Third Way Contract: Part 1 - Gingrich & Toffler By Steve Farrell & Diane Alden 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. Six years later, Republicans still hope that another leader, similarly charismatic, will step forward, take the reigns, and show the American people that the Republican Party really does have something unique to offer, something that will stem the tide of liberalism, turn on the speed boat engines of conservatism, and lead us back up the Potomac to our Promised Land heritage. Pleasant dreams, all of them. Frenzied, partisan, election year amnesia, too. Misplaced in the memory of this vision of loveliness is that the good old days of Republican unity were achieved not by fierce party loyalty, nor by like minded men all committed to a common vision; but, first by a publicity stunt of a Contract - which publicly bound signers to toe the line, and, second, by strong-arm, back-door tactics: including threats for chair and committee removals and vows of campaign fund withdrawal, to all those so unwise as to dissent from that dotted line. It mocked the whole idea of the promised democratic reform, and should have knelled to all the inhabitants of Republicanland, that something not wonderful, but dreadful was afoot within the Party and its Contract. What was afoot was the droll duo of ex-Marxist Alvin Toffler and Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, both posing as Thomas Jefferson back from the dead, preaching about some evolving, nebulous, revolutionary new democracy whose name keeps evolving too; from futurism, to anticipatory democracy, to 21st Century Democracy, to the Third Wave, to the Third Way. Not forgetting all the other bad names for this bad idea, either. But don't laugh. It's all true. Go ask Newt Gingrich. Newt told it all, though it seems almost no-one was listening. On November 11, 1994, still bubbling and cocksure over the Republican takeover of both Houses and his coming coronation as Speaker of the House and 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 Now futurism, as we already have alluded to is one and the same with the Third Way, but for brevity sake, Webster's Dictionary gives us yet another interesting 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 The key is "impose controls." Which leaves us to wonder: "What then is a conservative futurist?" Is it a compassionate King with a telescope? A benevolent tyrant with a computer? A H.G. Wells like time-machine-toting-Socialist who tolerates abstinence as a choice? A President Bush like "kinder, gentler" leader who wages high tech, impose-democracy-wars, on small fry dictators? Or is it our favorite, "Margaret Thatcher with a smile instead of a handbag?" These are not all that far fetched! It seems, from all that we have read, that a conservative futurist is one who busies himself on "conserving" the dictatorship of government controls, far into the future, while all the while preaching about democracy, free markets, and technological leaps. A sort of "Machiavelli for Modern Materialistic Man." But let's move on. This was no passing comment by Mr. Gingrich. His commitment to futurism, or the Third Way, the same fascist/socialist oriented Third Way that Clinton, Gore, Blair, and Schroeder are converted to, has a significant history. Gingrich told his fellow congressmen: "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 [30 now] 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 - which is clearly dying - to the emerging, but in many ways undefined Third Wave civilization. "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, indeed, that Mr. Gingrich put the book on a recommended reading list for members of Congress and all Americans, right along side the Federalist Papers and the works of DeTocqueville, as if it deserves such hallowed company. But that was not enough, in speech after speech and press conference after conference Gingrich referred to the Third Wave as "the seminal work of our time" 5 Then comes this revelation: "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 From bad to worse! First the socialist work the Third Wave is seminal, and then Al Gore's streamlining plan, which centralized executive authority, and spread gun carrying police powers to agencies previously lacking them, nibbles in the right direction! Toward what direction is that? The total state? One has to wonder. But there was a reason, we suspect, Gingrich felt this way. Alvin Toffler 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. 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, himself would rise within the Third Wave movement, would become a member of the executive committee of The Congressional Clearing House on the Future, and would win the praise of Toffler as possibly "the single smartest and most successful intellectual in American politics..." 8 But why stop here? 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 History with the Third Way also includes a collaborative effort with Toffler and twenty new left and new age authors in a 1978 work Anticipatory Democracy, where 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 brought on kudos from the likes of New Age "philosopher" Mark Satin. In the February 27, 1984 issue of New Options, Satin, identified Gingrich as a top "decentralist/globally responsible" congressman. 10 An interesting paradox, that fits the odd decentralism of the Third Way, which moves power not just supposedly down to the local level, but up to the international level, as well. Beyond that, Mr. Satin, the author of New Age Politics (1978), a guide to New Age political thought, is not the kind of man you expect to be praising the future founder of the Republican Revolution. In that guide Satin calls for planetary governance, "a system of world taxation (on resource use)," "an increased transfer of wealth from rich to poor countries," and "complete military disarmament." And he rounds it all out by stating his hostility for the nuclear family, traditional marriage, and heterosexual society - all of this, typical Third Way stuff. 11 Not surprisingly then, ten years later, in the wake of the passage of NAFTA, 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. That's right, and it all fits. Heralded Republican Newt Gingrich, and his mentor Alvin Toffler, whether we care to believe it or not, are two cogs in the wheel of the Third Way movement that has swept a new wave of socialism across Europe, into NATO, and into the White House. We are not here to debate, whether it was by complicity or stupidity that Gingrich chose to take the Republican Party and the Contract With America along Third Way lines, also, we will leave that to others to decipher. What is of pressing concern, to us, is that millions of Americans in 1994, and since then, have put their trust in the Republican Party as a savior from the radical, even criminal reputation of the Clinton Administration, and what they received, unwittingly, in answer to their prayers was a Contract, and a 1990's Republican philosophy, which was and is nothing less than a subtle compromise, at times a subtle aid, and yet in other instance, a source for radical change, to the advantage and promotion of national and international socialism. Our hope, as we press on in this series, is that an increasing number
of Americans, and especially Republicans, will open their eyes to the
weakness of their own party, and become better equipped to recognize the
hallmarks of the Third Way, so that they can work with us and others,
to expose and root them out of the current political agenda of the Republican
Party, putting the party back on track, to be a force for much good in
the coming century. Next up, a closer look at Alvin Toffler's Work, the Third Wave. Newsmax columnists Steve Farrell of Henderson, Nevada; and Diane Alden of Holly Springs, Mississippi, are widely published research writers. Their joint projects include their upcoming book: "Democrats In Drag: A Second Look at the Republican Party." Please email your comments and or requests for interviews and speaking engagements to Steve and Diane at cyours76@aol.com. Footnotes: |
|
© 1996-2025, Enter Stage Right and/or its creators. All rights reserved.