We the People vs. Corporatist-Globalism: the Real Clash of Civilizations

Written by Stephen Yates

Jul 11, 2007 at 12:00 AM

Back in 1996, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington published his much-discussed The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington, a CFR member, offered an elite, “commanding heights” style perspective on the near future of the West following the end of the Soviet Union—which doesn’t mean the book isn’t worth reading (it is). Huntington saw the West as having become simultaneously the most powerful empire in history—economically and militarily—but also facing slow, long term decline both because of the rise of energetic competitors (especially in places such as India and China) and its own internal problems including falling birth rates, low savings, increased crime and corruption, and social disintegration. As the saying goes, that was then, this is now. A bona fide clash of civilizations is developing right here on American soil—with parallel developments in Canada. One of the most amazing phenomena of the past few months is the explosion of grassroots support for Ron Paul. Media talking heads wrote him off following the second so-called debate in Columbia where he and Rudy Giuliani crossed verbal swords. In the eyes of We the People, Ron Paul won that exchange. He spoke calmly, coherently and cogently about such matters as blowback to explain why we were attacked on 9/11. Dr. Paul is the one Republican candidate who never approved of the undeclared Iraq War—now dragging on into its fifth year with no end in sight. When Dr. Paul was refused a microphone in Iowa, he and his supporters staged a parallel rally. More people attended the parallel rally than the mainstream one! Just during the past few days we saw some major backpedaling right here in the Upstate. Rick Beltram, who chairs the Spartanburg County Republican Party, had called Paul a “lunatic” for his blowback remark to Giuliani in the Columbia match-up and told him he could “stay home.” Following a storm of emailed and voice-mailed protests from local Paul supporters, Beltram quickly retreated and stated, “If we’re all that naive and we all misunderstood, I think they should come on down and tell us how we’re wrong, and I think the people of Spartanburg will be anxious to  listen.” It is looking like Dr. Paul will be paying visits to both Greenville and Spartanburg on July 21 (consult www.RonPaul2008.com and go to one of the local MeetUp group’s pages for times and locations not arranged as of this writing). Dr. Paul is now running third in the fundraising department behind Giuliani and Mitt Romney, having passed the fading John McCain. He now has $2.4 million in the bank, versus McCain’s $2 million. Only out of sheer prejudice against his thinking can anyone still maintain that Dr. Paul’s candidacy is “marginal,” i.e., not serious. No amount of name-calling or milder dismissals (e.g., George Will’s having referred to him as a “cheerful anachronism”) is going to change this. Nor will the continued mainstream media silent treatment that only prompts the question, “What are you afraid of?” Dr. Paul—as I and others have said before—is the only Constitutionalist in the race. He is the only person who, all evidence suggests, means it when he speaks of strict limitations on the size and scope of the federal government. As his campaign literature states, he’s never voted for a tax increase, never supported Congress’s votes to raise their own salaries, never voted for a foreign war where legitimate U.S. interests are not at stake. He doesn’t support laws that offer privileges to some groups at the expense of others; he doesn’t support the trend toward socialized medicine; he doesn’t support corporate welfare or the soft fascism of the growing public-private partnership system. Those who say he is an anachronism, are saying that Constitutionally limited government is an anachronism. That’s serious business, if you think about it. Those who dismiss Dr. Paul are conceding—however unintentionally—that our government really is no different in principle from any other empire that has ever existed, except in its capacity to rationalize doing as it pleases through brute force, whether on foreign soil or against the American people. A confrontation is now building between those who want unlimited government (in partnership with unlimited corporate power in quest for profits) and those who want limited government. That is to say, a confrontation is building between the elite culture and what we might as well call populist culture. And it is building on several fronts. Now of course, Dr. Paul is probably the least confrontational person in the race. Those in Washington who disagree with him 180 degrees usually like him as a person. His demeanor is always calm and congenial—exuding the confidence of a man who knows he is right and that his critics are all wet, but is too polite to put it in such terms. Not all of those on his side of this fence are nonconfrontational, however—for better or for worse. Possibly because it is a luxury they can no longer afford. Dr. Paul has been in Congress. Down here in the trenches, things look different. The elites wanted that so-called immigration reform bill in the worst way. The populists, who saw more of their jobs disappearing and more of their towns and neighborhoods destroyed by the growing crime rate and gang activity associated with illegal aliens, wanted nothing to do with it. With a lot of Senators facing re-election next year, when their phones rang off the hook a couple of Thursdays ago with over 80 percent of callers demanding a thumbs-down, they knew that voting with the elites could send them packing next year. The elites want Real ID (or its equivalent by some other name) in the worst way. They are doubtless aware of the grassroots rebellion sweeping through state legislatures. Seeing to it that we are not forced to accept national ID cards is going to take some doing—as the elites’ minions in Congress will try to slip it into every bill related to employment in one way or another, or possibly as one of those legislative land-mines in a totally unrelated bill. The elites want the Trans-Texas Corridor as the first leg of their proposed NAFTA Superhighway system, in order to move more cheap Chinese crud through Mexico and into this country. Texans have spoken loudly that they do not want it. Texas Governor Rick Perry does, of course. A confrontation is building in Texas, especially as Perry vetoed the bill calling for a two-year moratorium on the construction of the TTC. I’ve learned enough about Texans over the years to know that among their number are some who will not go quietly when the Texas DOT tries to use post-Kelo eminent domain to take away land they’ve worked all their lives, and which their fathers and grandfathers worked before them. This does not mention the potential for more illegal alien smuggling, drug trafficking, and possibly even terrorists sneaking nuclear materials into this country via Mexican trucks coming up that road. The elites want a “North American Community” (see my review of Jerome Corsi’s new book last week). The statists see unlimited bureaucratic-plutocratic power. They’ve never much cared for government by consent of the governed. The corporatists see unlimited profits through the ease of outsourcing and the ready availability of cheap labor, once the free movement of peoples and capital through an essentially borderless North America is established. China and India will reap the rewards of our elites having engineered the lowered standard of living that will presage the decline of the U.S. as a world power. Huntington gets it half right. Like all elitists, he sees this decline as a natural process, not the product of a deliberate agenda. We the People want no part of any of this. We are tired of paying out over a third of our incomes into taxes—especially with mounting suspicion that the federal income tax is one of the two biggest scams of all time, the other one being the Federal Reserve, a government-created corporation owned by the international banking elites. Those of us who now understand how our money system really works, how it has privileged the few and assaulted the financial independence of the many, more and more want an end to this system by shutting down the Federal Reserve and restoring Constitutional money (see Article 1, Section 8). Canadians are also organizing to oppose their power elite, represented by outfits like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Canada West Foundation, both of which advocate “deep integration” with the U.S. and Mexico. It is likely that there will be protests at the SPP meeting to be held next month at Montebello, Quebec. Interestingly, Canadians seem more aware of the momentum toward an integrated North America than do Americans. Canadians understandably fear being overwhelmed by the far larger and more powerful entity to their south. They worry that U.S.-based multinational corporations will plunder their resources, e.g., the oil-rich shale deposits near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, and bring in cheap foreign labor so that Canadians do not see a dime of the profits. What We the People want, here or there, is a restoration of control over our economic destinies—as opposed to being expendable pawns in a gigantic game of chess played by power elites who never have to live with the carnage their decisions and policies cause. This clash of civilizations—between the elite mindset (I believe it was also Sam Huntington who coined the term the Davos culture to describe it) and the populist one that is rising to prominence on the flow of uncensored information available via the Internet and a healthy mistrust of concentrations of wealth and power—is just the latest chapter in the longest struggle in Western history. This is the struggle between those who want to be left alone, and those who will not leave them alone. I think this struggle emerged in the West, and nowhere else, because nowhere else in the world did humanity develop such concepts as limitations on the power of the state, government by consent of the governed, and that of people dealing with one another peacefully and freely instead of through coercion. We are also, if we try, capable of seeing each person as a unique being put here by the Creator for a purpose—and not simply a pawn to be used by the powerful. I do not know, of course, what chances Ron Paul has at actually getting the Republican nomination next year. The elites who control the Republican Party will pull out all stops to make sure he doesn’t get it no matter how large the grassroots support. But one thing is for sure: the articulate and obviously very intelligent Dr. Paul has become the biggest threat to their supremacy in our lifetimes—quite unlike the early 1990s’ Ross Perot, who doubtless understood the system but acted like a nut and finally self-destructed. Dr. Paul’s candidacy, whatever its fate, has the potential to force a national conversation on the future of the United States of America. How do we fix our money system so that money is our servant and not the means of our enslavement? Do we want a sovereign U.S.A.? What are we willing to do to have it? Do we want to restore limited government that answers to We the People, which will mean holding our representatives feet to the fire as we did over the immigration bill, and taking action at the voting booth (and, I suspect, also getting rid of electronic voting machines through legislative action as well, to ensure that elections are not stolen)? Or do we want to continue in the direction we are presently going? This will mean more power concentrated in the hands of the few, less accountability on the part of those in power, and ultimately the loss of every freedom that matters. The critical mass to force this conversation is building. The choice is ours. --------------------------------------- Steven Yates teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College, and is on the board of the South Carolina chapter of Citizens Committee to Stop the FTAA. The views expressed in his columns are his own, and do not reflect official views of any of these institutions or organizations. His latest book World-views: Christian Theism versus Modern Materialism, was published last year by The Worldviews Project (for more information call 864-288-0043). He is at work on a new book tentatively entitled The Real Matrix. His email address is: