================================================================== The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070 ================================================================== THE NEW AMERICAN -- December 12, 1994 Copyright 1994 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913 ================================================================== ARTICLE: Front Page Sidebar TITLE: "New Age Newt: A Futurist 'Conservative' for the 21st Century" AUTHOR: William F. Jasper ================================================================== In a post-election address to the Washington Research Group on November 11, 1994, Representative Newt Gingrich chided the Washington press corps' propensity for stereotyping politicians and offered this description of himself: The best description of me is that I'm a conservative futurist. Marianne [Gingrich's second wife] and I have for a long time been friends of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the authors of Future Shock and The Third Wave. We really believe it's useful to think about the 21st century.... Moreover, Gingrich recommended "to all congressional staffs" that they read "the new Progress and Freedoms Foundation report on Alvin Toffler's works." The tight Gingrich-Toffler connection spanning three decades has received little attention in the major media, but consideration of it is essential to an understanding of Mr. Gingrich's strange new brand of "conservatism." In April 1975, Gingrich and Toffler joined with some 50 other liberal-left activists of the Ad Hoc Committee on Anticipatory Democracy in signing a letter to Congress urging more congressional interest in planning for the future and implementing a "futurist" agenda. Fellow signatories included Betty Friedan, Lester Brown, Margaret Mead, Jonas Salk, Elise Boulding, R. Buckminster Fuller, Willis Harman, Robert Theobald, and Amitai Etzioni (Bill Clinton's guru of "Communitarianism"). In 1978, Toffler wrote the introduction for Anticipatory Democracy, a collaborative effort by 20 New Left and New Age authors, including Newt Gingrich, whose chapter, "The Goals for Georgia Program," was a glowing endorsement of Governor Jimmy Carter's socialist "planning" agenda! Among the radical left, occult, globalist, enviro-extremist, humanist, and New Age organizations the book promoted as "citizen groups on the cutting edge of alternative futures" were ACORN, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Earthrise, Environmental Action, Findhorn Community, Lindisfarne Association, Worldwatch Institute, Public Citizen, Spark, Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Conference on Alternative State and Local Public Policies. 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). One of Gingrich's Anticipatory Democracy co-authors was Representative Charlie Rose, ultra-liberal Democrat from North Carolina, who has a cumulative rating of seven percent on The New American's Conservative Index, lower even than admitted Socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders (16 percent). Rose's chapter is entitled "Building a Futures Network in Congress." In 1976, together with a bevy of leftwing Democratic members of Congress, Rose formed the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, which Gingrich joined upon his election to Congress. In fact, Newt became a member of the executive committee, providing the critical Republican and "conservative" cover the group needed to camouflage its obvious leftist agenda. One of Newt's Clearinghouse comrades was Senator Al Gore, whose pathetic eco-diatribe, Earth in the Balance, although the butt of conservative jokes, closely fits the Toffler-Gingrich "futurist" world view. Leading Edge, an influential New Age newsletter, reported on October 17, 1983 that Congressmen Gingrich and Gore introduced a bill to advise the President on "critical trends and alternative futures." The February 27, 1984 issue of New Options, a publication edited by leading New Age "philosopher" Mark Satin, identified Gingrich as a top "decentralist/globally responsible" congressman, a revealing kudo. Mark Satin is also the author of New Age Politics (1978), a guide to New Age political thought. 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." What's more, he has it in for the nuclear family, traditional marriage, and heterosexual society: "The nuclear family can be devastating to parents and children alike," and "it tends to embody the first four sides of the Prison in almost pure form"; "Compulsive heterosexuality cuts us off from half the world as love partners"; "Compulsive monogamy may have served some essential purpose two or three million years ago," but today it tends toward "a more or less monotonous day-to-day living together." In all these radical positions Satin is in tune with Toffler, whose books he admiringly quotes and recommends. Toffler, the intellectual darling of the "counter culture" and the "liberal media" that Gingrich loves to attack, has for three decades been the leading "prophet" of social revolution and "transformation." Even more than for his socialist/redistributionist political and economic views, Toffler has been the bane of all true conservatives committed to preserving Judeo-Christian culture for his avid championing of group marriage, polygamy, serial marriage, homosexual marriage, the "liberating" effect of divorce, and child rearing by "professional parents." On October 3, 1990, Gingrich and Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a "Dear Colleague" letter inviting all members of Congress and staff members "to join us at a reception honoring best-selling author Alvin Toffler on the eve of publication of his new Bantam book Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century." "Alvin Toffler's seminal works, Future Shock (1970) and The Third Wave (1980), each helped to define its decade, add new words to the language, and significantly alter the way we think about change," Markey and Gingrich wrote. "His new book promises to shake up our vision of the future once again," they enthused, stating further that "Toffler's ideas will likely become an important resource in focusing national debate on the challenges facing our nation in the post-Cold War era." Like Charlie Rose, Markey is an odd ally for "conservative" Gingrich. Markey has a cumulative five percent rating on our Conservative Index. But those are the kinds of folks Newt runs with at the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, where he helps move our lawmakers leftward by bringing them speakers such as Toffler, Mikhail Gorbachev, Carl Sagan, Marian Wright Edelman, Lou Harris, Ellen Goodman, Daniel Yankelovich, and John Jacob. END OF ARTICLE ================================================================== THE NEW AMERICAN -- December 12, 1994 Copyright 1994 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O. 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