Gingrich, Toffler, and Gore: A peculiar trio

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Gingrich, Toffler, and Gore: A peculiar trio

Democrats In Drag: Third Way Fall From Grace, Part III

By Steve Farrell
web posted July 9, 2001

The most heralded achievement and high water mark of Republican leadership since the revival of America's military superiority under Ronald Reagan is, without question, the coming forth of the Contract With America during the election of 1994.

Its 100 day surge through the house of Representatives with its visionary agenda, and its promise and delivery of lock arm partisan voting is a singular feat - such an one, that ever since, Republican's have looked back with fondness and longing for a revival of the good old days.

Seven years later, conservative Republicans, unhappy with the current party, unhappy with their wishy washy Commander-In-Chief, still hold out hope, that he, or some other Republican will rise up, Newt Gingrich-like, with charisma, courage and acumen, and take a firm grip on the reigns of the party, take the heat, and show the American people what the Republican Party is really all about.

But why all this nostalgia for the "good old days?" Are we really sure that they were that good, and that they were that conservative?

Misplaced in this dreamy partisan memory of loveliness, is the plain fact that things weren’t so lovely. The conservative Contract was deceptively liberal, the strong armed tactics of its chief proponent was not at all democratic, and the same man’s established political loyalties were ironically tied to the same political movement he was tough guy like fighting - even Clinton, Gore and their Third Way.

A few, knew this from the start, but most missed the connection even though Newt Gingrich laid it on the line, for those who cared to listen.

Gingrich’s Coming Out Party

Newt Gingrich
Gingrich

On November 11, 1994, still bubbling and cocksure over the Republican takeover of both Houses, his coming coronation as Speaker of the House, and his annointing as King of the Republican Revolution, Gingrich couldn't resist exploiting the moment to put in a free plug for something he so devoutly believed in.

"The core of our Contract," and the solution for those "trying to figure out how to put me in a box," he said, could be found in a book by futurist Alvin Toffler called "The Third Way;" to which he added: "I am a conservative futurist ." (1)

Futurism, as already alluded to, is one and the same with the Third Way or Third Wave, but for brevity sake, Webster's Dictionary gives us another take on this subject.

"Futurism: Study of, and interest in, forecasting or anticipating the future, or theorizing on how to impose controls on events." (2)

Or in other words, a head in the clouds political philosophy, complete with theories and forecasts, which envisions the use of force to insure those theories and forecasts come to past.

It would not be a stretch to call it communism with economic vision, for that is what the futurists of the Third Way call it. But, what then, is a conservative futurist? If we believe Newt Gingrich, it is in person, a post 1994 Republican. And it is in policy, the Contract With America, the go along, get along policies of a party who for the next six year "caved" under Clinton, and the faith-based subsidies, public private partnership, fast track hopes, and bipartisan spirit of today’s Compassionate Conservativism movement - the latter of which had its start in the legislation and underlying principles of that same Gingrich Contract

As humorous, or as horrifying as this may sound, the first step in assessing this possibility, concerns the sincerity and depth of Gingrich’s relationship with the same center/left of center Third Wave/Third Way that pummelled our country under Clinton and Gore.

Gingrich revealed to Congress:

Alvin Toffler
Toffler

"For a long time, I have been friends with Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the authors of Future Shock and The Third Way.(3)

"I first began working with the Tofflers in the early 1970's on a concept called anticipatory democracy. I was then a young assistant professor at West Georgia State College, and I was fascinated with the intersection of history and the future which is the essence of politics and government at its best.

"For twenty years we [who’s we?] have worked to develop a future-conscious politics and popular understanding that would make it easier for America to make the transition from the Second Wave civilization [the one our Founders gave us] - which is clearly dying - to the emerging, but in many ways undefined Third Wave civilization [Alvin Toffler’s Centrist Utopia].

"The process has been more frustrating and the progress much slower than I would have guessed two decades ago. Yet despite the frustrations, the development of a Third Wave political and governmental system is so central to the future of freedom and the future of America that it must be undertaken." (4)

So central, so critical, indeed, that Mr. Gingrich put the book on a recommended reading list for members of Congress and all Americans. And mind you, he wouldn’t let go of it. In speech after speech and press conference after conference Gingrich referred to the Third Wave as "the seminal work of our time" (5)

For those who hadn’t read it, or who knew nothing about the Third Way/ Third Wave (he used both names) Gingrich delivered a few extra hints of where the Third Way was taking him.

"While I am a Republican leader in the Congress, I do not believe Republicans or the Congress have a monopoly on solving problems and helping America make the transformation necessary to enter the Third Wave information revolution. Democratic mayors like Norquist in Milwaukee and Rendel in Philadelphia are making real breakthroughs at the city level. Some of the best of Vice President Gore's efforts to reinvent government nibble in the right direction..." (6)

To those conservative freshman, just elected, those dyed in the wool conservatives already in a hot war with Clinton and Gore, and those millions of Americans who had just swept this "revolution" into power, nothing could have smacked more of betrayal than the foregoing.

Sad to say, Gingrich, wasn’t kidding, he really had a thing for the Third Way, and a peculiar partnership with what are now commonly referred to as "new democrats."

Toffler in his next book, "Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave," writes:

"In 1975 at the request of Congressional Democrats, we organized a conference on futurism and "anticipatory democracy" [the latter being the political game plan of the former] for senators and members of the House. We invited Newt Gingrich, probably the only Republican among the many futurists we knew. He attended.

Al Gore
Gore

'That conference led to the creation of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, a group eventually cochaired by a young senator name Al Gore, now vice president." (7)

Gingrich, Gore-like, would rise within the Third Wave/Third Way movement, would become a member of the executive committee of The Congressional Clearing House on the Future, and would win the praise of leftist, "ex"-marxist Toffler as possibly "the single smartest and most successful intellectual in American politics . . ." (8)

As "probably the only Republican among the many futurists" Toffler knew, Gingrich’s involvement in the movement, was not what one would call conservative, by traditional conservative standards.

New American Senior Editor, William F. Jasper, in a 1994 piece "New Age Newt: A Futurist Conservative for the 21st Century," reveals that Gingrich's embrace of the Third Way also includes a collaborative effort with Toffler and twenty new left and new age authors in a 1978 work Anticipatory Democracy, wherein Gingrich endorsed Governor Jimmy Carter's socialist "planning" agenda.

The book throughout extolled the virtues of "participatory democracy," a revolutionary slogan dear to the likes of Tom Hayden, Derek Shearer, and Bill Clinton, and one drawn directly from the eighth plank of the "Humanist Manifesto II (1973)." (9)

By 1984, Jasper continues, Gingrich's influence in the third way movement was so far to the left that it brought on kudos from the likes of New Age "philosopher" Mark Satin.

Mr. Satin is certainly no ordinary American. In his "New Age Politics" (1978), a guide to New Age political thought, he called for planetary governance, a system of world taxation (on resource use), an increased transfer of wealth from rich to poor countries (international communism), and complete military disarmament. He rounded that all out by stating, in no uncertain terms, his hostility for the nuclear family, traditional marriage, and heterosexual society (11)

So what did, such a one as this think of "conservative" Newt Gingrich? In the February 27, 1984 issue of "New Options," Satin, singled out Newt Gingrich as a top "decentralist/globally responsible" congressman. (10) Not the kind of praise any true conservative would want on his resume. As for the odd phrase, "decentralist/globally responsible" congressmen, this is the kind of interesting paradox that fits the fishy decentralism of the Third Way, a decentralism which seeks to move power not just down to the local level, but suspiciously up to the international level.

Not surprisingly then, ten years later, in the wake of the passage of NAFTA, globalist, Council on Foreign Relations Republican Insider Henry Kissinger would be heard bragging across the universe that the man most responsible for giving us NAFTA (what Kissinger called the important checkpoint on the way to a New World Order) was none other than Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, in fact, fast-tracked NAFTA and GATT through Congress, in December of 1994, as a gift to Clinton, shortly before a new Republican Congress - which would have likely defeated the treaties - took control. An example of things to come from this "conservative" Futurist.

And perhaps, it all fits. Heralded Republican Third Way Futurist, Newt Gingrich, emerges from the right - at the same time that his comrade, Third Way Futurist Al Gore and his pal Bill Clinton, burst upon the scene from the left. Gingrich promised to take them down - but in the end, he took them in.

Next Week, a closer look at the veiled Marxist underpinning of Alvin Toffler's Third Wave

Enter Stage Right senior writer Steve Farrell is the former managing editor of Right Magazine, a widely published research writer, a former Air Force Communications manager, and a graduate student in constitutional law. Contact Steve at Cyours76@yahoo.com Missed an article? Visit his online archives.

Footnotes

1. Gingrich, Newt; Armey, Dick. "Contract With America," New York, Times Books, 1994, p. 186.
2. New Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language, Danbury, CT, Lexicon Publications, Inc, 1992, p. 386.
3. Gingrich, Newt, Armey, Dick. "Contract With America," New York, Times Books, 1994, p. 186.
4. Toffler, Alvin and Heidi, "Creating A New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave" Atlanta, Turner Publishing, Inc. pgs. 16 - 17 (Forward Written by Newt Gingrich)
5. Ibid. p. 8.
6. Ibid. p. 17.
7. Ibid. p. 9.
8. Ibid. p. 10.
9. Jasper, William F. "New Age Newt: A Futurist Conservative For the 21st Century, The New American, December 12, 1994
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.




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