That's a naive approach to oust a group that controls the national candidate selection process for both political parties.

NDCC in particular blanketed the conservative movement of the early to mid-1970's, and I think led to the grassroots support for Ronald Reagan over the CIA, Trilateral Commission candidate, George Bush. Reagan punctuated his nomination by immediately choosing Bush as his running mate. (Under the present system, NO ONE gets to run as a major party presidential candidate without making deals.)

Common Problems with Conspiracy Theories

People on the fringes of society tend to gravitate toward movements critical of the established order. That explains why you find so many obsessive and unstable people among the ranks of conspiracy theorists.

That fact alone makes it easy for those with a stake in the established order to dismiss and/or discredit conspiratorialists as weirdos and nut-cases. Ad hominem attacks are easier and more effective for influencing the masses than research and reason.

Although I know that -- should I become important enough to be noticed -- those spokespeople will tar me with the same brush, I want, for clarity's sake, to differentiate my position from that of a significant portion of the conspiratorialist community. I will give the three most grievous errors that I believe one will find in conspiratorial presentations.

Here they are:

1) Seeing "THE Conspiracy" as Jewish. I suppose "Worldwide Jewish Banking Conspiracy" makes for better pamphleteering than, say "Worldwide Episcopalian Banking Conspiracy". I, however, think the latter is much closer to the truth of the matter than the former.

Jews are neither more nor less given to conspire against others than Sicilians, Irish Catholics or Saudi Arabians. The fact that Jews are disproportionately represented among international bankers is an interesting product of historical development, but not necessarily indicative of some broad plot of Jewish design.

2) Seeing "THE Conspiracy" as centered in one, all-powerful organization with historical continuity (Illuminati, Freemasonry, Papacy, etc). There are three parts to this view, which I deal with as follows:

---- One organization -- Whether the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, the CFR or any other group, I do not see the powers-that-be confined to any one group. My research indicates that power is distributed among a distinct network of individuals and institutions (more on that later).

---- Historical continuity -- Here you find the conspiratorialists' view analagous to the Papists' apostolic succession. Since power is not confined to just one organization or institution, the argument that there is a discrete, coherent organizational conspiratorial continuity from ancient times to the present is moot.

Individuals and institutions, however, may borrow ideas and principles from contemporary and historical organizations because of a commonality rooted in philosophy and exercise of power.

---- All-powerful group that plans & controls all events of significance -- Conspiratorialists commonly attribute near omnipotence to the inner circle of the cabal. Although the power networks of this world wield a vast amount of power, they cannot and do not control all the details of all world events.

Observers conclude that insiders micromanage world affairs when they see the power brokers profiting and consolidating power in the midst of national and international events. , However, the reality is that their wealth, influence and their access to information allow them to turn even unexpected situations to their favor.

3) UFOs, Area 51, space (or interdimensional) aliens and the like. These are way outside the scope of my worldview. I heard an interview of one researcher who performed a background study of all the people who had claimed to be abducted by aliens. He said the list included people from all walks of life & religions, EXCEPT what he referred to "walk-the-walk born-again Christians". 'Nuff said.

So, if I reject these commonly-held aspects of conspiracy theories, what does my theory look like? That's a topic for another post.