The automatic rejection of anything labelled a "conspiracy theory" as something foolish or crazy is actually relatively recent--
1967 seems to be when the CIA officially started using the term as a tool to discredit theories. I had noted recently, in my article on "
Secret Combinations," that secret combinations and conspiracies have played an important role in history, using the example of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. However, not all conspiracies are as blatant in their outcome. Who can forget
JournoList, where a select group of academicians and journalists decided what was "news" (and the spin to be given it) and what was not, and thereby influence public opinion. (Although the original JournoList closed down,
a successor is up and running).
Another example, and one that is somewhat better documented, is the story of Rosa Parks.
The National Archives relates the Rosa Parks myth we all learned in school:
On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested that day for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses.
On the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, the front 10 seats were permanently reserved for white passengers. ... When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Mrs. Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Mrs. Parks remained seated, arguing that she was not in a seat reserved for whites. Joseph Blake, the driver, believed he had the discretion to move the line separating black and white passengers. ... [W]hen Mrs. Parks defied his order, he called the police. Officers Day and Mixon came and promptly arrested her.
* * *
... Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381 days and captured the world's attention. It was during the boycott that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.
When I was a wee lad, the reason we were told that Parks didn't want to give up her seat was because
she was tired and sore from a long day of work.
Of course, the myth of Rosa Parks, while rooted in real events, does not relate the true facts, and I doubt we know all of them even now. The important point, though, is that the events were not as spontaneous as we are (or were) led to believe. A couple articles on the topic are
here and
here. Without going into the fine details, the salient facts are as follows: NAACP leaders had previously attempted to organize a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, and were looking for a case to test the law on segregated seating. The first attempt, made after the March 1955 arrest of Claudette Colvin for not vacating her bus seat, failed. A couple primary reasons are advanced for the failure: (1) lack of organization, and (2), probably more important, although Colvin was a member of the Youth Council of the local NAACP chapter, she was unknown to the black community at large. The subsequent arrest of another Youth Council member, Mary Louise Smith, in October 1955, also was deemed inadequate because Smith was too young and poor to generate the necessary sympathy. Although even the current accounts in circulation still make it sound as though Parks' decision was impromptu, it is likely that the NAACP turned to her to act as an
agent provocateur prior to her arrest. Parks was the secretary to E.D. Dixon, the local NAACP president. She had been heavily involved in the NAACP and civil rights movement for over a decade, knew all of the important leaders, and was known to the larger black community. Certainly she would have known of the strategy and decisions involving Colvin and Smith. Moreover, there was probably a bit of personal revenge on Parks' mind: James Blake, the bus driver who ordered her to the back of the bus in 1955 had previously thrown her off his bus in 1943 for the same offense. In any event, when Parks was arrested, the NAACP's plan went into effect; within 10 hours, 15,000 flyers had been printed and distributed, and 50 pastors (including Martin Luther King, Jr.) met and agreed to urge their congregations to join in the boycott. The rest, as they say, is history.
The point of the foregoing is that key events are not always (or even mostly) mere happenstance. There can be a lot of planning and thought behind what seems to be a random event or "grass roots" ground swell. Sometimes it takes years or decades of careful work. We have seen this with gay marriage, where first homosexuality had to be normalized through media exposure, so that people would tolerate, then embrace, the concept. This was done by downplaying the grotesque lifestyles previously associated with homosexuality and portraying homosexuals as, other than their orientation, being "normal" and committed to long term relationships; thus we are shown
Will and Grace and
Modern Family instead of the San Francisco gay pride parade. With that accomplished, the push for gay marriage was advanced on the grounds that it was only fair that the "life partners" be entitled to the same rights as married heterosexual couples. At first, the "equality" sought was only in relation to insurance, or visitation rights when hospitalized, and so on. Policies extending such rights were first adopted by government and large private employers, before leading to the legal grant of "domestic partnerships," which was marriage in all but name. But even that was not enough, and so we now find ourselves with a
de facto Constitutional amendment by the Supreme Court requiring recognition of gay marriage.
Which brings me to the subject of the current post. Yesterday,
Slate published an article entitled "
I’m a pedophile, but not a monster," and subtitled, "I'm attracted to children but unwilling to act on it. Before judging me harshly, would you be willing to listen?" The specifics of the article are largely irrelevant. What is important is to recognize this article for what it is: the first step in normalizing pedophilia by presenting us with someone that is sympathetic; that is not a child molester; and, by sympathizing with him, begin to subconsciously question our revulsion of pedophiles generally. How can we know that this was the purpose of the article? Ask yourself how
Slate came to publish this article, and why. The author is not a regular
Slate contributor, but he is the moderator of the Virtuous Pedophiles forum. He has an agenda and so too must the editor(s) that chose his story for inclusion in the magazine.
His voice is not the first. (See also
here). But it is a sign of what is to come. And I'm confident that it was no accident that this article was published shortly after the Boy Scouts were shamed into accepting gay leaders.
As C.S. Lewis wrote: "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts...." And, so, the public will be gradually ensnared, and gently pulled in certain directions under the guise of advancing equity and human rights. "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." And so it goes.
