As Old as The Hills

Trey Smith

There have been quite a number of reports and articles in the past few months about certain conservative individuals (e.g., the Koch Brothers) and groups (e.g., American Legislative Exchange Council -- ALEC) who have been meeting and crafting legislation for government bodies all over the country. These reports present this coordination as a new strategy in the elite's master plan to mold the country into the kind of shape they desire.

What gets me is that this strategy is anything but new; it's as old as the hills! Individuals and groups from every political perspective imaginable have been meeting together to plot out their machinations since the nation-state was born. Heck, it may even predate then.

While the strategy itself is not innovative in the least, what has changed in this 24/7 news world is that people outside of these meetings and conferences know about them. Before the advent of mass and instant communications, these little enclaves met in secret and most folks were completely in the dark!

Beyond that facet, it is again as old the hills that various political factions desire to revolutionize society and government in ways that benefit them. We see this very clearly in Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism as she describes how the boys from the Chicago School have spent the better part of the last four decades trotting around the globe introducing the shock doctrine wherever they can.

In the book I'm currently reading, Chinese Thought, from Confucius to Mao Tse-Tung, the author shows how this idea of influencing the tenor and direction of society was a central piece of Confucius's educational mission.

...Confucius expected his students to play the dynamic role of revolutionizing any government in which they might take part and making it serve the needs of the people.

It's a good bet that others before and after the time of Confucius have had this same basic goal with the only difference being which people's needs they believed should be served.