Gingrich, Toffler, and Gore: A Peculiar Trio
Democrats In Drag: Third Way Fall From Grace, Part 3
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 a one that, ever since, Republicans 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 reins 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-arm tactics of its chief proponent were not at all democratic, and the same man’s established political loyalties were ironically tied to the very 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
On November 11, 1994, still bubbling and cocksure over the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress, his coming coronation as speaker of the House, and his anointing 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’s 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 that those theories and forecasts come to pass.
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 that for the next six years “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 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 pummeled our country under Clinton and Gore.
Gingrich revealed to Congress:
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 1970s 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 press 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.
That conference led to the creation of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, a group eventually co-chaired by a young senator named 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,” revealed that Gingrich’s embrace of the Third Way also included 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 continued, 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. (10)
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 (11) – 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 that 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 likely would have 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, a closer look at the veiled Marxist underpinnings of Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave
Footnotes
1. Gingrich, Newt and Armey, Dick. “Contract With America.” New York: Times Books, 1994, p. 186.
2. New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language. Danbury, Connecticut: Lexicon Publications Inc., 1992, p. 386.
3. Gingrich, Newt and 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., pp. 16-17 (Foreword 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.
Liberty Letters editor Steve Farrell is a pundit with America's Newspage, Newsmax.com, associate professor of political economy at George Wythe College, and the author of the highly praised inspirational novel, "Dark Rose." | More from Steve Farrell
Stumble It!
November 9th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Yes Steve,
I see what you are saying. The following is certainly one of the most subversive pro-communist documents I have ever seen…I fear you have been wearing your tin-hat a little too tight and often.
Other than the extremist-verging on paranoid-view of everything, you have done nice work.
REPUBLICAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICA
As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.
That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.
This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.
Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.
On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:
FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.
[I'm shaking in my boots already, what a frightening pledge]
Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny.
1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out- of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses. (Bill Text) (Description)
2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT: An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in- sentencing, “good faith” exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer’s “crime” bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools. (Bill Text) (Description)
3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT: Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility. (Bill Text) (Description)
4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT: Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children’s education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society. (Bill Text) (Description)
5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT: A S500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief. (Bill Text) (Description)
6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT: No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world. (Bill Text) (Description)
7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT: Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years. (Bill Text) (Description)
8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT: Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages. (Bill Text) (Description)
9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT: “Loser pays” laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation. (Bill Text) (Description)
10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT: A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators. (Description)
Further, we will instruct the House Budget Committee to report to the floor and we will work to enact additional budget savings, beyond the budget cuts specifically included in the legislation described above, to ensure that the Federal budget deficit will be less than it would have been without the enactment of these bills.
Truly it is the most anti-constitutional document ever foisted on the American people that I have ever read…whew!
“You just keep thinkin’ Butch, that’s what your good at.”
November 9th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I’ll be going through those 10 items in the columns that follow. Yes, they all sounded good, didn’t they, but the Devil was in the fine print: e.g. No U.S. troops under foreign command – did in fact grant that very power to the President if he could cry “National Security.” Thus giving the President, for the first time in the history of this nation the power to do the very thing the Contract promised not to do. Republicans talk the talk, but the fact is, they don’t walk the walk – and that’s one of the reasons they’ve just been booted from office.
Respectfully, Steve
November 10th, 2006 at 12:50 am
Will, there is an excellent book on the real nature of Newt called “Breach Of Trust-How Washington turns outsiders into insiders” by Tom A. Coburn, former US Congressnman, Class of 94.
Tom was a doctor who beleived in the “revolution” of the “Contract of America,” but what he saw, and what he went through under the “real” Newt will really open your eyes. This man was there and a congressman during that revolution…and he and goes into great detail about the draconian Newt and how he betrayed all those congressmen who joined him in his contract….you will be amazed at the secret meetings.
Newt…who comes on Hannity every day, makes you beleive that he cares about all the things that we do, and yet…the truth is, he is a globalist that is working with the Clintons and this “secret” governnment=== who have been working for a New World Order for quite some time.
It’s a wonder that he can be so duplicitious, but like Steve says, they are good at talking the talk….look..Bush talked the talk, and yet, he has acted like a global Democrat during his whole Prsidency.
It’s just hard for people who are honest and have great charactor and integrity to beleive.(And from your readings I deem you to be in that catagory Will) They just can’t imagine why a bunch of people would want to plan and control the world, and manipulate and lie while doing it.
Once again, eye=opening Steve. AT least NOW I don’t feel so crazy.
So…WHEN is the book coming out?
November 10th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Joyanna:
I’ll have to get a copy of that book. He did rule with an iron fist from all I’ve been able to gather. Heaven forbid you got out of step. Good bye to your committee chair, and your re-election funds! From what I remember, Mr. Gingrich even managed to twist Phil Crane’s arm successfully to abandon his long-held, deep-set opposition to such sovereignty destroying things as NAFTA. It was come my way, or the highway. And so he came … to the shock and dismay of conservatives everywhere.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:03 am
Joyanna:
BTW, thanks for the book comment. That is, in fact, my intent – and your encouragement isn’t doing any harm to that goal. Thanks again!
November 10th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Sorry Joyanna,
Bush never truly talked the talk. He was merely the best of a mediocre lot. McCain…don’t make me laugh. Orrin Hatch and Danny Quayle were probably the class of the bunch, but for sure Quayle was toast before the starter’s pistol fired, and Hatch was just too…I don’t know…Conservative? Clean-cut? Whatever. Alan Keyes has his moments, but he is a little too inflexible and on occasion comes off somewhat dictatorial.
So Bush was the best that was electable.
November 10th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Steve,
I just don’t see it. I was dead serious about your work being very good and I will, as all good Conservatives should, retain an open mind, but on this one, “I’m from Missouri.” Your take on each item you mention seems to be the most extreme interpretation.
You state that the “devil is in the details” so to speak, so I am going to go read the original bills which are in the contract.
Keep slogging away, I will continue to pay attention.
November 10th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Bush was “electable” for one reason, and one alone: He was annointed by the Eastern Liberal Establishment, and thereby financed. We then had a host of conservative pundit and talk show hosts who abandoned all principle to pretend that he had a single conservative credential. One of many lies they then proclaimed is that one must run to the middle if one expects to get elected, and then turn conservative after the election. They intentionally ignored the fact that Ronald Reagan’s election proved that all wrong. He electrified the base and the country by campaigning on extremely conservative positions which included calling for the abolition of the Department of Energy, The Department of Education, our withdrawal from the United Nations, a balanced budget, and a pledge to keep the Establishment out of his administration. He may have not delivered on all of that, and that is an entirely different discussion, but the fact is that he got elected on it.
Best, Steve
November 10th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Will: I wish I could say that the approach I am and will be taking is extreme, but rather it is penetrating and principled. No one likes to explore difficult truths about that party that appears to represent all that we hold dear.
But it is “party spirit” within every party that by and by undermines those principles we hold dear. Edmund Burke warned of party spirit: “You may criticize freely upon the Chinese constitution, and observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to what would be reason and truth if asserted of China.”
And again, “the spirit which actuates ALL parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of oppression and treachery. This spirit reverses all the principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty, all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural affections.” Sad, but true, and no less true of the Republican Party, the one to which I have long belonged, as I shall explore in the days ahead.
Best, Steve
November 10th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Your memory of Reagan’s campaign is different from mine. His campaign was on Conservative ideals, anti-abortion, America as the greatest nation on Earth (renewal of patriotism), a strong military, tax-cuts, capitalism trumps communism, and a balanced budget as well as the items you listed. He accomplished none of the things you listed, and most of the things I list. He was one in a generation and we could use his like again.
As for “party,” I don’t give a fig for the Republican party beyond the fact that it is the only reasonable game in town. Complete inflexibility renders one impotent. Pat Buchanan has adopted that stance, and as such has virtually no influence on todays politics. One must “go along to get along.” Where the model breaks down is not in compromising, it is in not moving the bar in the correct direction each time.
Democrats have largely succeeded in moving the socialist agenda forward because each time Republicans compromised, they failed to seize the initiative and move the bar in our direction; Democrats succeeded in moving the national discourse in their direction.
We do have too many RINOs in the party, but you must remember that traditionally, the Republican Party was always a Liberal party. It was the party of the North-eastern rich Liberal elite. Only since the emergence of the Conservative movement in the 1950’s with Bill Buckley has there been a strong Conservative presence in the Republican party.
Democrats are correct when they say that the old “Dixie-crats” have moved into the Republican party. For a very long time, they were the Conservative voices of America. They were the “state’s-rightists,” and unfortunately the segregationists of the old South. They were also the strongest believers in and supporters of the non-secular view of the United States.
All this is to say in a very long-winded way, that I remain Republican only as long as the Republicans offer the better of the two alternatives.
November 10th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Cutting taxes, but paying for it via deficits to international bankers, that is by loans which than feed that cash into the economy, bids up prices and wages, and when combined with a graduated income tax, forces individuals into ever higher tax brackets, and thus becomes what we know as a hidden form of taxation. It allows a Reagan or a Bush to speak conservative, even why the size and cost of government increases (and the tax revenues did expand enormously as a result), and ultimately, our freedoms decrease — even if, yes, it creates a temporary stimulus, an artificial stimulus to the economy. (We can thank Reagan for doing away with the higher brackets, but on the other hand, he created steeper brackets, that discouraged many from going through the effort of increasing their income, for the initial take home would be less. I witnessed that among close work associates in the Air Force in the 1980’s.)
Remember now, the Federal Reserve that permits this game to be played was plank number one in the Communist Manifesto. That is, the creation of a National Bank with an exclusive monopoly in private hands. That is the Federal Reserve. The graduated income tax, also created at the same time (1913), was plank two. These are partners in undermining “the more advanced capitalist countries,” as was the 17th Amendment (also 1913) which made it so that Senators were no longer responsible to their state legislatures but directly to the people.
Interestingly, or call it prophetically, the Founders in the Constitutional Convention stated that if ever both houses of Congress were to be directly elected by the people, “immediately, schemes for the redistribution of the wealth would arise.” How on target were they? 1913 was the year when this all came into play, all at once, immediately, and not surprisingly, the socialist oriented League of Nations followed shortly thereafter as well.
Bush, and all those Republicans who blabber on and on about “tax cuts,” unlike Clinton before him, is playing the Keynesian game, pretending to be a conservative thru these “tax cuts,” even as he creates an enormous hidden tax – much of it now going to Communist China, of all nations. Capitalism, once again, is not trumping Communism (which is, by the way, taking over again in South and Central America).
As to flexibility, it was William F. Buckley, who I do not call a conservative, as Mr. Limbaugh does, but a centerpiece of the Eastern Liberal Establishment, is the one who defined Conservatism as “a dance along a precipice.” Rather than taking a principled stand for the Constitution and certain fixed moral values, which he refused to do, his was to dance along the edge (which kept moving to the left) without falling in. An impossible task.
Not surprisingly his publication became a mouthpiece for drug legalization, the new world order, a phoney bologna detente that created a huge military state, secretive CIA etc., in this country to go up against an enemy we were simultaneously funding. That the NR finally ended up being run by a closet gay is fitting – Buckley, and his crew (which persistently booted out true conservatives from his staff) being one of the first Democrats In Drag.
Okay, are we having fun yet? Hey, I still voted almost straight Republican. I understand your point. It is the party where “We have a voice.” I’m not disputing that. I’m talking about an open discussion about exposing the fraud that our voices are actually being heard as much as we think. Since our voice is heard, we need to get beyond “party,” and focus on “principle,” so that those RHINO’s won’t get away with it any longer. This cannot happen if we close our eyes to difficult realities such as the state growing faster under Republican Party leadership than under Democratic Party leadership.
There are theories as to why that happens: e.g. conservatives unite against a liberal Democrat, but fall in line behind a Republican moderate, and thus we push faster to the left under the Republican. Statistical studies have proved their point back to the early 1900’s on this issue. If they are right, and I believe they are, than a “flexible” moderate is the last thing in the world that we need.
Respectfully, Steve
November 10th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
[...] Read Foreword, Part 1, 2, and 3 [...]
November 10th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
[...] Read Foreword, Part 2, 3, 4 [...]
November 10th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Reagan was not a Keynesian. Keynes believed that the way to end a recession was to spend your way out of it. Reagans plan was to cut total federal spending (i.e. restrain the growth) while stimulating the economy through tax cuts. It is a formula which has always worked, and did work for Reagan. Problem was Congress and the Liberals who controlled it. When spending is unrestricted, then yes, tax cuts will be accompanied by deficits, not caused by them, only accompanying them. When spending is reigned in, tax cuts cause deficits to fall due to increased revenues. This is not theory, it is documented fact. Even today with a Congress that is spending money like a drunken sailor, the deficit is falling at better than twice the rate originally projected by the Bush administration. This is due to the tax cuts and the economic stimulus they created.
Some facets of the spending spree in which the Bush administration has engaged can be debated. You may feel the war was unnecessary, or not (not unlike Kerry-but backwards-I was against it before I was for it). You may, as do I, feel that the unrestrained shoveling of money at New Orleans and the survivors of Katrina and Rita was obscene. But by far the largest hit on our national budget has been the war on Terror and the economic impact it has had on the private sector and the unforseen and unavoidable costs associated with it. For the economy to be in as good a shape as it is, is nothing short of miraculous.
FYI, China is about as communist as we are. The economic madel they are pursuing is capitalism and they are pursuing it for all they are worth. The only vestiges of “communism” remaining are the political controls placed on individuals lives and freedoms. Which in real terms is not “communism,” but merely autocracy. Profit is now the most important economic concept in China.
You do not know what a conservative is if you do not know that the modern conservative movement was basically started by Bill Buckley and the National Review was, for decades, the sole spark of light in the political universe for conservatives. I don’t know exactly what you believe a Conservative is, but by and large conservatism is defined by the very least inteference in a citizens life, commensurate with a stable government. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “that government governs best, which governs least.”
In truth, the only legitimate reason for government to exist is to protect our right to property. It doesn’t exist to promote equality, it doesn’t exist to promote morality, except as it is required for general stability. Its job isn’t to promote religion, nor to obstruct it.
Freedom is the very basis of our nation. Freedom and the responsibility which accompanies it.
November 11th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Yes, so goes the claim. But his proposed budgets were rarely more than a few dollars less than what passed by Congress – and well, they shortchanged him on some of his requests, e.g. foreign aid. And so, the actual figures bear out about a tripling of the National Debt, some looking into foreign debt we assumed put the figure higher. He may have said he was against Keynesian spending, but he in fact practiced it.
I’m not sure why any one other than the writers at Time Magazine, and a few “purist” free traders (many of whom are in the Bush Administration) are really in agreement that ALL OUT capitalism is going on in China. State Monopoly Capitalism is what the honest political scientists and economists call it – translation: fascism. And even that concession to capitalism is not out of love of liberty, but simply love for the dialectic, which Lenin knew the game was all about, not about ideology. It’s all about power, and doing whatever is wise for the moment. It is, in fact, more along the lines of the Third Way I’ve been talking about, and will yet talk about. Progressivism. True Marxist-Leninism. Futurism. Fabianism. It’s really all the same thing. Doing whatever it takes in any situation.
More on supposed conservative Buckley later. The Pied Piper of the Establishment is what one book called him, with ample evidence. I never said he wasn’t a leader, or THE leader of the ‘mainstream’ conservative movement, whatever that is, but that he was a phony. And he is.
November 20th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
[...] Read Foreword, Part 1, 2, 3, 4 [...]
December 9th, 2006 at 10:45 am
[...] Read Foreword, Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 [...]