Ferguson further claimed that a "shift to higher needs" would be sensed by a future "president with a platform committed to fundamental restructuring." Insiders are now calling the "higher lever of truth" the Third Way. In his January 27 State of the Union Address, President Clinton claimed that his government represents a "Third Way":

Using classic terminology (unity in diversity, consensus, synthesize), Ms. Ferguson has described the dynamics of Georg Hegel's dialectical process, which is the philosophy that conflict creates history. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary defines the Hegelian Dialectic in terms of equally assertable propositions that are reconciled by embracing a third proposition which is a "higher truth" -

"In his study of cultural awakenings, William McLoughlin ... foresees that at some future point, no earlier than the 1990s, a consensus will emerge that will thrust into political leadership a president with a platform committed to fundamental restructuring. It will reflect the new belief system, with its greater respect for nature, for others, for craftsmanship, and for success measured in terms of friendship and empathy, not money or status.

"In the long run, it is the evolving Radical Center constituency that will engender increasing numbers of candidates and elect some of them to office.... As in the model of Burns, the followers will help transform the leaders - those leaders who sense the shift to higher needs.

"Traditionally, we have wanted to identify our friends and enemies. Lobbies, political realities, and the media, playing both sides against each other, usually force politicians into taking black-and-white positions. But sooner than we may suppose, Radical Center will be a viable point of view. The rising number of new movements, all demonstrating and pressuring, combined with traditional special-interest lobbies, may finally force politicians to seek a middle way through the mine field. Politicians may finally have no choice but to transcend the either-or dilemma.

"Politicians of the Radical Center are easily misunderstood and unusually vulnerable to attack, regardless of their accomplishments, because they dont take strident positions. Their high tolerance of ambiguity and their willingness to change their mind leave them open to accusations of being arbitrary, inconsistent, uncertain, or even devious.

"When nearly two hundred of the most effective Aquarian Conspirators were asked to categorize themselves politically on a questionnaire, many expressed great frustration. Some checked off every box  radical, liberal, centrist, conservative  with apologies. Some drew across the spectrum. Others wrote marginal notes: 'Liberal but...' 'Radical on some issues, conservative on others.' 'These categories dont apply.' 'Radical but not in the usual sense.' 'Choices too linear.' 'Old categories useless.'

"Partial viewpoints force us into artificial choices, and our lives are caught in the crossfire. Quick, choose! Do you want your politician to be compassionate or fiscally responsible? Should doctors be humane of skillful? Should your schools pamper children or spank them? The rare successful reforms in history the durable Constitution, for example  synthesize. They blend the old and the new values. Dynamic tension, in the form of the system of checks and balances, was built into the paradigm of democracy. Whatever its flaws, the framework has proved amazingly resilient.

"Anthropologist Edward Hall lamented our cultural inability to reconcile or include divergent views within one frame of reference. We are also indoctrinated by our right/wrong, win/lose, all/nothing habits that we keep putting all our half-truths into two piles: truth versus lies, Marxism versus capitalism, science versus religion, romance versus realismthe list goes on and on. We act as though either Freud or Skinner had to be right about human behavior, as Hall noted, when in fact 'both work and are right when placed in proper perspective.'

"Most historical movements have their last will and testament along with their manifesto. They have known more surely what they oppose than what they are. By taking a firm position, they trigger an inevitable countermotion, one that will disorient their fragile identity almost at once. Then rapid metamorphosis and self-betrayal: pacifists who become violent, law-and-order advocates who trample law and order, patriots who undo liberties, 'peoples revolutions' that empower new elites, new movements in the arts that become as rigid as their predecessors, romantic ideals that lead to genocide.

"As it was expressed in an editorial in the British Journal, The New Humanity: We are neither right nor left but uplifted forward. The New Humanity advocates a new kind of politics.... Governance must develop a framework, not a rigid structure, and we must find unity within our immense and wonderful diversity. At this point in human evolution there can be no way out of the global political stalemate unless there is first, and fast, a new humanity with a changed psychology. That new psychology is developing, a new humanity is emerging.

In 1980, Marilyn Ferguson set forth in The Aquarian Conspiracy a "common ground/consensus" model where the Far Left and the Far Right can compromise and reach agreement on individual issues. In a chapter titled "The Power of the Radical Center," Ms. Ferguson asserts that Truth is arrived at via consensus, whereas extremes on any issue are merely half-truths:

Contrary to Tony Blair's protest that "The new right [conservative capitalists] did not want to manage [social change]" are the facts. The following excerpt from a Futures World News article on the Third Way conference at NYU exemplifies the massive disinformation campaign that is presently underway:

On the Heritage web site is posted a tribute to Weyrich's foresight 25 years ago in realizing the need for a "conservative alternative" to the liberal Rockefeller-funded Brookings Institution, "the catalyst for many of the legislative successes of the liberals during the 1960s and early 1970s...":

William Lind serves on the staff of the Free Congress Foundation as Director Center for Fiscal Responsibility Center for Transportation & Urban Studies. Paul Weyrich founded the Free Congress Foundation in 1974 as the political arm of the Heritage Foundation which he had established one year earlier.

"Once viewed primarily as 'do-gooders' and religious groups trying to 'save the world,'' NGOs have evolved into a movement of liberals and conservatives . British Prime Minister Tony Blair calls it the 'third way' in world affairs. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder dubs it the 'new middle.' To academics it's an emerging 'civil society .'''

The unpleasant fact is that the massive network of non-governmental organizations represent constituencies which are unwittingly collaborating with their ideological adversaries. The success of this Third Way endeavor gives testimony to the genius of using NGOs as instruments of consensus building, as noted in the Nov. 7 Tampa Bay Online:

Lord Acton was a 19th century Roman Catholic appointed by British Prime Minister Gladstone to the position of Professor of History at Cambridge - an appointment which caused no small controversy in the Anglican Church which sponsored the university. Acton was distinguished for his vision of the ultimate "Universal History," a mystical belief in a universal conscience of the human race which enables mankind to gradually evolve morally, and so progress in civilization to overcome the world. Author of The Occult Underground , James Webb, correlated Lord Acton's Universalism with the vision of religious unity undertaken by the Parliament of the World's Religions at its opening conference in 1893. 2.

The Kuyper Institute (C), is funded, directed by the Center for the Advancement of Paleo Orthodoxy (C). The Kuyper Institute is also linked with Brookings Institution (L), Hoover Institution (Stanford University) (L), Hudson Institute (C), the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University) (L) and the Acton Institute (L).

The liberal Brookings Institution list of Scholars includes Diane Ravitch who, with Chester Finn, directs the conservative Hudson/Fordham Foundation Education Excellence Network (EEN) and the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a subsidiary of Heritage Foundation's Center for Education Reform. Hudson Institute reciprocates with a link to Brookings Institution.

"In order to put public opinion into our hands we must bring it into a state of bewilderment by giving expression from all sides to so many contradictory opinions and for such length of time as will suffice to make the goyim lose their heads in the labyrinth and come to see that the best thing is to have no opinion of any kind in matters political, which it is not given to the public to understand, because they are understood only by him who guides the public. This is the first secret."

On a global scale, the dialectical process is in full swing. The actors in this melodrama are playing their parts well - castigating one another in no uncertain terms, remonstrating about the various issues, promoting their respective ideologies, and appealing to their constituents for sufficient funds to "win the battle." Gradually, however, consensus will be achieved through a supposed synthesis - what insiders are now openly calling the Third Way.

When the masses have been properly conditioned through protracted contention, fearmongering and a myriad of crises, the "higher level of truth" will be found to be a merger of ideological extremes into one group of ruling elites. At the critical moment, the Power Elite will lay down their weapons and present themselves to the world in a public display of "reconciliation." Few will be the wiser, most having failed to recognize that the Religious Right, New Right and the Radical Left have been collaborating to this end all along.

An interesting analysis by the Global Intelligence Update posits that the present reshuffling among the Republicans is a final move to the Radical Center in this war-torn political party. According to a November 9 Red Alert, the conflict of extremes - radical feminists and Christian Right - has been carefully managed so as to demonstrate that both are irrational and irrelevant. They will therefore be marginalized:

"The two wings of the cultural wars, the Christian Right and feminists, have both suffered massive damage. The ability of the Christian Right to strike fear into the hearts of politicians has been severely diminished, certainly on a national basis. The moral and intellectual credibility of their main opponents, the Feminist Left has also been shattered. Thus we will make an extreme but we think defensible statement: the cultural wars that have defined much of the nation's politics since about 1980 are over. Both sides have lost and have lost decisively."

While we are not of the opinion that the dialectical process has run its course and synthesis is imminent, this article provides some insight into the mindset of Third Way planners who are consciously manipulating the Christian Right against the Hedonist Left to achieve their true goal: Radical Center.

Ecumenism: A Third Way

In the secular realm, the Third Way is the higher truth arrived at by reconciling two equally assertable and apparently contradictory propositions - capitalism and communism. Since (we are informed by the social planners) neither system has proved workable, the answer is a Third Way of government control of the private sector. The practical outworking of this plan, however, will be a government / business partnership (Power Elites) which will control the workforce to serve its own purposes.

A similar scam has been marketed to the religious masses, who are now informed by the ecumenical change agents at the World Council of Churches that the independent local church concept established by the Protestant Reformation represents a form of "anarchy." A recent report from Ecumenical News International declares the alternative of "hierarchy" to be equally undesirable. The facilitator in this dialectic is an Italian theologian who proposes that a united Protestantism must demonstrate a "third way" between "anarchy and hierarchy."

This ecumenical colloquium was held in Geneva, Switzerland by the WCC - one of the vast network of International Institutions located in Geneva that are working toward the establishment of one world government.

The transformation of the various religions to a Third Way religious system will parallel and strengthen the consolidation and control of the masses in the socio-political realm. Although assurances are forthcoming that religious unification will not invite an authoritarian hierarchy, history proves that the road to ecumenical unity invariably leads to a state-governed church.

Many Evangelical leaders will be well-suited for leadership in the global church/state alliance. They are already Politicians of the Radical Center as described by Marilyn Ferguson: "...they don't take strident positions. Their high tolerance of ambiguity and their willingness to change their minds leave them open to accusations of being arbitrary, inconsistent, uncertain or even devious."

Among their swelling numbers are those Pioneers of the Radical Center who signed a document titled "The Williamsburg Charter" 10 years ago along with such liberal luminaries such as Sen. Ted Kennedy and Norman Lear of People for the American Way. This agreement to celebrate First Amendment religious plurality gave the Carnegie Foundation the green light to create a curricula for public schools on comparative religion:

Proclamation, Invitation, & Warning

Billy Graham: The Williamsburg Charter Foundation

"The Williamsburg Charter Foundation was a private educational group that provided the focus for a movement to fill a void in public school curriculum in the area of teaching values and teaching about religion. Their goal was to produce class materials by 1990 which was done. An example of the class materials that resulted is 'Living with our Deepest Differences: Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society', which Ernest Boyer (President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching) says is a 'major stride forward for the school reform movement in this country.' There was a formal signing ceremony of the 'Williamsburg Charter' on June 25, 1988. "According to a CBS television program produced in 1990 called 'The Fourth R: Religion and the Public Schools,' Billy Graham took part in the signing ceremony. Signing the charter with Billy Graham, were two former U.S. presidents (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) and two Supreme Court Chief Justices (Burger and Rehnquist), Senator Strom Thurmond, and many other 'distinguished leaders in government, art, and the religious community. "The Williamsburg Charter Foundation brought together an incredible amalgamation of supporters: The Mormon church, the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Muslim American Community, the American Jewish Committee, National Organization for Women's Molly Yard, CWA's Beverly LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, People for the American Way's Norman Lear, James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Oz Guiness (Executive Director), the Chairman of the Soviet Commission on Human Rights, and Billy Graham gave an address at the signing ceremony. (From a CIB Bulletin)"

Summary of the Williamsburg Charter - Finding Common Ground

Signers of the Williamsburg Charter - Note the blend of liberal/conservative signatories. Those who would be archenemies in any other public forum have suddenly found "common ground" or consensus.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not teach comparative religion, nor encourage his disciples to make such arrangements with the secular Powers That Be. As God come in the flesh, Jesus declared:

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me.

Scripture is clear that those who have faith in Jesus Christ will be saved, but those who reject Him will perish. However, Proverbs 14:12 warns of a Third Way which is both deceptive and deadly. It is the way of compromise, which seems reasonable and practical but sacrifices Truth:

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.



Blair Tells Of "Third Way"

by Don Fiedor

While visiting in Washington, Prime Minister Tony Blair gave an interview with the Guardian newspaper, and evidently blabbed quite a bit more than the Clinton Administration was comfortable with. Yet, our national media almost totally disregarded the story.

Blair told the Guardian that his Labour party and Clinton's Democrats would hold a conference in London next May. That conference would be followed late this year, or in early 1999, by an international follow-up conference, bringing on board the so-called "center-left parties" from western and eastern Europe, Australia and north and south America.

The purpose of the conference, as Blair related it, is 'To craft and define center-left philosophy for the world of today.'

What does that mean?

"I want to start with the ideology that links Labour and the Democrats," Blair said. "Then I want to bring together the Anglo-Saxon definitions of these ideas and these policies with the European ones."

So far, still nothing. These were all basically innocuous statements, not worthy of being reported to the American people. But then, he spilled the beans out where anyone paying attention could see. Blair said that the world's center-left parties had to put themselves at the forefront of managing social change in the global economy.

"The old left [communists] resisted that change. The new right [conservative capitalists] did not want to manage it. We have to manage that change to produce social solidarity and prosperity."

So there you have it: managing social change in the global economy to produce social solidarity and prosperity. Blair's explanation is a short definition of a political plan that has been in the works for quite some time. It started with the Rhodes Scholars at Oxford University and is now taught in select American schools, such as the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The perpetrators support a blend of the best of communism and capitalism.

The captains of big business and industry are to continue receiving every liberty, freedom and privilege they have come to expect. In return, they are expected to produce products, generate capital and support the governing elite.

Government's function will be to control the people, and insure a ready work force. That will be accomplished through a myriad of laws, rules and regulations controlling everything in the lives of the people."

One Reason For The Laws

Don Fedor

Even mouthing the words identifying this ideological position is only done in the privacy of elite circles. Because, to do so is to give a hint as to the real reason behind what is happening in Washington nowadays. But it happened. They not only said the words, they put them in print. They almost gave themselves up; their plan, that is. Twice within as many years, they made that mistake.

It's a secret, you see. We taxpaying serfs, we workers who pay the bills for government, we the great American unwashed, are not even to have a hint of this information. Without paying close attention, most of us would not even notice when they're speaking of this ideological position, anyway. And the so called ruling elite want things to stay that way, too.

So, it was very interesting to see, buried in the middle of a long article by John Harwood in the November 26 Wall Street Journal, this sentence: "There is room for a Republican "Third Way," says conservative magazine publisher William Kristol, invoking Mr. Clinton's term for his own ideological approach." We're betting there were some very uneasy moments in the White House when they saw that!

The "Third Way" ideology is much more than just 'another way' of doing things. Rather, it is the specific ideology of the political elite and their multinational industrial paymasters. And, if you study this ideology closely, you may soon learn the real reason behind all those very oppressive laws, rules and regulations coming out of Washington these past few years.

Simply put, the intent of the "Third Way" ideologues is to design a classed society -- made up of us worker serfs and our elite controllers. To do that, it is necessary that the elite have general control over money, training, medical treatment, associations, religion, living arrangements, and liberty of all the workers. One need only examine federal laws, rules and regulations for the past decade to see how they're moving right along with that program. Another hint would be the recent massive arming of federal personnel necessary to enforce all this new law.

Oxford trained Bill Clinton, of course, is a major part of this "Third Way" program. In fact, that is exactly what the Rhodes Scholar program is teaching over at Oxford University. These are the movers and the shakers of both business and politics -- but with an ominous twist.

The "Third Way" is a form of government said to be a blend of the "best" of both capitalism and communism. The "Third Way" is a "Financial-Political Oligarchy," as some describe it. And, because of the many Rhodes Scholars around the world, it's tentacles reach internationally, as well as exerting local and national control.

We now have dozens of "Third Way" supporters in the federal government. At one time, it was not difficult to pick them out. But lately, a similar ideology is also being taught at Harvard University, and other American schools. So, Clinton is only the most visible of the group now in government.

To keep the best of capitalism in a "Third Way" society, private property must be allowed. Rather than government owning all property and the means of production, as in pure socialism, an alternative is used. In a "Third Way" society, property and business is heavily controlled by government regulation, rather than government ownership.

However, in a "Third Way" society, the laws to keep us citizens in line come from the communist model of government -- which means complete government control of everything from womb to tomb. We are to have a semblance of freedom. But the working class people must never have enough freedom (or accumulative power) to interfere effectively in either commerce or government. The moneyed elite, however, work under the capitalist system, and capitalist rules, so as to continue generating wealth. The elite get the freedom, the workers get strictly controlled.

At the 1995 Democratic Leadership Council Annual Conference in Washington, DLC President Al From spoke on "Building A New Generation of Democratic Leaders." He wound up his speech by saying:

"So the stakes are high. I hope that you will join us in what I think has to be a national crusade to restore progressive politics in America, to define and build support for a 'Third Way' agenda so that we can enter the new century with progressive politics once again as the dominant political force in America."

Communism never worked. And socialism does not work very well either, unless government is willing to give special dispensation for the capitalist wishes of the moneyed elite. But communism and socialism are not the only ways of controlling a society of worker-serfs. And, these multinational corporations know that they can buy just about anything they want in Washington. Therefore, the federal government is well along on its quest to give us a "Third Way" society.

So, when you hear of harsher laws being passed to crack down on drugs, defend against terrorists, protect the environment, provide fair medical treatment, raise the scholastic ability of children, or protect against global warming, just remember that it's all part of the same program. It's all a scam!

1998 Elections Will Redefine U.S. Policies

Global Intelligence Update

Red Alert

November 9, 1998

The past week has demonstrated that Bill Clinton is the most extraordinary politician of our time. He took a draw in the 1998 by-elections in which the Republicans retained control of both houses of Congress, and managed to define it as an overwhelming defeat for the Republicans and a major personal victory for himself. The generally accepted consensus was that the elections ended any chance of an impeachment of the President. As pure icing on the cake, the elections destroyed his archenemy, Newt Gingrich and with it, redefined the Republican Party.

President achieved his tremendous victory by defining the basic issue as whether having sex with Monica Lewinsky was or was not an impeachable offense. He was actually aided in this by Ken Starr and the Republican right wing, which in fact did regard having sex with Monica Lewinsky as being an impeachable offense.

The issue of lying under oath became a subsidiary matter. The really critical issue: whether the President raised funds from Chinese and Indonesian government and commercial sources in return for skewing U.S. foreign policy in their favor was shoved off to another investigation where it languishes, mostly forgotten. This was the true tail wagging the dog: Monica Lewinsky's tail wagged a dog of an investigation.

How was this permitted to happen? The cultural conservatives in the Republican Party simply failed to understand that the dominant culture in the United States draws a fundamental difference between public character and private behavior. Most Americans were personally offended by the President's behavior, but did not translate the private failure into something that defined the President. Clinton understood this. He allowed his enemies to do exactly what they wanted to do: paint Clinton as a degenerate womanizer. He allowed them to win that battle, knowing that he would win the war, since being a degenerate womanizer was not an impeachable offense. Clinton sandbagged the Republicans. The Republicans then sandbagged themselves by permitting the elections to become a referendum not on whether Clinton was a degenerate womanizer (that was already conceded) but whether he should be impeached over it. They then allowed the Democrats to define a draw as a victory, and the results sent Gingrich packing his bags.

There are two domestic political results here. The Christian Right sees itself as engaged in a struggle for the cultural soul of the United States. They have just been handed an overwhelming defeat. The culture that won this battle was the secular, hedonist culture that holds that what people do of their own free will behind closed doors not only is their own business, but does not in any way effect public life. The inability of the Christian Right to bring down a President caught literally with his pants down will be een as a signal that the Christian Right simply doesn't have the power to define the important issues. If they could not bring down Bill Clinton over admitted sexual misconduct, they are simply not as powerful as they would like to think they are. Their influence in the Republican Party will diminish after this, or the Republics will slip back into minority status.

The second political result is the effective collapse of feminism as a political force. Feminists savaged Clarence Thomas as being unfit for the Supreme Court because a former employee of his, Anita Hill, provided uncorroborated testimony that on several occasions he had asked her out on dates and that he had even made several dirty jokes in her presence. Feminists seriously regarded this as evidence that Thomas was unfit to sit on the Supreme Court. Clinton was charged (with certainly at least as much evidence as Anita Hill brought forward) with exposing himself to an employee (Paula Jones), groping another employee (Kathleen Willey), and having an affair with young student doing an internship in the White House (Monica Lewinsky). Where lesser charges were enough to mobilize feminists against Thomas, the charges against Clinton were not seen as sufficient to demand his resignation. In fact, feminists argued that the good Clinton did the feminists outweighed whatever personal misconduct he engaged in. In other words, powerful liberals are to be held to different standards than conservatives.

The feminists have now created the Clinton Test for sexual harassment. Unwanted sexual advances, actual exposure of private parts, and taking advantage of a powerful office to seduce young women, do not constitute sexual harassment if you support the feminist agenda. Asking employees out on dates and telling dirty jokes in front of them does constitute sexual harassment if you are on the feminist hit list. The utter cynicism of the feminists will cripple the movement for a generation. No one will take seriously NOW's calls for greater protection of women in the workplace after their refusal to condemn Bill Clinton.

This is the interesting outcome of the elections. The two wings of the cultural wars, the Christian Right and feminists, have both suffered massive damage. The ability of the Christian Right to strike fear into the hearts of politicians has been severely diminished, certainly on a national basis. The moral and intellectual credibility of their main opponents, the Feminist Left has also been shattered. Thus we will make an extreme but we think defensible statement: the cultural wars that have defined much of the nation's politics since about 1980 are over. Both sides have lost and have lost decisively.

If this is true, then the battles that energized the Christian Right and the Feminist Left, but which left the center generally uneasy and unengaged, should slowly decline in importance. Abortion is, of course, the core issue. Issues like pornography, on which both flanks agreed and which failed to excite the rest of the spectrum should also decline in importance. In short, a new political agenda should be emerging in time for 2000. What will that agenda be?

It is increasingly clear that Bob Livingston of Louisiana will be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. That means that the Republican leader of the House will be from the Deep South, along with the Republican leader of the Senate, Trent Lott. This is an extremely dangerous situation for the Republicans, who have just been devastated by cultural conservatism. But there is a reverse twist to this. Precisely because both Livingston and Lott come from the deep south and have strong credentials among the powerful Christian Right within the Republican Party, they have more room for maneuver within the Party than others might have. Moreover, both Lott and Livingston are more creatures of Washington than the South by now, and we should remember that Washington won this election. They will be able to define a new agenda without alienating the Christian Right. They can lighten up on family values if they have another issue that the Christian Right resonates to but that has broader appeal.

That issue is economic nationalism. Bob Livingston was the key figure in the recent debate over an $18 billion payment to the IMF for use in addressing the global economic crisis. While some in the Party wanted to block the payment altogether and while the President was simply in favor of it, Livingston crafted a solution which permitted the money to be paid if the IMF underwent massive reforms that would actually change its very nature. Rather than supporting proposals for increased power to the IMF bureaucracy, Livingston crafted legislation that both supported the IMF while decreasing its power. He forced Clinton into accepting what was, when viewed carefully, a very radical piece of legislation. Given the new proposals being floated for $80 billion bailouts and the creation of a larger, more powerful bureaucracy to control international currency controls, proposals almost but not quite creating a global central bank, Livingston has already shown himself to be a powerful opponent to Clinton and Rubin.

It is interesting to note that issues like the power of the IMF are increasingly motivating the Christian Right as much as cultural issues. There is a deep and growing distrust on the part of the Christian Right of the trend toward multilateral solutions, like NAFTA, IMF, UN, WTO and so on, that the Democrats are so fond of. What is most important, is that this sense of unease is not unique to the Christian Right. Dick Gephardt represents a serious faction within the Democratic Party that is equally dubious about what is seen as a transfer of power from the United States Government to multilateral organizations.

Now, the most important issue facing Congress when it returns will be the future of the international financial system founded at Bretton Woods. There are proposals being made to dramatically increase the power of organizations like the IMF and World Bank, transferring regulatory powers over world financial markets into their hands. These proposals are being made by France, Germany and Japan. The Clinton administration has recently appeared to be increasingly in favor of these changes. These proposals will rip Washington apart. They may well be supported by major banks looking for a way out of the crisis. Free traders who have tended to line up with the banks, like Jim Leach who chairs the House Banking committee, will be torn between his ideological loyalties and his institutional proclivities. Labor Democrats like Gephardt will be opposed to any such institutional shift. The Christian Right will be utterly opposed. Corporate Republicans will tend to favor the proposals. In short, there will be chaos.

With the cultural wars at an end, the new defining issue in the United States will be economic nationalism versus internationalism. This is an issue that cuts between parties. Pat Buchanan and Dick Gephardt are on one side, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton are on the other. But Newt Gingrich is gone. Pat Buchanan is a pale reflection of his old self. In fact, both parties are up for grabs. It is not clear which party will become the party of economic nationalism. However, the dynamics surrounding Bob Livingston's elevation to power seem to indicate that he will take the mantle of economic nationalism and run with it. It will protect his Christian Conservative flank while allowing him to define the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Livingston could turn out to be a pivotal figure in American history. 3.

Ecumenical News International

Implement your declarations, Italian theologian tells churches

By Edmund Doogue

Ecumenical News International

6 November 1998

Geneva, 6 November (ENI)--The greatest danger to Christian ecumenism is the risk posed by rhetoric that does not lead to action, a leading Italian Protestant theologian told a colloquium held on 31 October in Geneva to discuss relations between two of Protestantism's dominant traditions - Lutheran and Reformed.

The greatest danger for ecumenism is in fact ecumenical rhetoric - making declarations without putting them into effect. We already have tonnes of documents," Professor Paolo Ricca told 30 theologians and church officials gathered at the John Knox Centre, in Geneva, to celebrate the Formula of Agreement which has been accepted by one Lutheran and three Reformed churches in North America, and the 25th anniversary of the Leuenberg Agreement which has brought Lutheran and Reformed churches into communion across most of Europe.

In his impassioned speech, given in French, Professor Ricca, who teaches theology at the Waldensian Faculty in Rome, praised attempts to bring Christianity's divided traditions together, but said that merely reaching agreements was not enough. Protestants, he said, lived under an illusion that at some time in the past all of Protestantism was united, whereas in fact this had never been the case. Unity between Lutheran and Reformed Christians was not something that would come about spontaneously, and an "interior change" was necessary to make it happen.

If you want to reach communion [with other Christians], you must take a step," Professor Ricca said. "You think that it's already been done - after all, it has been officially declared - and yet it [unity] isn't happening ... We've been separated for 400 or 500 years. That division is not healed in 25 years and it doesn't heal by itself."

Professor Ricca also said that Protestantism had a duty to show Christians that there was a "third way" between "anarchy and hierarchy".

It is possible to be united without being authoritarian," he said, adding that Protestantism showed that it was not necessary to follow the "Fuhrer principle". Asked by ENI after his speech if he was referring to the Roman Catholic Church, he said "not especially", adding that the Orthodox churches, based on the authority of patriarchs, followed the same principle.

Professor Andre Birmele, a French Lutheran who teaches theology at the University of Strasbourg, told the gathering that the Leuenberg agreement was perhaps the most successful and effective church agreement of the past 30 years. However, it had relatively little impact at the local level.

He added that on ethical issues - such as peace, ecology and homosexuality - Europe's Protestant churches had still not managed to reach consensus and speak with one voice. One of the difficulties, after the Leuenberg agreement, was the nature of the authority of churches.

"We [Protestants] are very attached to the local church," Professor Birmele said. "Our difficulty is understanding the universality of the church. This difficulty is inherent to our Protestant churches."

Another problem was that smaller churches, like the minority Protestant churches in France, feared they would be "eaten up" by big churches taking part in agreements like Leuenberg.

Dr Lukas Vischer, a Reformed pastor and theologian from Geneva who organised the colloquium, said there were clear indications that there was potential for closer cooperation between Lutherans and Reformed Christians. Leading figures had pointed out that the Leuenberg Agreement could be used as a basis for similar concordats elsewhere in the world, Dr Vischer said. 4.



The Process

The Rockefeller~Heritage Connection

The Council for National Policy