America possesses, or possessed, a potent combination:
a constitution explicitly recognizing, for each individual citizen not convicted of a crime: freedom of speech, of assembly, and of armament, the right to fair and impartial treatment before the law, sovereign private property rights, and exemption from involuntary servitude
a constitution forbidding subordination of the nation's government, or any part thereof, to any foreign power (i.e. international court, parliament, etc.)
a vast military and economic might
a citizenry that is habitually inventive, to an economically disruptive degree
Thus America was, and to a great degree is to the present day, uniquely problematic for the establishment. (1), (2), and (4) are simply contrary to their perceived interests, as will be explained in much greater detail below, and (3) makes control of America of paramount importance to them simply in order to safeguard their hegemony. America is thus a distinguished target in their machinations.
The national character of the United States is to neither dominate nor be dominated (with the obvious exception of slavery before emancipation). This character has been eroded by urban and suburban culture, by the welfare state, by corporatization, and by the national security establishment, but it nonetheless survives recognizably. For other nations, notably those in Europe, the idea of a nation militarily and economically capable of imperial domination and the exacting of tribute, but refraining from doing so, is alien. People in these nations (and most others, of course) therefore at once distrust, fear, and admire the United States, not quite understanding, but believing it to have identified a formula for relatively unaccountable domination while maintaining prosperity and political stability. Sadly there is a grain of truth in this point of view: the US establishment certainly seeks to dominate the international stage, and to a large degree, does so. They hide behind the curtain of the nation's largely subverted electoral institutions, and they are empowered by the wealth of inventive freedom-loving Americans ...
The vital pillars of the current establishment regime are:
the tort law system (non-contract civil suits)
the compulsory citizen jury and the jury-culling racket
the military draft in time of war
the national income tax and the withholding system
state and local sales and property taxes
Federal Reserve style central banking (fiat currency, central authority on loan policies) and fractional reserve banking (by inferior banks)
state borrowing and bond issues
non-employee stockholders
mergers and acquisitions of companies that compete with each other
single entities holding stock in companies that compete with each other
transferable copyrights
transferable patents
state-operated primary schooling free to attendees
state-licensed, state-regulated broadcast and cablecast corporate empires that monopolize the mass media
the winner-take-all, gerrymanderable electoral system
constant community patrolling and policing by state agents
The entrenched establishment of the US will resist, at any cost, changes that threatens these pillars. They expect to parlay them - each of which, without exception, is a dangerous corruption - into global economic and political hegemony.
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The establishment leaders' vision is to transform world political and legal reality so that the historic role of the nation-state is played by largely sovereign transnational corporate trusts, to which nation-states are subordinate. Their envisioned seat of world government is not a United Nations but a United Trusts, a transnational oligarchy ruling from behind closed doors. This is the role for which Bilderberg fancies itself suited. Revealing this rather directly, David Rockefeller (in Newsweek International, 1999-Feb-1) said ``[...] somebody has to take governments' place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it.''
In order to empower a global banking, managerial, regulatory, and surveillance infrastructure, they cultivate economic interdependence at scales from the household to the multinational region, to a degree that cannot be justified by appeal to overall efficiency or profit advantages. Speaking at the Business Council for the United Nations, on September 14, 1994, Rockefeller said ``But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts to erect an enduring structure of global interdependence.'' Indeed, the organization's quarterly publication is called The InterDependent, and indeed, such forces are at work, and will eventually prevail.
Cont ...