Conspiracy: A Biblical View, by Gary North - EntreWave

THE SHIFT IN THE CLIMATE OF OPINIONMen, conservative sociologist-historian Robert Nisbet's History of theIdea of Progress, and George Gilder's devastating criticism of thegovernment welfare system, Wealth and Poverty. (Gilder was helpedas a young man by David Rockefeller, who financed Gilder's Harvardeducation. This investment is now paying off for the conservatives,especially with Gilder's 1984 book, The Spirit of Enterprise [Simon &Schuster], an anti-bureaucracy, pro-entrepreneurship study.) I know ofno other comparably stupendous year of editing in conservativebook-publishing history. The climate of opinion is changing.Singing a New TuneAll over the landscape these days, intellectuals are singing the praisesof decentralization. New Age mystics, former Marxists, best-sellingbooks like Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave and John Naisbett'sMegatrends have all joined the chorus: a new day is a-comin'. Outwith central planning, in with local decision-making.The manipulators are trying to join in the song fest, but it's likedressing a Russian dancing bear in ballet shoes and calling it theBolshoi's prima ballerina. They just can't pull it off."Decentralization" is our program, and has always been our side of thedebate. I think they are faking it; they still know that they have tohave centralized power to maintain their power. They are not ready todecentralize anything they now control. But if they are forced todecentralize, they want to be able to say what and how far. They stillwant to run the show.On the other hand, the shift of public opinion may be so powerful thatsome of them are actually defecting, especially the younger scholarlytypes. If this continues, today's power elite is headed for the dustbin ofhistory (to use Trotsky's phrase).They successfully used the pro-government shift in the Americanclimate of opinion after, say, 1890 to further their statist ends. Nowthat the public has seen the results of this experiment in governmentcentralization, voters are having second thoughts. The old faith in thegovernment as planner is fading. The manipulators are now beginningto swim upstream intellectually, the way conservatives were forced toswim for three or four generations. The manipulators are not used toswimming upstream. They are out of shape. They are used tohttp://freebooks.commentary.net/freebooks/docs/html/gnco/html/7.htm (2 of 8) [5/26/2000 1:48:19 PM]