I understand conspiracy<\/em> to mean a group of people acting in secret towards a possibly sinister, but certainly dubious, goal.\u00a0 My Merriam-Webster<\/u> and Collins Essential Canadian<\/u> dictionaries agree that a conspiracy centres around a crime.<\/p>\n The first conspiracy I ever heard tell of was during the Reagan presidency.\u00a0 From centre stage Reagan faced a tough recession and a blossoming Cold War.\u00a0 His unshakeable confidence proved contagious: \u00a0 he presided over a tremendous economic recovery and the Western World’s final encirclement of Communism.\u00a0 I’ve heard he was the most popular president ever.<\/p>\n While America revelled in its surprising success under Reagan, some people watching from their armchairs didn’t believe Reagan was responsible.\u00a0 While clearly a great man, did he seem to possess the technical understanding needed to tackle America’s complex problems?\u00a0 Someone else behind the scenes must be doing it, they thought.\u00a0 They suspected those people were highly intelligent and would remain unknown. I heard people talk about a “shadow government” that actually controlled America, virtually independently of whom the voters chose.\u00a0 They called it a conspiracy.<\/p>\n If the “shadow government” was a conspiracy, what was the crime?\u00a0 The secrecy of how the country was actually run, the detractors argued, violated the spirit of democracy.<\/p>\n There are many other suspected conspiracies; like with the possible one discussed above, proof is often lacking.\u00a0 However, there are puzzling scenarios that involve numerous accounts, much documentation, yet no answer to satisfy everyone.<\/p>\n As well as probing deeper into the philosophy of conspiracy theorists, the tutor will examine possible conspiracies in coming posts.<\/p>\n Cheers:)<\/p>\n