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Cybernewt

``` David Corn sent me the enclosed story, which will run in the February 6th issue of The Nation. I've reformatted it but haven't edited the text.

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 08:20:52 -0800 From: The Nation

The following is a copy of the Clinton & Co. column on Newt Gingrich's January 11, 1995, cyber-conference that appears in the February 6 issue of The Nation magazine. It was written by David Corn, the magazine's Washington editor. Feel free to share it. If you have any comments, suggestions, or leads, contact Corn at

Dacor@aol.com

or

The Nation 110 Maryland Ave. NE Suite 308 Washington, DC 20002 202-546-2239 ph 202-546-1415 fax

CyberNewt

A week after he wrapped his mitts around the Speaker's gavel, Newt Gingrich stood before a packed Washington hotel ballroom in the role he seems to relish most: the historian/philosopher/visionary. He rambled on about change, the Information Age, the Third Wave of social development, the decline of bureaucracies, the decentralization of power, the establishment of a "citizens' movement"--all the familar themes. The occasion was a one-day conference of cyberjocks convened by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and Gingrich's formal subject was "From Virtuality to Reality". But the Speaker had more in minde than advancing his well-known interest in futurism and sci-fi. His aim was (and is) to hijack the cyber revolution on behalf of the conservative movement.

The operating premise of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a tax-exempt outfit created by a Gingrich sidekick, is that as the world moves from an age of industry to an age of information--the so-called Third Wave, cresting in the aftermath of the agrarian and industrial "waves"--the "political infrastructure of the United States is ill prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities." So the foundation brings together futurists, policy analysts, telecommunications experts and computer mavens to ponder what it all means and advocate proposals for "renewing American civilization." The message behing Gingrich's prominence at the P.F.F.'s conference was clear, and was conveyed in the next day's headlines: Gingrich is thinking ahead. He's a leader.

He also is a clever fellow. The conference assembled genuine futurists--most notably Alvin and Heidi Toffler of Future Shock fame, who have been friends of Gingrich for two decades--and champions of supply side economics and cultural conservatism, such as George Gilder and George Keyworth Jr., President Reagan's science adviser and a Star Wars aficionado. (In 1973, Gilder wrote an anti-feminist tract, Sexual Suicide, declaring "the woman's place is in the home.") All were together to scratch heads about "Democracy in Virtual America." Some participants spoke of the positive technological consequences of cyber-politics: Political parties can have volunteers working from home; political meetings can be held on-line. But the discussion was far-reaching. New Age Republican Arianna Huffington, a foundation board member, assailed Heidi Toffler's call for more women legislators and decried the "mistaken belief that the mind alone can conquer everything." Much mention was made of the "devolution of power." Everything was attributed to the Second Wave (bad) or the Third Wave (good). The welfare system is Second Wave, so is stimulating the economy. (The Tofflers consider the nuclear family and California's Proposition 187 to be Second Wave, but the Newtites don't want to hear that.) What's Third Wave? Smaller government, state's rights, privatizing school systems, unfettered free enterprise.

Gingrich is seeking cyber-cover for age-old conservative precepts. For years, he has sincerely celebrated the information revolution and advocated an aggressive space program. (The current issue of the foundation's newsletter calls for colonizing Mars; it also contains a list of "American proverbs," including the maxim, "He that does not work; neither shall he eat.") And foundation literature admirably proclaims that with the coming of a cyberworld, "The opportunity is now before us to empower every person." But Gingrich's cyber-embrace is about politics, high and low. "The conflict between Second Wave and Third Wave groupings is the central political tension cutting through our society today," declares the P.P.F.'s "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age." In other words, the basic political conflict is between a decrepit old order of paper-pushing central bureaucracy and a bright new one of computer-enhanced individuality and demassification. The foundation is run by Jeffrey!

Eisenach, who formerly headed GOPAC, Gingrich's secretive and bitterly partisan political action committee. Days after the November elections, Eisenach, held a closed-door Capitol Hill briefing for Republicans only. There Frank Luntz, whiz-kid G.O.P. pollster and foundation fellow, credited Eisenach with devising the Contract With America and presented polling data, according to a Democratic House aide forced to leave the room. This meeting may have violated tax laws that prohibit tax-exempt groups from partisan activity.

There is nothing particularly futuristic about the funding sources behind P.F.F. and its conference. Telecommunications firms subsidize the group: A.T.& T., BellSouth, Turner Broadcasting System, Cox Cable Communications. Other donors to P.F.F.'s $1.9 million bank account include conservative foundations, Wired magazine, high-tech firms, military contractors and drug companies. (another foundation passion is attacking the Food and Drug Administration).

When Senator Phil Gramm speaks at the conference luncheon, the closest tables to the podium were reserved for corporate benefactors: Eli Lilly, Seagram's, Philip Morris, S.B.C. Communications (formerly Southwestern Bell). Not much of a figure on the cyber-frontier, this G.O.P. presidential wanna-be had little to share on "virtual democracy," and instead gave a stock campaign speech. "Ideas, not vested interests, determine the outcome of the debate," he said. His brave new idea: massive deregulation.

Grammism bloomed at the afternoon panel. Michael Rothschild, identified as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, began by asserting, "The economy is not a machine. The economy is a rainforest." You can tinker with a machine, retool a machine, slow down or speed up a machine. But anyone who proposes to intervene in the delicate, organic, complex, evolving ecosystem known as the economy will have to prove first that the intervention will be "environmentally sensitive." Such an approach, Rothschild notes, will "nurture the Information Age economy." It will do so by undermining antitrust action and government regulation--which was one of the few concrete goals that emerged from all the Third Wave jargon spilled at the conference. Gilder was more specific, denouncing all controls on telecommunications--such as limits on the mergers of cable and phone companies--as actions that "will stifle the Third Wave."

There was a moment of dissent when Mitchell Kapor, a designer of Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, asked, "Where are you on the risks to society that come from highly centralized private power?...If you dismantle the government, how comfortable are you with A.T.& T., Microsoft, Bell Atlantic[sp] and others deciding what you watch." He wondered why no one had raised questions of social justice: "You're introducing a new rhetoric for Social Darwinism." Heather Higgins, a P.F.F. fellow, replied, "Capitalism can never have a human face," and then went on to condemn progressive taxation and social program entitlements.

Gingrich closed out the conference, rhapsodizing about the need to wire every child into cyberspace, so none of them fail to catch the Third Wave. It's a noble sentiment, as is his call for more information for all. But left unstated is how this will happen, particularly if telegopolies do not permit it. When Vice President Gore recently suggested firms bid for federal dollars to hook up schools, libraries and hospitals, the foundation sniffed, "That is not how we approach telecom."

Gingrich has long realized that high-tech devices can bolster conservative political organizing. With the Progress and Freedom Foundation, he is using pop social anthropology and cyber-rhetoric to position himself, and his rightist comrades, as progressive, forward-looking--and inevitable. The Speaker is a master at blending themes and interests. Recently, he had on his weekly cable show--which airs on the conservative National Empowerment Television network--John Mallone, president of Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable firm. Both men spoke enthusiastically about deregulation. Afterward, a TCI spokesman said that the company hoped to find room for NET in its programming next year. Now that's systems-expanding synergy.

DAVID CORN ```

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