WEBVTT NOTE Conspiracy Theories, History, and The State 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with Jeff Rigenbach. 2 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:20.000 If you spend much time on the internet, you probably already know who Cass Sunstein is. 3 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:25.000 He's a former professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago, 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:34.000 where, during the 1990s, he met and became close friends with a fellow member of the law school faculty named Barack Obama. 5 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:41.000 Currently, Sunstein is a law professor at Harvard, but he's taking a leave of absence from that position, 6 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:50.000 so he can serve as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. 7 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:55.500 The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, according to Wikipedia, 8 00:00:55.500 --> 00:01:03.500 develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, 9 00:01:03.500 --> 00:01:09.000 information policy, privacy and statistical policy. 10 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:18.500 If you spend much time on the Internet, you probably also know why Sunstein has been receiving a lot of attention from the blogosphere lately. 11 00:01:18.500 --> 00:01:24.800 It's because of a research paper he co-authored with Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule 12 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:28.820 for publication in January 2008. 13 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:32.340 The paper is on conspiracy theories. 14 00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:38.200 A conspiracy theory, according to Sunstein and Vermeule, is an effort to explain some 15 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:44.860 event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people who have also managed to 16 00:01:44.860 --> 00:01:47.320 conceal their role. 17 00:01:47.320 --> 00:01:49.260 They give a few examples. 18 00:01:49.260 --> 00:01:54.680 The view that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President 19 00:01:54.680 --> 00:01:56.880 John F. Kennedy. 20 00:01:56.880 --> 00:02:01.320 That doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus. 21 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:09.620 That the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile. 22 00:02:09.620 --> 00:02:13.800 That the theory of global warming is a deliberate fraud. 23 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:18.780 That the Trilateral Commission is responsible for important movements of the international 24 00:02:18.780 --> 00:02:20.780 economy. 25 00:02:20.780 --> 00:02:25.300 That Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed by Federal agents. 26 00:02:25.300 --> 00:02:30.720 That the plane crash that killed Democrat Paul Wellstone was engineered by Republican 27 00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:32.660 politicians. 28 00:02:32.660 --> 00:02:37.960 That the moon landing was staged and never actually occurred. 29 00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:43.120 According to Sunstein and Vermeule, some conspiracy theories are harmless. 30 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:48.600 They write, for example, that we should consider the false conspiracy theory held by many of 31 00:02:48.600 --> 00:02:54.000 the younger members of our society that a secret group of elves working in a remote 32 00:02:54.000 --> 00:03:00.440 location under the leadership of the mysterious Santa Claus make and distribute presents on 33 00:03:00.440 --> 00:03:02.480 Christmas Eve. 34 00:03:02.480 --> 00:03:07.840 They suggest that we should consider, too, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. 35 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:13.380 The thing is, they point out, that if children believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, 36 00:03:13.380 --> 00:03:16.360 there is no problem for government to solve. 37 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:21.060 And the belief that the government covered up the landing of space aliens in Roswell 38 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:26.380 does not seem to be causing discernible harm either, with the possible exception of bad 39 00:03:26.380 --> 00:03:29.040 television shows. 40 00:03:29.040 --> 00:03:34.440 But not all conspiracy theories are harmless, say Sunstein and Vermeule. 41 00:03:34.440 --> 00:03:37.340 Some conspiracy theories do great harm. 42 00:03:37.340 --> 00:03:41.180 They Create a Problem for Government to Solve. 43 00:03:41.180 --> 00:03:46.360 For example, a conspiracy theory that portrayed the Federal Government of the United States 44 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:53.940 as a morally repellent organization could have such pernicious effects as inducing unjustifiably 45 00:03:53.940 --> 00:04:01.120 widespread public skepticism about the government's assertions, or dampening public mobilization 46 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:06.240 and participation in government-led efforts, or both. 47 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:11.320 According to Sunstein and Vermeule, there are conspiracy theories that not only undermine 48 00:04:11.320 --> 00:04:17.680 democratic debate, in extreme cases they create or fuel violence. 49 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:22.740 In brief, some conspiracy theories create serious risks. 50 00:04:22.740 --> 00:04:27.540 If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. 51 00:04:27.540 --> 00:04:32.360 What specifically do Sunstein and Vermeule believe government should do? 52 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:37.600 It should begin, they say, by recognizing that those who hold conspiracy theories do 53 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:41.520 so because of what they read and hear. 54 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:46.660 And they read and hear talk about conspiracy theories because there are people out there 55 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:49.880 promoting such theories. 56 00:04:49.880 --> 00:04:57.080 Sunstein and Vermeule write that many conspiracy theories are initiated and spread quite intentionally 57 00:04:57.080 --> 00:05:05.480 by Conspiracy Entrepreneurs who profit directly or indirectly from propagating their theories. 58 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:13.240 The specific motives of these conspiracy entrepreneurs vary somewhat, according to Sunstein and Vermeule. 59 00:05:13.240 --> 00:05:18.120 Some conspiracy entrepreneurs are entirely sincere, they write. 60 00:05:18.120 --> 00:05:24.280 Others are interested in money or power, or in achieving some general social goal. 61 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:31.800 In any case, they argue, it is these conspiracy entrepreneurs that need to be targeted, undermined, 62 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:35.560 and, if necessary, silenced. 63 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:40.900 There are more than a few problems here already from a libertarian perspective, but one of 64 00:05:40.900 --> 00:05:47.200 them especially stuck out to me at this point in Sunstein's and Vermeule's argument. 65 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:53.960 Aren't at least some so-called conspiracy theories the simple historical truth? 66 00:05:53.960 --> 00:05:59.680 Einstein and Vermeule acknowledge that. They write that some conspiracy theories under our 67 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:06.840 definition have turned out to be true. But, they assert reassuringly, our focus throughout 68 00:06:06.840 --> 00:06:14.280 is on false conspiracy theories, not true ones. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public 69 00:06:14.280 --> 00:06:21.000 officials might undermine such theories, and, as a general rule, true accounts should not 70 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:23.640 should not be undermined. 71 00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:28.780 As a general rule, true accounts should not be undermined. 72 00:06:28.780 --> 00:06:31.280 But that's only as a general rule. 73 00:06:31.280 --> 00:06:36.600 There are probably some cases in which true accounts should be undermined, like maybe 74 00:06:36.600 --> 00:06:42.400 when they begin inducing widespread public skepticism about the government's assertions, 75 00:06:42.400 --> 00:06:49.200 or dampening public mobilization and participation in government-led efforts, or both. 76 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:54.200 whenever they begin causing problems for the powers that be. 77 00:06:54.200 --> 00:07:01.000 Even if we do, as Sunstein and Vermeule say they do, and assume a well-motivated government 78 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:07.600 that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories or draw their poison, if and only if social 79 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:13.480 welfare is improved by doing so, this is a troubling thought. 80 00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:19.920 You see, we don't know, going in, which conspiracy theories are true and which aren't. 81 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:22.680 In many cases, we can't know. 82 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:25.640 We simply don't have enough information. 83 00:07:25.640 --> 00:07:32.620 Ordinarily we find out that a particular conspiracy theory is true because historians, whether 84 00:07:32.620 --> 00:07:38.400 the historians in a hurry, whom we usually call journalists, or the more painstaking 85 00:07:38.400 --> 00:08:08.040 Government officials are not, by and large, happy with this state of affairs, because 86 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:15.600 As history is the natural enemy of the state, sustained reflection after the fact on exactly 87 00:08:15.600 --> 00:08:22.040 what the state did and why inevitably has the tendency to undermine any confidence one 88 00:08:22.040 --> 00:08:28.480 might have had in the state's good motives and desire to promote social welfare. 89 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:34.640 It tends, inevitably, to induce widespread public skepticism about the government's assertions 90 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:42.080 and to dampen public mobilization and participation in government-led efforts, or both. 91 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:48.640 The state benefits from the shortage of information that the speed of events imposes on people. 92 00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:52.160 It can't avoid history entirely, of course. 93 00:08:52.160 --> 00:08:58.060 People will read and write about such stuff, no matter what the state says or does. 94 00:08:58.060 --> 00:09:04.400 But the state can do what it can to see to it that whatever history does get written 95 00:09:04.400 --> 00:09:08.040 tells the story the state once told. 96 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:14.620 Albert J. Nock argued that studying the classics as an undergraduate was far and away the best 97 00:09:14.620 --> 00:09:21.160 educational program a young person could adopt, because the literatures of Greece and Rome 98 00:09:21.160 --> 00:09:28.040 comprise the longest and fullest continuous record available to us of what the human mind 99 00:09:28.040 --> 00:09:34.960 has been busy about in practically every department of spiritual and social activity. 100 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:38.760 Every department, I think, except one, music. 101 00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:46.080 This record covers 2,500 consecutive years of the human mind's operations in poetry, 102 00:09:46.080 --> 00:09:55.280 drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, natural history, philology, rhetoric, astronomy, 103 00:09:55.280 --> 00:10:00.680 Politics, Medicine, Theology, Geography, Everything. 104 00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:07.040 Hence the mind that has attentively canvassed this record is not only a disciplined mind, 105 00:10:07.040 --> 00:10:13.840 but an experienced mind, a mind that instinctively views any contemporary phenomenon from the 106 00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:20.040 vantage point of an immensely long perspective, attained through this profound and weighty 107 00:10:20.040 --> 00:10:24.560 experience of the human spirit's operations. 108 00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:29.860 Something similar can be said about studying the classics of the libertarian tradition, 109 00:10:29.860 --> 00:10:34.720 though the overwhelming majority of the works in that tradition are no more than a few hundred 110 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:36.200 years old. 111 00:10:36.200 --> 00:10:43.280 Nonetheless, the mind that has attentively canvassed the record of libertarian and proto-libertarian 112 00:10:43.280 --> 00:10:49.600 writing during those few hundred years will be equipped by that experience to view any 113 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:56.080 Any Contemporary Phenomenon from the vantage point of a long and thoughtful perspective. 114 00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:01.920 The mind familiar with the classics of the libertarian tradition is the mind best prepared 115 00:11:01.920 --> 00:11:07.260 to comprehend any contemporary political development. 116 00:11:07.260 --> 00:11:11.640 In thinking about the Sunstein affair I've been describing for the past few minutes, 117 00:11:11.640 --> 00:11:17.240 for example, we would do well to reflect on what Murray Rothbard told us in one of the 118 00:11:17.240 --> 00:11:30.240 The Great Libertarian Classics to come from his pen, his great essay, The Anatomy of the State, first published in 1965 in Robert Lefebvre's Rampart Journal. 119 00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:39.240 Once a state has been established, Rothbard wrote, the problem of the ruling group or caste is how to maintain their rule. 120 00:11:39.240 --> 00:11:46.240 While force is their modus operandi, their basic and long run problem is ideological. 121 00:11:46.240 --> 00:11:52.840 For in order to continue in office, any government, not simply a democratic government, must have 122 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:56.460 the support of the majority of its subjects. 123 00:11:56.460 --> 00:12:01.140 This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm. 124 00:12:01.140 --> 00:12:07.240 It may well be passive resignation, as if to an inevitable law of nature. 125 00:12:07.240 --> 00:12:12.600 But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort, it must be. 126 00:12:12.600 --> 00:12:18.560 Thus the minority of state rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of 127 00:12:18.560 --> 00:12:21.240 the majority of the public. 128 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:27.080 Since predation must be supported out of the surplus of production, it is necessarily true 129 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:33.840 that the class constituting the state, the full-time bureaucracy and nobility, must be 130 00:12:33.840 --> 00:12:40.600 a rather small minority in the land, although it may, of course, purchase allies among important 131 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:42.600 Groups in the Population. 132 00:12:42.600 --> 00:12:50.240 Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance 133 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:53.400 of the majority of the citizens. 134 00:12:53.400 --> 00:12:59.640 Rothbard continues, Of course, one method of securing support is through the creation 135 00:12:59.640 --> 00:13:02.240 of vested economic interests. 136 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:08.960 However, this secures only a minority of eager supporters, and even the essential purchasing 137 00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:14.280 Promoting of support by subsidies and other grants of privilege still does not obtain 138 00:13:14.280 --> 00:13:17.060 the consent of the majority. 139 00:13:17.060 --> 00:13:23.520 For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government 140 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:32.520 is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. 141 00:13:32.520 --> 00:13:38.800 Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the intellectuals. 142 00:13:38.800 --> 00:13:43.940 For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or, indeed, think through these 143 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:46.100 ideas independently. 144 00:13:46.100 --> 00:13:52.820 They follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. 145 00:13:52.820 --> 00:14:00.280 The intellectuals are, therefore, the opinion-moulders in society, and since it is precisely a molding 146 00:14:00.280 --> 00:14:06.360 of opinion that the state most desperately needs, the basis for the age-old alliance 147 00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:11.160 Alliance Between the State and the Intellectuals Becomes Clear. 148 00:14:11.160 --> 00:14:16.800 One particularly venerable example of this alliance between the state and the intellectuals 149 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:24.220 is the existence of what Rothbard calls official or court historians, dedicated to purveying 150 00:14:24.220 --> 00:14:29.360 the rulers' views of their own and their predecessors' actions. 151 00:14:29.360 --> 00:14:34.880 It is important, Rothbard reminds us, for the state to inculcate in its subjects an 152 00:14:34.880 --> 00:14:39.440 and aversion to any conspiracy theory of history. 153 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:45.680 For a search for conspiracies means a search for motives and an attribution of responsibility 154 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:48.680 for historical misdeeds. 155 00:14:48.680 --> 00:14:55.880 If however, any tyranny imposed by the State, or venality or aggressive war, was caused 156 00:14:55.880 --> 00:15:03.120 not by the State rulers, but by mysterious and arcane social forces, or by the imperfect 157 00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:10.840 State of the World, or if in some way everyone was responsible, we are all murderers, proclaims 158 00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:17.120 one slogan, then there is no point to the people becoming indignant or rising up against 159 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:18.920 such misdeeds. 160 00:15:18.920 --> 00:15:25.520 Furthermore, an attack on conspiracy theories means that the subjects will become more gullible 161 00:15:25.520 --> 00:15:31.840 in believing the general welfare reasons that are always put forth by the state for engaging 162 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:35.000 in any of its despotic actions. 163 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:40.940 A conspiracy theory can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state's 164 00:15:40.940 --> 00:15:45.040 ideological propaganda. 165 00:15:45.040 --> 00:15:51.080 Now and then, of course, a state fails to take adequate precautions, fails to plan far 166 00:15:51.080 --> 00:15:56.600 enough in advance, fails to conspire effectively enough. 167 00:15:56.600 --> 00:16:00.360 This happened in the United States after World War I. 168 00:16:00.360 --> 00:16:03.980 The American state had its court historians in place. 169 00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:07.260 It had had them in place for several years already. 170 00:16:07.260 --> 00:16:13.240 But it failed to anticipate a revisionist movement that took hold in the 1920s among 171 00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:20.120 some of the most informed and articulate American historians, most notably Harry Elmer Barnes 172 00:16:20.120 --> 00:16:22.600 and Charles Beard. 173 00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:29.640 As Barnes recalled the events of those years 30 years later in the early 1950s, the readjustment 174 00:16:29.640 --> 00:16:35.440 of historical writing to historical facts relative to the background and causes of the 175 00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:42.200 First World War, what is popularly known in the historical craft as revisionism, was the 176 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:48.360 most important development in historiography during the decade of the 1920s. 177 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:54.060 In fact, Barnes wrote, the revisionist controversy was the outstanding intellectual adventure 178 00:16:54.060 --> 00:17:00.020 in the Historical Field in the 20th Century down to Pearl Harbor. 179 00:17:00.020 --> 00:17:05.700 According to Barnes, revisionism, when applied to the First World War, showed that the actual 180 00:17:05.700 --> 00:17:11.940 causes and merits of that conflict were very close to the reverse of the picture presented 181 00:17:11.940 --> 00:17:17.580 in the political propaganda and historical writings of the war decade. 182 00:17:17.580 --> 00:17:24.020 And by some time in the 1930s, those historians at all receptive to the facts admitted that 183 00:17:24.020 --> 00:17:48.020 In fact, according to Barnes, by 1928, almost everyone except the die-hards and bitter-enders in the historical profession had come to accept revisionism, and even the general public had begun to think straight in the premises. 184 00:17:48.020 --> 00:18:06.020 In fact, the revisionists won over so sizable a segment of the general public to its point of view on the war that the Roosevelt administration had to resort to desperate measures to win popular approval for its plans to enter World War II on the side of the Allies. 185 00:18:06.020 --> 00:18:18.020 But once that approval was won and the war was fought and over with, the American state turned out to have learned something from its intellectual adventures of the 1920s and 30s. 186 00:18:18.020 --> 00:18:30.020 As Barnes wrote in 1953, revisionism would produce similar results with respect to the Second World War if it were allowed to develop unimpeded. 187 00:18:30.020 --> 00:18:36.180 but a determined effort is being made to stifle or silence revelations which would establish 188 00:18:36.180 --> 00:18:42.420 the truth with regard to the causes and issues of the late world conflict. 189 00:18:42.420 --> 00:18:48.600 This determined effort, according to Barnes, included systematic denial of access to official 190 00:18:48.600 --> 00:18:51.380 documents about the war. 191 00:18:51.380 --> 00:18:56.980 There is a determined effort, he wrote, to block those suspected of seeking the truth 192 00:18:56.980 --> 00:19:03.620 from having access to official documents, other than those which have become public property. 193 00:19:03.620 --> 00:19:09.660 Many of these important sources are completely sealed off from any historian who is suspected 194 00:19:09.660 --> 00:19:17.100 of desiring to ascertain the full and unbiased truth with respect to American foreign policy 195 00:19:17.100 --> 00:19:19.100 since 1933. 196 00:19:19.100 --> 00:19:26.700 Yet, Barnes argued, if the complete official documents would support the generally accepted 197 00:19:26.700 --> 00:19:31.260 Views with Respect to the Causes and Issues of the War. 198 00:19:31.260 --> 00:19:37.120 There would seem to be no reasonable objection to allowing any reputable historian to have 199 00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:42.540 free and unimpeded access to such materials. 200 00:19:42.540 --> 00:19:49.220 To learn more about revisionism, see my book, Why American History is Not What They Say, 201 00:19:49.220 --> 00:19:55.820 An Introduction to Revisionism, available as a free download in PDF format, or for sale 202 00:19:55.820 --> 00:20:08.580 Cast Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule would beg to differ with Barnes, I'm sure, about making 203 00:20:08.580 --> 00:20:13.060 official documents available to revisionist historians. 204 00:20:13.060 --> 00:20:18.660 After all, the revisionist accounts of the war, conspiracy theories about the U.S. role 205 00:20:18.660 --> 00:20:24.940 in the war, might portray the Federal Government of the United States as a morally repellent 206 00:20:24.940 --> 00:20:26.620 Organization. 207 00:20:26.620 --> 00:20:32.740 Such theories might have such pernicious effects as inducing widespread public skepticism about 208 00:20:32.740 --> 00:20:39.500 the government's assertions, or dampening public mobilization and participation in government-led 209 00:20:39.500 --> 00:20:41.900 efforts, or both. 210 00:20:41.900 --> 00:20:45.120 Such theories might undermine democratic debate. 211 00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:49.980 In extreme cases, they might create or fuel violence. 212 00:20:49.980 --> 00:20:53.940 What would Sunstein and Vermeule have the federal government do? 213 00:20:53.940 --> 00:21:00.960 Well, they write, the most direct response to a dangerous conspiracy theory is censorship. 214 00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:06.600 We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive and 215 00:21:06.600 --> 00:21:10.340 so dangerous that censorship would be thinkable. 216 00:21:10.340 --> 00:21:15.860 However, censorship of speech is notoriously difficult. 217 00:21:15.860 --> 00:21:18.180 It's good that it is so difficult. 218 00:21:18.180 --> 00:21:24.740 If it weren't, it might be resorted to more frequently by men like Cass Sunstein, administrator 219 00:21:24.740 --> 00:21:30.740 of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, men who don't seem to 220 00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:36.560 mind violating their fellow human beings' natural rights when such an important issue 221 00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:41.900 as public skepticism about the government is at stake. 222 00:21:41.900 --> 00:21:48.900 This is Jeff Riggenbach.