Perhaps Glenn Beck is on to something. The more I read W. Cleon Skousen, the radical conservative conspiracy theorist at the center of all things Beck, the more I start to like him. He's barking mad, make no mistake, but the man certainly could spin quite a yarn.

Take, for example, page 24 of Skousen's The Naked Capitalist, and its explanation of the aims of “the world's secret power manipulators”:

In the beginning of this presentation I pointed out, some of the disturbing questions which are likely to occur to anyone who has been trying to understand the significance of the amazing rends of current history. There is a growing volume of evidence that the highest centers of political and economic power have been forcing the entire human race toward a global, socialist, dictatorial-oriented society. And what has been most baffling about it has been the fact that this drift toward dictatorship with its inevitable obliteration of a thousand years of struggle toward human freedom, is being plotted, promoted and implemented by the leaders of free nations and the super-rich of those nations whose positions of affluence would seem to make them the foremost beneficiaries of the free-enterprise, property-oriented, open society in which so much progress has been made. Certainly they, above all men, should know that in order for this system to survive, freedom of action and the integrity of property rights must be preserved. Then why are the super-capitalists trying to destroy them?

Dr. [Carroll] Quigley provides an answer to this question but it is so startling that at first it seems virtually inconceivable. It becomes rational only as his scattered references to it are collected and digested point by point. In a nutshell, Dr. Quigley has undertaken to expose what every insider like himself has known all along -- that the world hierarchy of the dynastic super-rich is out to take over the entire planet, doing it with Socialistic legislation where possible, but having no reluctance to use Communist revolution where necessary.

They must be very powerful indeed to dispense “Communist revolutions” as freely as Tic-Tacs.

So, yes, this is nuts. But don't think for one minute it starts and ends with Skousen. Glenn Beck is completely on board with this stuff. Take, for example, this conversation he had with Lou Dobbs back on October 4, 2006, when the two were still CNN colleagues:

BECK: Was Carroll Quigley right on the shadow government, on the companies taking over and really controlling everything? Because it's really the only thing that I can put my finger on to say, “Why aren't we doing anything about illegal immigration?” We're run by companies now, aren't we?

DOBBS: Well, both political parties are run by the very same people, corporate America, $2.4 billion in lobbying each year. No other special interest comes that close.

The power of corporate America -- and I'm talking about big business. I'm not talking about small business. There's even a fiction in this country now that small business, medium-size business, and corporate America are all the same. They're not.

Corporate America is working against the interest of the medium- and small-size businesses, are working against the middle class, destroying jobs, not creating them. Small business continues to create jobs in this country, more than 80 percent of them. But the truth is that corporate America is dominating our legislative and our electoral system.

BECK: Wouldn't you go further than that? It's not just corporate America. I mean, it's global corporations. I think we're being turned into MexAmeriCanada.

And, of course, one need only look back as far as, well, last night to ascertain Beck's opinion on whether we're moving “toward a global, socialist, dictatorial-oriented society.” So the next time you hear Beck uncork some loony conspiracy theory, remember that as crazy as he might appear, he's really just standing on the shoulders of crazier giants.