WHILE NEW Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stands for some important conservative principles, his record as an "ideological conservative" is not all that impressive. Over the years, he has continued to express his admiration for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and one certainly can't characterize his vote for the establishment of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979 as a vote against big government. In his 1984 book, "Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future," he proposed at least a dozen new or enlarged federal programs. Similarly, he has consistently voted to send huge amounts of foreign aid abroad, and he has supported the radical leftist African National Congress in South Africa.
So who is Newt Gingrich really, and what is he up to? His former chief-of-staff, Frank Gregorsky, said on C-Span (Jan. 2) that "Newt is first and foremost a political visionary, a futurist, and a historian. He's not be coming speaker to preside as speaker. He is carrying the essential core of himself into an incredibly visible podium with a lot of opportunity and a lot of responsibility, but he's not there to be the speaker." This confirms an earlier quotation by Mr. Gingrich that was reported by the Washington Post: "I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the planet. And I'm doing it."
If you think this "shift the planet" jargon sounds a little New Age, it should be remembered that he has networked with New Agers for many years, and in Mother Jones magazine, he was referred to as "this new-age Republican." He's been on the executive committee of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, and for many years a member of the World Future Society with his close friends Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
The speaker's Progress and Freedom Foundation has just published the Tofflers' book "Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave," (with a supportive foreword by Mr. Gingrich). On C-Span the new speaker said about the book: "In this 100 pages you'll begin to sense what the 21st century America, the 21st century Government, and the 21st century Congress need to be." In the book, one reads that the Third Wave new civilization will be "based on new, non-nuclear families," and that it is futile to speak of Second Wave "values, as though one could return to the values and morality of the 1950s. . . . We will need to prepare people for work in such fields as human services (domestic work, child care, etc.). . . . Majority rule is increasingly obsolete. It is not majorities, but minorities that count. . . . The Constitution of the U.S. needs to be altered . . . the system must die and be replaced. . . . Nationalism is (Second Wave) . . . as economies are transformed by the Third Wave, they are compelled to surrender part of their sovereignty." In conversation, Mr. Gingrich says he doesn't agree with the Tofflers' positions on all issues. However, it is still a fact that his foundation did publish the Tofflers' book quoted above, and neither on C-Span nor in his foreword to the book did Mr. Gingrich mention that it contained outrageous ideas which he wanted publicly to repudiate.
Regarding the Tofflers' quote concerning national economies, it should be noted that Mr. Gingrich is a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, and he voted for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO), even though in the Ways and Means Committee he said regarding the GATT/WTO: "We are transferring from the U.S. at a practical level significant authority to a new organization. . . . This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. . . . It is a very big transfer of power. Now, yes, we could in theory take the power back. . . . But the fact is we are not likely to disrupt the entire world trading system [by pulling out]."
Newtonian politics and values simply cannot be considered those of traditional conservatives in many important areas of concern to the American people.
D. L. Cuddy, Ph.D., writes from Richmond, Va.