Secret bankers plot takes over REASON magazine. Right!

The paranoid nut cases at the John Birch Society are outing our friends at REASON magazine as fascists! Truly. No more bizarre than the loony conspiracists theories they usually tout with such fervor, however. In fact, they are being rather mild in berating writers from REASON as only fascists. Usually they invent some plot involving bankers and the Council on Foreign Relations.

When their adrenaline is pumping they start in about the Illuminati and mysterious “Insiders”.

The Birchers, and others on the extreme Right, have been pushing a NAFTA superhighway theory that is about as bizarre as the old JBS canard that Dwight Eisenhower was a agent of the Communists and reported to his brother for instructions from Moscow. It really is difficult to emphasize how deranged the Birchers can be. And they don't even have to work hard at it. It seems to be a natural talent.

Jim Capo, at the Birch Society, is upset because the Los Angeles Times has published an article debunking their conspiracy du jour -- this Superhighway/NAFTA plot that has miscellaneous xenophobes in a dither.

Capo says that article he finds so offensive “was awarded to a pair of fascists from Reason magazine, an outfit that used to be in favor of freedom.” Which is unlike the John Birch Society that loved government control over lots of things. Debunking this paranoid theory apparently makes the authors, Shikha Dalmia and Leonard Gilroy, not just fascists but “corporatist shills” as well as “phony libertarians." Aparently the new revisionist view of libertarians, that is so popular on the far right, includes beliefs in secret plots, building walls on the borders and slamming immigration.

I was once told that if you throw a stone at a pack of wild dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit. They don’t get much wilder than the Birchers --- they are crazy and funny people. (I remember one JBS member who tried to convince me that homosexuality was caused by a vitamin deficiency.) And Capo certainly is yelping loudly. Capo makes the point that “real libertarians” like Republican Ron Paul believe in the conspiracy theories they promote. He may well do so. But he is hardly a a typical libertarian.

Regardless of the vices or virtues of Ron Paul, conspiracy theories didn’t used to be typical fare for libertarians. That is, this sort of irrationality is not one peculiar to libertarians. We may have our own craziness but hundred year secret plots to rule the world by building highways isn’t one of them. The Bircher are most welcome to that insanity—we have enough of our own.

Of course, the paranoid mind always must explain anyone who challenges them. So when someone challenges the existence of witches that challenge is proof positive that the denier is clearly a witch. So apparently REASON magazine is now a part of the secret plot to take over the world and install one-world government for the Illuminati.

Capo explains: “what the LA Times and Reason magazine are really trying to do is sell us a toll ticket on the Conspiratorial highway of their sponsors.” See, “their sponsors”. Now, we know. Reason is sponsored by the conspiracy. And clever folks that these conspirators are, they set up REASON 40 years ago so it could hire two people who would write an article that would deny the secret plot to create a North American Union with a NAFTA Superhighway.

Pretty soon we’ll discover REASON editors hired Freemasons and dance naked at the Bohemian Grove —so watch for videos on YouTube proving it. I’m just waiting to find out that editor Nick Gillespie is a member of the Skull and Bones. I have it on good authority that he possesses both a skull and bones himself. He’s never been seen in public without them.

Every time I run into the Birchers I swear I can hear the music of the Twilight Zone playing in the background.