The North American Union conspiracy theory grew out of a kernel of truth, called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP). But cultivated by xenophobic fears and political opportunism, the NAU outstripped its reality-based progenitor so fast that it has become hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. A little history helps.

After the North American Free Trade Agreement went into force in 1994, the three governments began to talk about expanding the scope of the agreement. Mexico, in particular, hoped to negotiate a solution to the border/immigration problem. However, the process was brought to a grinding halt by the attacks of Sept. 11th. In a 2005 summit of then-Presidents George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas plans for “deep integration” between the three countries finally progressed with the official launch of the SPP. In the post-September 11th political context, immigration was definitively off the table and U.S. security interests, along with corporate interests in obtaining even more favorable terms for regional trade and investment, dominated the agenda.

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The Anti-Union Network

The Center for Union Facts is only one of many anti-labor front groups created by business. American Rights at Work tracks the worst here...

When they began their campaign for political power in the 1960s, the ideologues of the New Right were outside the main branch of the Republican Party with their embrace of privatization of essential government services, tax cuts for the wealthy as a supposed economic engine, union-busting, and deregulation of environmental and other protective laws. Today this network - through their new think tanks' skillful reframing of issues, coalition building with the Christian Right, and enormous expenditure of money to mobilize voters - has significant influence in the Republican Party, and is a major force in shaping public policy debates in the United States.

In the past five years, the free marketers have forged common ground with conservative Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists similar to "fusionist" coalitions of conservatives in the 1950s; and the campaign against Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

By portraying "Big Government" as tyrannical; taxes as theft, and a full employment economy as a utopian heresy, the New Right defends unfair power and privilege for a tiny wealthy minority.