Diane Alden
Monday, Feb. 28, 2005

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  While China has had its ups and downs, its civilization has marched on for 5,000 years. Western influence on China has not changed its basic civilization or mindset; communism couldn't do it, and capitalism won't either. Those who think China will not revert to its ancient pattern of belief that it is the center of the Earth or the "hegemon" (supreme civilization) are beyond presumptuous and into a fantasyland.

Huntington informs us, "The idea is advanced that the spread of Western consumption patterns and popular culture around the world is creating a universal civilization." He refers to those who hatched the recent incarnation of a universal civilization as the Davos Culture.

Who are members of the Davos Culture? They are the same kind of elite there have always been: with lots at stake, much to lose, a yen for controlling and directing, as well as an overwhelming desire to remain the elite. That is human nature and the way the world has always worked. No conspiracy involved – simply arrogance combined with tunnel vision, money and power.

One of the gathering places for that elite is Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum. At Davos, or meetings of G-7 or G-8 or Club of Rome, they think great thoughts, plan great strategies, and decide how the world should work. Comprising the world's economic, financial, intellectual, political and cultural aristocracy, this assembly believes it can accomplish what has eluded humanity for thousands of years.

The thinking is that universal civilization will evolve out of globalization. Buzzwords include Hillary's favorite, "global village." On the other side, President Bush promoted something similar in his inaugural address, a vision of spreading democracy and trade around the world and ending tyranny for all time. As former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan remarked, "a bit over the top."

In 2005, the golden gathering at Davos included the usual U.S. Senate suspects: Richard Shelby, Orrin Hatch, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Christopher Dodd, Saxby Chambliss, Bill Frist, Joe Biden and John McCain. From the Bush Cabinet, Elaine Chao (Labor), Grant Aldonas (Commerce), John Taylor (Treasury), and Robert Zoellick (U.S. Trade Representative), Kristin Forbes (Council of Economic Advisers), William Donaldson (SEC) and Michael Powell (FCC);

The Democratic contingent included Al Gore, Larry Summers, Stuart Eizenstat, Laura Tyson, Gene Sperling, David Gergen, John Deutch, David Caputo and ex-President Bill Clinton. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were the main moneybags involved.

At one point, Republican Steve Forbes led a discussion on "The Unholy Alliance between the Media and Extremists." Does that include Internet writers such as myself, Steve?

David Pearlstein of the Washington Post wrote the best analysis of the gathering of modern feudal barons at Davos. "I admire your unbending faith that continuous dialogue among 2,000 of the world's smartest, richest and most powerful people can flush out the best new ideas, hold governments and great corporations to account, and bring peace and prosperity to the global village. Never mind that history's lesson is that most breakthrough ideas come from upstarts and outcasts and revolutionaries determined to overturn the established order. Or that, in a network world, change happens from the bottom up, not the top down. For me, as for you, the Davos Spirit lives."

Universal Civilization – Godzilla Lives

Former President of Czechoslovakia Vaclev Havel once wrote, "we now live in a single global civilization." As Soviet-style Marxism/Leninism collapsed, President George H.W. Bush told us we were on the verge of a "new world order." At the same time, intellectuals decided we were at the "end of history." Western style would prevail in all things.

On the other hand, throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton handed off U.S. sovereignty, self-determination and economic self-preservation to the U.N., the WTO, NAFTA, Most Favored Nation status for China, and placed the U.S. military under international command. While he did that, he gutted the U.S. military on one hand and made intelligence-gathering subject to the machinations of the PC police and a bunch of Beltway lawyers on the other.

Not content with destroying the U.S. by giving it all away or trying out sixties social theories, Clinton and Al Gore corrupted the executive branch by accepting copious amounts of money from foreign governments and corporations in order to finance their 1996 and 2000 election campaigns.

Following Clinton, Bush II proclaims the end of tyranny around the world and freedom and KFC for everyone. He doesn't tell you that we are still at the same level of military as we were under Bill Clinton. We went from 28 divisions to 18 and are stuck there. Building up the military by paying for more boots on the ground has been replaced by theories about fewer men and technology fighting "new" types of war.

While President Bush doesn't think too much about billions of dollars spent on medical care for illegal immigrants, he cut back on what is spent on American veterans. The corker was when wounded U.S. soldiers coming back from Iraq were paying for their own hospital meals. Meanwhile, he makes it more difficult for returning vets to find jobs that pay well, as the "market" excuse is used to bring in cheap labor from around the world.

At the same time, he insists that economic migrants from every nation on earth, particularly those south of the border, should be allowed to displace his countrymen in the name of trade, commerce and compassionate conservatism. Ain't it a great country?

Personally, I think they are all a bunch of irresponsible clucks that don't give a damn about the U.S. Constitution, their countrymen, or the fate of this nation. It does not matter if they act in service to compassionate conservatism, or believe that illegal migrants are "good-hearted" folks trying make a living. It does not matter if it is the "market" or Clintonesque money-grubbing one-world-fits-all universalism, it is ALL disastrous for this nation.

The Naive and the Dead

"Only naive arrogance can lead Westerners to assume that non-Westerners will become westernized by acquiring Western goods. What indeed does it tell the world about the West when Westerners identify their civilization with fizzy liquids, faded pants, and fatty foods," says Huntington.

Luckily, he lets us know that "Davos people control virtually all international institutions, many of the world's governments, and the bulk of the world's economic and military capabilities."

They hide behind rhetoric of justice, compassion, fairness and the "free" market. But what they are more interested in is stability and making the world safe for multinationals and their own place in the scheme of things: that they are in charge.

Few understand what is happening. They cling to old patterns of thought, theories and their blindness that people in their own political party or movement can be wrong, arrogant, or mistake compassion for something deadly.

How often I have heard guys like Rush Limbaugh say that paying the peasants of China slightly below squat is better than what they had before. Maybe so, but low pay, long hours, few benefits is no way to build a middle class or give peasants the wherewithal to buy "stuff" from U.S. producers or the time to use them. It is no way to build their own consumer economy.

For a short time it may give Americans cheaper goods, but only for a short time, as things more important to us disappear. Much of the money American investors, consumers and companies are sending to China advance by decades the day that Chinese military, nationalism, 5,000 years of history, will eclipse our own.

The Chinese are building up their military and nuclear capability as fast as they can. The money they are taking from U.S. investors is doing what money from U.S. investors did prior to World War II as IBM, Ford, GE and Standard Oil financed the growth of the Third Reich. U.S. investors are making it possible for China to kick our butts.

Although there are more consumers in China than there were ten years ago, nothing much has changed to make the society more open or more peaceful. Intelligence and military expert Bill Gertz and China expert Stephen Mosher conclude that Chinese nationalism is replacing communism and that makes China just as threatening to our interests as when Mao Tse Tung ruled.

As I plowed through 297 pages of the 2004 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to Congress, I saw that our fearless leaders are doing us immense harm by their lackadaisical attitude toward the demise of U.S. manufacturing, gutting of the U.S. military, and buying our way into insolvency with foreign dollars.

Meanwhile, millions upon millions of poor folks living in China's rural areas don't benefit at all from commerce or trade. Frankly, the Chinese government can worry about them. I am more concerned about U.S. workers, our institutions, and how both sides of the political spectrum are selling us out.

Trading or Treachery?

Under our NAFTA agreement with Mexico, every economic report that I trust records that there are MORE poor Mexicans than there were prior to Clinton signing NAFTA. Plus, according to Barron's economic magazine, the U.S. has absorbed 15 to 20 million illegal economic migrants since NAFTA.

Contrary to what the Bush administration says, WE are worse off than before. Badly thought-out economic policy, trade deals, visa system, and influx of cheap labor into the U.S. are ruining us. Not to mention destructive to the middle class and to what is left of American civilization.

Before NAFTA we had a trade surplus with Mexico, now we have a trade deficit. We owe the other nations of the world over $600 billion as we binge at Wal-Mart and Circuit City. Our deficit is 6 percent of the gross domestic product. Any economists worth their salt, who are not hallucinating, understand that this is a disaster for the U.S. and its future. Cheap goods and high debt are two sides of the same coin.

Our leadership refuses to be concerned that this binge is financed by foreign dollars and that they may call in their IOUs whenever it suits them.

All the while, the establishment of both parties turn a blind eye as the middle class is being squeezed with high taxes, regulations, fees, stagnant salaries and wages and little job growth in any sector that pays well. Nonetheless, Democrat and Davos cultist Bill Gates is asking for an increase in work visas to bring in computer engineers and high-tech people from around the globe. This, even as the U.S. has a glut of underemployed or unemployed computer engineers and scientists.

Meanwhile, Republican George W. Bush will seek to approve guest worker amnesty and have CAFTA approved, further eroding the position of the American worker and taxpayer.

At the same time, in Japan and Germany the manufacturing base is healthy as ever and comparative wages and benefits are higher than for the U.S. worker. By manufacturing I am talking about hard industries that produce goods that require some skills and craftsmanship. We are bleeding that type of manufacturing through every orifice as government policy and venal multinationals could give a damn.

Part of our problem is that the financial sector is no longer connected with production or work. Money games and mergers and acquisitions, investment banking, etc., have lots to do with making money but little to do with building up economies or improving the lot of the working class. No matter what they tell you, the U.S. as international money changer is not going to replace making stuff to export, nor will it improve over the long haul our economic health or national security.

Nor will the information society save us, because that also can be transferred anywhere on the planet. Our comparative advantage, the Holy Grail of free marketers, is almost non-existent; all things are mobile, including people.

I admire the way the Japanese operate. Contrary to what the economic pundits and dimwits on Wall Street tell you, overall the Japanese economy and working class are better off than ours. Plus they have a trade surplus with China that is in THEIR favor.

Meanwhile, the Japanese enjoy a consistent trade surplus of around $900 billion and the Japanese savings rate is around 8.7 percent. It is too bad the American economic system began with cutthroat capitalists joining forces with government to manipulate the system. It is more than too bad that relations between capital and labor were based on nothing more than every man for himself.

After World War II, the Japanese built an economy that was not grounded in an adversarial relationship between management, labor and the investor class. Somehow the Japanese understand the importance of cooperation between the various sectors, and we do NOT. So far they haven't divorced the financial from the productive as we have. The Japanese are also smart enough to comprehend the significance of maintaining the strength of their working class and manufacturing base and the need for investment in both. We do not.

I know this may be boring you. Nonetheless, in a short time you or your children will feel the consequences of failed U.S. economic policy – if you haven't already.

I would advise the wise that whenever you hear someone tell you none of this matters, it's simply the "market" at work: RUN LIKE HELL. You have met the economic equivalent of Jim Jones, and we know how that turned out for those who followed him. The true believers have certain aspects of truth, but they twist it to fit their own ideologies or agendas.

There is NO "free" market in the way of America circa 1900, or the 18th century of Adam Smith,. The forces that once guided the "invisible hand" have changed. When you add the fact that the financial sector has next to nothing to do with capital building, labor and production, we are in a double bind.

The incestuous relationship that exists between government and corporations destroyed the "market" of Adam Smith and Davis Ricardo. Nowhere did either of the Fathers of the Free Market exclude the guiding hand of loyalty to one's own community and civilization in favor of chaos theory or commerce gone berserk. In any event, the closest thing Americans have to the "free" market is over at eBay.

While in the U.S., collapse of ethics and ignoring the Golden Rule give us piles of paper money and credit, poor accounting practices, wheeling and dealing, over-taxation and over-regulation, excess, debt, and few savings. Our glorious leaders excuse such failure as "the market."

During the Clinton years and early years of the first Bush administration, they turned a blind eye as Enron and Global Crossing evolved. Just as they turned a blind eye to the savings-and-loan debacle of the late eighties and early nineties, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab. They think nothing of a $600 billion trade deficit and believe trillions of dollars in national debt are acceptable casualties of the "market" at work.

In 2005, they continue to refuse to address the deceit and double-dealing of "trading partners" like China and Mexico. The overconfidence, smugness and blindness of the American branch of Davos Culture know no bounds.

Even as the poor and middle class are taking the brunt of their failure, they compound matters with more immigration, wars we can't afford, and new federal departments that are black holes of money and talent.

Another great thinker explained his vision of what is happening in the post-Cold War/post-industrial Western world. It certainly applies to the United States. Pope John Paul II wrote, "Since the collapse of the collectivist system in Central and Eastern Europe, ... humanity has entered a new phase in which the market economy seems to have conquered virtually the entire world."

He added that globalization's "prime characteristic is the increasing elimination of barriers to the movement of people, capital and goods. It enshrines a kind of triumph of the market and its logic" and "many people, especially the disadvantaged, experience this as something that has been forced upon them."

"Globalization 'a priori'," observed the Holy Father, "is neither good nor bad. It will be what people make of it. No system is an end in itself, and it is necessary to insist that globalization, like any other system, must be at the service of the human person; it must serve solidarity and the common good."

Globalization isn't about communism, socialism, capitalism, democracy, the U.N., or Democrats versus Republicans. It is about the pride and arrogance of the ruling classes. They attempt to remake humankind and create a universal civilization where Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha, the Catholic Church, Protestants, Marx and Lenin, Napoleon and Hitler, plus all the armies of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, China, Rome, France, Britain, Russia, Japan and Germany have failed.

The pope said that capitalism at its best is a good system IF it remembers the importance of human beings as God's children rather than commodities on an economic chessboard.

As an American, I am concerned about the United States. Our leaders – economic, political and cultural – have been swept up by the conceit of the Davos Culture, an inclination that places an economic price tag on absolutely everything. The direction the Europe and U.S. is heading will be a utilitarian system devoid of humanity and truth.

The Bible may have described where our acceptance of the Davos Culture is leading us:

"Therefore, shall plagues come in one day. Death, mourning, famine and she shall be burnt with fire. The merchants who were made rich will stand far off from her for fear of her torments. They will say: Alas that great city which was clothed with fine linen, purple and scarlet and gilt with gold and precious stones, in one hour are so great riches come to nothing. Every shipmaster and all that sail on the sea will cry, alas the great city wherein all were made rich, that had ships at sea by reason of her commerce and in one hour was made desolate. No more the sound of musician, pipers and harps. No more will there be craftsman of any art nor will the sounds of the mill be heard. The light of the lamp shall wane, the voice of bride and bridegroom fall silent. No matter her merchants were great men of the earth, while her profit and finery blinded the nations. (The Apocalypse)

Next: A surprise: Diane writes something uplifting or mysterious. For more Diane, listen to me Wednesday on WNDB.AM, Marc Bernier Show, 10 a.m. CST, 11 a.m. EST. I am not sure if the show can be heard via the Internet, but it is well worth the listen if it is. Thanks to Marc I actually made it into the White House and U.S. Capitol Building via telephone. That is the ONLY way they would ever let me in. By the way, my criticism of Bush is only meant as an eye-opener, not because I have become a liberal Democrat. I don't hate him, but I don't think he is conservative or a constitutionalist in any way I recognize. Contact me at alden@newsmax.com

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