Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk

The Left Trades Places, looks at what the conspiracy-mongering Left:

When I was in the ninth grade I decided to run for student body president of my junior high school, and became suddenly and vitally interested in all things political. My father's friend had given him some copies of American Opinion, the John Birch Society magazine. I read them cover-to-cover.

I learned that the Trilateralists, the CFR, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bildebergers, the Jews, and the Imperial House of Hapsburg really ran America and-for that matter-the entire world. And they did it in secret.

I distinctly remember marching into the kitchen with the literature. I was panicky over the impending junior high election, but my misgivings had not stopped my family from spreading word of my campaign throughout the neighborhood and beyond. "How come ... if nobody in this family can keep a secret ... how come all these guys could keep all these secrets all these years?" I demanded of my father.

Dad grinned down at me and answered, "They couldn't and they didn't. Politics are public. You can't run for student body president without people knowing. People love to talk ... even when they don't know what they're talking about." He took the magazines from me and threw them in the trash.

My dad should have been a political philosopher, instead of a building contractor, because with those few sentences, and that one toss, he helped me understand two fundamental political truths: (1) conspiracy theories are rarely valid; and (2), conspiracy theories are almost always promulgated by people who do not currently wield political power. In other words, by people who do not know what they are talking about.

Call it a truism if you will: Conspiracy Theories Are Bunk.

I too had a similar teenage years experience: Reading then rejecting the main ideas of the conspiracy theorists, wondering if the conspiracy is that big how do they keep their mouths shut. Well, they can't. Conspiracy theories and claims have abounded in American politics and in human history, but reality is more mundane. Most of the problems we face in society are due to common and open human failing - we suffer the consequences of bad ideas, and incompetence is just as likely as malice to get us into trouble.

But now the conspiracy theories are prominent not on the Right but on the Left:

The parallels between the once rabid right and the new loony left are staggering. The conspiracy is exactly the same: secret worldwide domination by a few tightly controlled special interest groups. Most of the names of the organizations in charge of the conspiracy have been changed, to convince the credulous. For the Trilateralists, the CFR, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bildebergers, the Jews, and the Imperial House of Hapsburg simply substitute Haliburton, Big Oil, Pharmacuticals, Multinationals, The Military Industrial Complex, the Jews, and The Imperial House of Bush. ...

The loony left is dangerous because there are so many of them. Membership in The John Birch Society peaked at about 100,000 nitwits. MoveOn.org can count on millions. Never in the history of the United States have so many people bought in to conspiratorial theories. Conspiracy theorists, of any political stripe, are dangerous because they cannot think and act rationally about the world that they live in. It can't be good for a country when many of its best and brightest are totally convinced that every time they lose an election that the election was rigged.

The claims are absurd - for example, Bush is said to want higher oil prices for his personal benefit, even though he sold his oil company back in 1989.
If all they have is this, it means they are out of ideas. As the author said: "Conservatism got out of the illusory business of conspiracy theories and into the rough and tumble real world of politics. Conservatism stopped peddling its fears and started marketing its ideas."

We need to keep doing that.