Gingrich’s record on big government uncovered
Glenn Beck earned lots of attention yesterday with his allegedly “thorough” interview of Newt Gingrich. Beck did succeed in covering Gingrich’s big-government positions on things like government-mandated health care, global warming, corporate welfare, subsidies, and the regulatory state, invoking statements from Gingrich such as “I believe government can lead and that regulatory leading is okay,” in regard to health care.
But Beck’s needling hardly pierced the surface of Newt’s less-publicized leftist-like record, according to several recent sources. New American reveals his new-age side,
In 1994, Gingrich described himself as “a conservative futurist.” He said that those who were trying to define him should look no further than The Third Wave, a 1980 book written by Alvin Toffler. The book describes our society as entering a post-industrial phase in which abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, and divorce are perfectly normal, even virtuous. Toffler penned a letter to America’s “founding parents,” in which he said: “The system of government you fashioned, including the very principles on which you based it, is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare. It must be radically changed and a new system of government invented — a democracy for the 21st century.” He went on to describe our constitutional system as one that “served us so well for so long, and that now must, in its turn, die and be replaced.”
Gingrich recommended The Third Wave as essential reading to his colleagues when he became Speaker of the House. In his forward to another Toffler book, Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave, he grieved at the lack of appreciation for “Toffler’s insight” in The Third Wave and blamed politicians who had not applied his model for the “frustration, negativism, cynicism and despair” of the political landscape. He went on to explain that Toffler advocated a concept called “anticipatory democracy,” and bragged that he had worked with him for 20 years “to develop a future-conscious politics and popular understanding that would make it easier for America to make the transition” to a Third Wave civilization.
Around the same time, Gingrich gave a speech before the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in which he allegedly said,
The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution. Under our [constitutional system] — either we’re going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we’re going to have to rethink our process of decision-making.
When a lame-duck Congress was considering ceding U.S. sovereignty over tariffs and trade regulations to the World Trade Organization in 1994 (before more conservatives were sworn in and would likely have blocked it), Newt expressed his own undeerstanding in a Congressional hearing:
I am just saying that we need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment. I would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change.
I agree … this is very close to Maastrict [the European Union treaty by which the EU member nations have surrendered considerable sovereignty], and twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment. 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.
Then, despite such a clear understanding of such clear tyranny and selling-out of American sovereignty, Newt immediately added, “I am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it.”
Gingrich’s voting record shows him siding with the left and the UN more often than his current conservative rhetoric would lead most people to believe. The list includes,
1979 Elected to Congress from Georgia’s 6th District
1979 Voted to create the Department of Education, under President Jimmy Carter
1990 Becomes member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
1993 Voted for NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement
1994 Supported the WTO, the World Trade Organization. Voted for GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that subjected Americans to the international authority of the WTO (See his exact quote in accompanying article.) See additional link.
1995 Becomes Speaker of the House of Representatives and recommends reading The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler as required reading for all of his Congressional colleagues.
1995 Delivers speech to the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in which he blames the US Constitution for making America’s role in leading the world more difficult! Read his full quote in accompanying article, “The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution…”.
1995 Wrote the foreword to another one of Toffler’s books, The Politics of the Third Wave, Creating a New Civilization
1995 The liberal establishment Time Magazine names Newt Gingrich their “Man of the Year”
1995 Appeals to the US House of Representatives to increase the power of the Presidency by repealing the War Powers Act of 1972, and urged President Clinton to expand the US military presence in Bosnia.
1996 Under his leadership, Congress passed the largest single spending increase on education in US history, a whopping $3.5 billion dollars!
1999 Newt resigns over failed midterm elections in which Republicans lost 5 seats, the worst loss in history for a Party who did not control the White House! At the same time, he was also involved in a flap over an extra marital affair and a controversial book deal!
2008 Records the ‘We Can Solve It’ global warming TV commercial for Al Gore along with Nancy Pelosi
2009-2010 Travels the country with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan to promote President Obama’s new educational policies: i.e. increased local control of schools with increased Federal subsidies and regulations from Washington.
2010 Supported ultra-liberal, pro-abortion, pro-union, establishment candidate Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd Congressional District in a special election, over conservative candidate Doug Hoffman.