The Ron Paul investigation continues, sorta, except I really don't care

My curiosity finally got the better of me [click the link at the least for the bonus comment of some anonymous guy calling our beloved author a 'putz' for...well, insulting Marc Emery? not sure why the small comment was deemed worth the effort -ed] and I decided to look up this "CFR" that Ron Paul was not a tool of (or was "humping", depending on the commenter).

And here it is: the Council on Foreign Relations. Okay, I wasn't expecting that at all.

I'm not exactly sure what the big knock against the Council is supposed to be here. Ron Paul isn't a member of it, but the last 3 Presidents were. More damningly, I suppose, is that several current nominees are also members, specifically:

• FRED THOMPSON
• HILLARY CLINTON
• JOHN MCCAIN
• BARRACK OBAMA
• MIT ROMNEY

Four former/current Senators, and a Governor. Romney is a bit of a black sheep in this list for sure (sorry, Barry), but it doesn't seem at all odd that some prominent members of the U.S. Senate are members of an organization which has 4,300 members dedicated to "promoting understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world" (or at least, 4300 people who like being able to put that phrase on their resume).

The gag from Ron Paul and his cohorts seem to be that the Council (and the Trilateral Commission) is a secret cabal that picks one of its own to positions of prominance to encourage their goals. This seems on the face of it to get the cause-and-effect completely backwards: people of prominance like to join councils and commissions to get the latter to believe in their own goals.

The best is perhaps Ron Paul's comments on the subject as quoted on the page linked to above:

I'm not a member of any secret society...I haven't been invited by the Trilateralists of CFR (Council on Foreign Relations). I don't get to go to their meetings.

First off, how "secret society" can the Trilateral Commission or the CFR really be if, well, Ron Paul knows about them? Secondly, how does one get to join the CFR? The Wikipedia page^† on the Council lists some of the prominant members who seem to be quite wide-ranging on the political and success spectrum. George Soros and Paul Wolfowitz, Thomas Friedman and Conrad Black^‡, Angelina Jolie and Irving Kristol...if all these people can become members, what's stopping Ron Paul? He said "I don't get to go to their meetings", but could he not join and show up to the meetings if he so desired? You can be anti-social all you like, but if its your call you can't play the outcast card. Sorry Ron, but that's how it works.


^† Surprise surprise, the Wikipedia page dedicated to the Council on Foreign relations is in the midst of an edit war. Ron Paul's supporters aren't just kooks on message boards over at the Western Standard. (Sample response: "Can we get a reliable [i.e. non-conspiratorial] link to an article that details plans for an American Union which WASN'T written by someone who's batshit insane?"--Baltech22)

^‡ And if the CFR is really so wide-ranging and powerful, why was poor Conrad Black so viciously attacked by the U.S. government? Sure he's a former member, but didn't he pay his dues on time or something? That's the problem with this conspiracy theory: with so many prominent people as members, some will become very successful, and others will fail. The successes are trumpeted, the failures ignored, and a bunch of lunatics are easily swayed.