The Agenda …

I’m not a conspiracy buff. 

Probably not for the reasons you might imagine, however.  I think most conspiracy theories are too simplistic; they offer pat answers to what are more likely fairly complicated events. 

That’s why conspiracy buffs like them – it’s easier to believe someone or some group is pulling all the strings behind the scenes.  Especially when the actual facts are uncomfortable to face, or the true reason why something happened is way too complex to easily grasp. 

I was in the oil industry during the 70s. If you are old enough, you probably remember waiting in long lines for gas, odd and even days to buy gas, and soaring energy prices. 

And I bet you – like so many others – blamed the greedy oil companies. 

The real reasons for the crises and dramatic price increases were convoluted and short-sighted U.S. energy policy decisions made in the past, international politics and Mideast wars, and overreaction by our own politicians and regulators who made it all worse than need be.  Plus, while wholesale prices were rising, greedy state politicians also took the opportunity to jack up their gas taxes, driving prices even higher. 

That’s what really happened.  I was there.  But a popular conspiracy theory at the time was this was all just a ploy by U.S. oil companies who refused to pump oil from their domestic wells until the price went up.  I suppose that’s much easier to understand than why for many years our government put price controls on domestic oil production, yet encouraged oil imports by making it more profitable for oil companies to drill overseas than here. 

Or why our government helped set up OPEC in the first place. It did. Look it up.   

So I don’t buy into the premise that Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Davos crowd or some combination of those and other rumored cabals are secretly engineering a New World Order. That’s as nutty as the white supremacists’ and KKK-types’ beliefs that blacks, Jews, and illegal aliens are somehow in league to take over the country.    

However, I will concede that there is an agenda in this country – not pursued in a conscious, coordinated way, but headed in a common direction. It’s not a conspiracy per se, because it’s a range of independent, uncoordinated actions from a variety of disparate groups, but it’s pretty clear cut what the end result is.  

What is that agenda?  In simplest terms, as follows:

There’s no absolute right or wrong anymore, or legal or illegal.  Whether something is right or wrong, or legal or illegal, should depend entirely on context and public opinion. 

That means, whether they realize it or not, they want a nation based on opinions – the rule of man – rather than the rule of law. Unless, of course, they are in favor of that particular law. 

In fairness, it’s not as if there’s a unified force trying to push this agenda.  Some of these groups despise each other and would never think to join forces.  Instead, it’s more a relentless chipping away in thousands of minor hits coming from a variety of directions.

In Pennsylvania we have an Attorney General who openly declines to enforce certain laws, not claiming the right under Prosecutorial Discretion, but simply because she doesn’t agree with those laws. She has also decided which laws and rules of conduct she herself will obey. 

Not long ago she orchestrated a leak of Grand Jury testimony – clearly against the rules – to embarrass an adversary. First she lied about it; then, when caught, she threw her own staff under the bus.  When they turned on her, she hired Lanny Davis to try to escape on a technicality. 

But she’s a woman, in favor of gay marriage, and pro-choice, which is all that matters to some folks.  So she still has ardent supporters despite her obvious lack of ethics.   

The same thing is happening in many other states, too.  What laws are on the books and which laws get enforced may be vastly different, depending on who is calling the shots.  More importantly, officials aren’t trying to change what may be bad laws – they are just ignoring enforcing or complying with laws they don’t like. 

At the same time, state legislatures are bending to popular sentiment by passing new laws to rein in provisions in the Bill of Rights they don’t like – such as protection of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms, for example.  Other state legislatures are passing laws creating new rights for the sole purpose of appeasing special interest groups. 

For example, possession and sale of marijuana is a Federal offense, punishable by up to 5 years in prison and as much as $250,000 in fines.  But public opinion in a lot of places is in favor of legalizing use of marijuana by adults.  So some states have done so and openly allow licensed, and now taxed, marijuana growers and retailers to prosper and users to get their weed legally. 

Don’t get me wrong – I’m in favor of legalizing marijuana use by adults and treating it the same as alcohol … taxes, restrictions, and all.  Yet technically it’s still against Federal law – which still has it as a controlled substance. 

Do the Feds and Justice Department not know that Colorado, for example, has legalized pot?  Do they not know who the licensed dealers are?  Of course they do.  But they’ve decided not to bother with enforcing the law, because public opinion is in favor of legalizing pot. 

As much as I agree with public opinion on this, it is simply another example of the agenda.  Instead of repealing a bad law, or modifying that law, it just gets ignored.  For now.  It’s still on the books if someone later decides to use it against somebody, but for now, who cares.     

That’s the part of the agenda that’s so dangerous – you never know when public opinion is going to change, or get headed down a terrible path.  That’s why there are – or were – laws and rules: to put a stake in the ground so everybody knows what lines can and cannot be crossed, regardless of what public opinion might be at the time. 

If the law is a bad law, then there are processes for changing it. Segregation was supported by bad laws, albeit favored by the majority of the public in several states.  Despite public opinion being on the side of segregation for many years, those laws were eventually overturned despite public opinion.     

Another disturbing trend supporting the agenda is that the past few Presidents have used Executive Actions extensively to bypass the processes outlined in the Constitution for making laws. Rather than following the clearly defined rules, they’ve decided they can do whatever they want as long as they feel public opinion is on their side, or ultimately will be. 

That’s set up an ultimate high stakes “catch me if you can” game, where a President challenges either the Congress to impeach them, or the Supreme Court to overrule them. In effect, we now have Presidents betting that neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has the guts to set up a Constitutional challenge to their Executive power.  

The Republican Congress learned how politically disastrous impeaching a President can be with Bill Clinton. The Democrats are not likely to repeat the Republicans’ mistake. 

I’m not sure what now rises to the level where a Republican or Democrat Congress would be comfortable impeaching a sitting President. 

They’d have to be proven to have sold critical military secrets to the Russians and Chinese and done something on the order of shipping nukes to ISIS or Boko Haram, for starters.  Then they’d have to be recorded in the Oval Office shooting up heroin with Kim Jung Il while having sex with underage illegal immigrants they later murder, along with a puppy, in a Satanic ritual, all captured in high-def by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning cameraman doing a live network feed from the White House seen by millions around the world. 

It would still be difficult even then.  But maybe the pedophilia and murder would turn off enough of the public to make a Congress think they had popular support.  What constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors is in the eye of the beholder, after all. 

In terms of getting in a fight with the Supreme Court, look at what happened with the Affordable Care Act ruling on whether people could be compelled by government to buy a product or face financial penalties.  Chief Justice Roberts rolled over after criticism and threats from the White House; out of left field he called those penalties a tax and let something clearly un-Constitutional get a pass. 

Such is today’s power of public opinion. That’s just wrong.    

But I guess those unknowingly advancing the agenda won’t realize that until public opinion turns against something they want.  Which it will, eventually. 

What the agenda promotes is mob rule, which is fine for many people as long as the mob is moving in the same direction they are. But mobs are unpredictable. 

One day they might find the mob no longer behind them, but coming toward them.

Then they’ll wish there were laws and rules to protect their rights and liberties against the mob.