At risk of being called a McCarthyist toolbag, I will talk of a grand socialist conspiracy. When most people hear the word conspiracy, they think of elite power barons gathering in smoke-filled rooms and plotting the demise of their opponents. I do not believe that is an accurate portrayal of things.
Rather, I would call this a Gramscian memetic conspiracy. Memetic conspiracies are simply a collection of memes (ideas, stories, paradigms) that when accepted, bring a person to desire a certain goal. The effect is that when the memes are spread, people will independently of one another work towards that goal. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian socialist philosopher who lucidly figured out that the USA and other Western nations would not be violently overthrown from within by a glorious proletarian uprising, because of something he called cultural hegemony.
Cultural hegemony exists by defining a certain set of ideas as common sense. Because American common sense (at least, as it existed in the early 20th century) precluded the rise of communism, not only at home but wherever American thought had taken hold, the only way to truly establish Marxism would be to redefine common sense.
Thus, a Gramscian memetic conspiracy is the propagation of ideas, stories, and paradigms whose effect are to alter the public definition of common sense.
What to do about it
There are three main businesses that together provide the typical American with probably 90% or more of what he knows: Education, entertainment, and journalism. A successful 21st-century renaissance will require all three of these fields to be developed toward an individualist/capitalist philosophy.
While there is always more to be done, admirable inroads have been made in education, through various private efforts, and journalism, through the rise of the blogs. I believe entertainment is our weakest sphere at the moment.
