Dr. Harold Pease
I was a young man when I received my Ph. D, but I well remember the rigor and the attention to documentation that went along with it. I was trained to believe nothing that was not well documented. In fact, the training (perhaps conditioning) included avoiding anything that seemed unreasonable or conspiratorial. As a result I was not always as open minded as I should have been. The Warren Commission Report on the John F. Kennedy assassination was the only document that I shared with my students on the subject. I am still prone to be this way; after all, there are “kooks” out there and I do not have the time or resources to investigate every alternative explanation.
In graduate school days I had heard of the Bilderbergers with the accompanying accusations that they were a group of the world’s high finance and political power players that were plotting a world government. No one else took these charges seriously so neither did I. After all I was a scholar, whatever that was!
Year after year, since the first Bilderberg meeting in the Netherlands in 1954, they attracted the elite of Western Europe and the United States; the names included many of the most trusted and prominent on either continent. People who normally attracted lots of press coverage, sometimes meeting in the United States right under our nose, and the establishment press consistently ignored them. Certainly no one would actually be plotting the merger of world nations into one, which would, if successful, necessitate the end of our republic as we know it I reasoned, but no coverage at all!!
Moreover, the reports from a variety of lesser-known presses and authors, were consistent with one another for over fifty years complete with photos of participants arriving, armed guards to prevent uninvited attendees, discarded printed materials from their secret meetings, and even guest lists. It was the same every year complete with the arrest of “kooks” taking pictures of guests arriving at these posh and secluded get away places. Foreign presses usually had better coverage. Something very important was going down and the great networks and news magazines were always somewhere else, as though these events never happened.
I now include the Bilderbergers as an international special interest group when I cover special interest groups in political science. The documentation warrants it. When I overcame my programing and my “kook phobia,” at least on the idea that since we have been steadily moving in the direction of globalization (the current vogue word for world government), it is very likely that there are proponents of it intentionally leading us toward it. They see world government as the only solution to giving us peace and prosperity. I well remember the failed promises of communism, whose conspiratorial proponents gave us the same “pipe dream.”
If you are experiencing “kook phobia,” everything I have written about the Bilderbergers, and much more, is found on Wikipedia the Internet Encyclopedia, complete with 47 references. Both the left and the right are showing some awareness of the power of this semi-secret organization. My favorite, on the left, is that of former Cuban president Fidel Castro, of all people, who “describes ‘sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists’ manipulating the public ‘to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self’.” Well-done Fidel! Another source is the official Bilderberg Website. They too, admit “there remains a clear need to further develop an understanding in which these concerns [previously identified as foreign affairs and international economy] can be accommodated.” Solutions are always more governance at the international level or bluntly, world government.
This years conference was held May 31-June 3 in the posh Westfield’s Marriott Washington Dulles Hotel in Chantilly, Virginia some thirty miles outside Washington D.C. This time the Washington Post had a small article and the Washington Times had two notations of the activity, one front page, otherwise the establishment press again ignored it.
Notable attendees of the 100 coming from the U. S. included the usual faces of Henry Kissinger and Bill Gates. Democrats had favorite son Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and lead proponent of the Law of the Sea Treaty advocating giving the UN 70% of the surface of the earth, a long-time favored Bilderberg goal. They also had White House National Security Advisor Thomas E. Donilon. Republicans had in attendance past presidential hopeful and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Governor Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. of Indiana, and Vin Weber, a two-time Bilderberg presenter and presently advisor to Mitt Romney.
There are still “kooks” out there and I still do not have time or resources to investigate every alternative explanation for why globalism is growing so fast but this “kook” explanation has earned its right to be brought to the table and considered seriously. Let us begin with editors and column readers.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.