Oh what a phrase.  It stirs wild passions for and against.  Those who openly profess to embrace them are labeled kooks.  Those doing the labeling are themselves accused of being government dupes with their heads in the sand.  As with all things, the truth most likely lies somewhere in between the two camps.

I chose this topic today as it really is something I can speak to purely from my own life experience.  I’ll try and not belabor the point, yet will lay groundwork for what’s to come.  If you read the ‘About CoS’ page you already know the driving purpose of CoS is to deliver as much truth as can be uncovered and discerned.  Yet sometimes the whole truth is elusive.  Do we then remain silent or discuss what we DO know?

I have a few friends who, in our younger days, would talk about conspiracies quite often.  One other friend would always respond with “Sure, it’s a conspiracy.  Satan is out to destroy the world and all of us with it.”  We’d all laugh and admittedly I adopted his position.  I would scoff at the idea of conspiracy all the while silently wondering.

The most well known conspiracy at that time was the JFK assassination which came up in conversation regularly.  Part of my scoffing was purely to keep from being one of the targets of humiliation, branded as a “conspiracy nut”.  I also just wasn’t sure how I felt about it.  I had to admit there was some compelling evidence that Oswald did not act alone.  On the other hand I had things to do, places to be.  I didn’t have time to worry over such things.  After all, uncovering the truth wouldn’t change what happened.

Wiser

Years pass.  We grow older, presumably wiser, or at least more experienced in this drama we call life.  Over time much more has been revealed about the JFK assassination, and my logical mind (engineer and programmer) that is never quite content with passe answers, needed more input for this unsettling puzzle.  After hours of searching I have my own conclusion which might make a good post one day.  But the bottom line is this; what was once a conspiracy theory is generally regarded as conspiracy fact today.  No matter who was behind it, the physical evidence alone proves there were multiple gunmen.

Where does this leave us?  Those who for years claimed the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, enduring endless ridicule, were it would seem, right.  Many have now gone back to look at Lincoln’s assassination insisting it too was a conspiracy, and apparently with good reason.  Has all good sense left us if we embrace such thinking?  As a one time scoffer I say, no.

Life experience has taught me several things.  Power begets and seeks more power.  The wealthy seek more wealth.  Those in control want more control.  It’s the undeniable nature of humans.  Leaks, the freedom of information act, and simple greed, have brought to light various underhanded manipulations of those in power.  Actions that seemed innocent at the time are now seen in a far different light.

One such example is Pearl Harbor.  We now know without a doubt the FDR administration knew the attack was coming, yet did nothing.  It served the purpose of the war machinery to profit from the gross expenditure of humans killing other humans.  It served the purpose of Churchill who had for years begged FDR to get the U.S. involved.  FDR had refused based on not being able to convince the U.S. populace.  Pearl Harbor changed that.  It’s all well documented.

We know these things have happened.  It would be foolish to believe they don’t still happen.

Origins

These days I prefer to turn to a much older version of a dictionary as a reference point.  In case you haven’t looked lately the ‘modern’ versions of dictionaries have changed the meaning of words to suit a political agenda.  Conspiracy?  No, this is a fact.

Turning to the 1828 American dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster let’s see what we find.

CONSPIRACY, n. [L. See Conspire.]
1. A combination of men for an evil purpose; an agreement between two or more persons, to commit some crime in concert; particularly, a combination to commit treason, or excite sedition or insurrection against the government of a state; a plot; as a conspiracy against the life of a king; a conspiracy against the government.

More than forty had made this conspiracy. Acts 23.

2. In law, an agreement between two or more persons, falsely and maliciously to indict, or procure to be indicted, an innocent person of felony.

3. A concurrence; a general tendency of two or more causes to one event.

THE’ORY, n. [L. theoria; Gr. to see or contemplate.]
1. Speculation; a doctrine or scheme of things, which terminates in speculation or contemplation, without a view to practice. It is here taken in an unfavorable sense, as implying something visionary.

2. An exposition of the general principles of any science; as the theory of music.

3. The science distinguished from the art; as the theory and practice of medicine.

4. The philosophical explanation of phenomena, either physical or moral; as Lavoisier’s theory of combustion; Smith’s theory of moral sentiments.

Theory is distinguished from hypothesis thus; a theory is founded on inferences drawn from principles which have been established on independent evidence; a hypothesis is a proposition assumed to account for certain phenomena, and has no other evidence of its truth, than that it affords a satisfactory explanation of those phenomena.

In putting it all together those 2 words are a powerful statement.  A damning statement of those in power.  Yet it is used in modern culture to deride, mock, and condemn those who are possibly on to something going on.  In fact the origin of the phrase “conspiracy theorist” is from the CIA for the express purpose of debunking cries of fowl play involving JFK’s assassination.  Prior to that time this phrase, and it’s negative connotations did not exist in our culture.

Mathias Broeckers, born 1954, is a German investigative journalist who did the research and published a book on it, “JFK: Coup d’Etat in America”.  In an interview with Lars Schall of Global Research he states:

In January 1967, shortly after Jim Garrison in New Orleans had started his prosecution of the CIA backgrounds of the murder, the CIA published a memo to all its stations, suggesting the use of the term “conspiracy theorists” for everyone criticizing the Warren Report findings. Until then the press and the public mostly used the term “assassination theories” when it came to alternative views of the “lone nut” Lee Harvey Oswald. But with this memo this changed and very soon “conspiracy theories” became what it is until today: a term to smear, denounce and defame anyone who dares to speak about any crime committed by the state, military or intelligence services.”

Exactly.

Wisdom

Do we blindly accept every notion of corruption?  No.  Do we then act like it doesn’t exist, as so many well known conservative speakers do out of fear of being labeled a kook?  Again I say no.  We must weigh all things against history, the facts we do know, and common sense and reasoning.  It’s VERY easy to get caught up and carried away in the moment of discovering some hard truth about some conspiracy.  At those times we need to take a step back and allow our common sense to prevail.  Are bad people doing bad things in secret?  You bet they are.  But it’s not happening in everything.  Yet avoiding it out of fear is not the answer.  Yesterday’s conspiracies are becoming today’s fact.  This alone should inspire us to consider all possibilities.

You may ask why.  Why should we care?  Because there are things happening today that may very well change all of our lives forever.  We need to be aware and prepared.  We need to watch and carefully discern.  In some cases we may be able to band together and defeat some things that are taking place.  In other instances simply being prepared and having a back-up plan is all we can, and should, do.  This is no different than preparing for retirement by creating a nest egg of investments.  If that is being a prepper then that’s what we need to be.