THE VERSAILLES PHENOMENON;
TENSION IN THE EMPIRE:
BUILDING UP TO THE
"GREAT DECEPTION"

INTRODUCTION

There is a great "dichotomy of force and energy" at work in the world today; two vast and seemingly irreconcilable impulses are pressing against each other; one is seeking to unite the world; and the other is seeking to tear it apart. One is universalist and "ecumenical;" the other is parochial, insular and ethnocentric. One seeks to connect, link and attach; the other seeks to divide, separate and rend - and we are not the only ones who have noticed this phenomenon: this is also what former National Security Council Chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan1 (D-NY) and V.S. Naipaul believe too [please see their books, Out of Control (Brzezinski), Pandemonium (Moynihan), and Our Universal Civilization (Naipaul)]. Brzezinski and Moynihan are rather pessimistic as to the outcome; Naipaul is optimistic; nonetheless, all three - and many others besides - recognize the dichotomy. In all of this, however, one would make a big mistake in thinking that one force is of heaven while the other is of hell. Both forces serve hell.

THE NEW ANARCHY

People like Brzezinski and Moynihan see a coming age of irrepressible chaos; an era characterized by tribal, ethnic, and religious warfare as well as "civilization conflict" - all of which is typified by anarchy, lawlessness, confusion and the breakdown of governmental authority. And it's not just secularists like Brzezinski and Moynihan who have taken note of this phenomenon. This is also what the Bible says will occur at the "end of the age:"

"Then He (i.e., Christ) continued by saying to them, "Nation (ethnos - i.e., ethnic group) will rise against nation (ethnos), and kingdom against kingdom ..." (Luke 21:10)

And it's already begun! - indeed, it's been going on for some time; it's just that now - at the turn of the millennium - the phenomenon is intensifying and reaching a crescendo. For example, between 1945 and 1990 there have been eighty major wars, of which only twenty-eight have taken the traditional form of fighting between regular armies of two or more states. Forty-six were civil wars or guerrilla insurgencies. Since 1990 alone there have been as many as forty-two countries immersed in major conflicts and thirty-seven others experienced lesser forms of political violence - and all this at the same time.

Former UN secretary-general Perez de Cuellar has called this the "New Anarchy" - and the fighting in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in Zaire, in Rwanda, in Sri Lanka, in Indonesia, in East Timor, etc. suggests that this anarchy is spreading.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CIVILIZATION

Take what's happening in Africa: in an age of decaying cities, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest urban growth rate of any region on the planet: 5.8 percent from 1965 to 1980, and 5.9 percent from 1980 to 1990, according to the World Bank. (The second highest was the Arab world, with a 4.5 percent urban growth rate since 1965.) In Lagos, 61.1 percent of this population growth has resulted from migration from rural areas, which suffer, in many cases, from degraded soil that can no longer sustain agriculture. Africa shows how the urban environment may come to represent the locus of future conflict in the developing world. The perpetrators of future violence will likely be urban born, with no rural experiences from which to draw.

In many west African urban areas, streets are unlit, police lack gas for their vehicles, and armed burglars and carjackers are increasingly numerous. In Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, armed gangs attack people caught in the nonstop traffic jams. Direct flights between the United States and the city's airport were suspended by the US secretary of transportation because of violent crime at the terminal and its environs, and extortion by law enforcement and immigration officials - one of the few times the US government embargoed a foreign airport purely for safety reasons, having nothing to do with politics or terrorism.

But it's not just in Africa that this phenomenon has taken root - it's happening everywhere. The fact of the matter is, the whole world is becoming a place characterized by pandemonium, "failed states," and globalized crime mafias and drug cartels. Indeed, law and order - both as a concept and as a reality - seem to be evaporating in large swaths of the earth today: in Moscow, Johannesburg, Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, Mexico City, Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, etc.

IT'S HAPPENING IN AMERICA TOO

Moreover, this phenomenon has taken hold on America. The reality of the matter is, much of urban America has become a vast residential cage in which a great portion of the population is held prisoner. As Tom Morganthau of Newsweek describes it, to ride through much of urban America on a busy Saturday night is to watch the real-life version of Blade Runner. The cops rush back and forth in their patrol cars, sirens blaring, while helicopters clatter through the night sky to pinpoint the sources of intermittent gunfire with their searchlights. Law-abiding citizens cower behind locked doors and barred windows, fearful of going out-side - and the fact that thousands of middle-class, white evangelicals who may be reading this article think that Morganthau is being too sensational here in his description of what's happening only reveals the extent to which they have become detached from what's really occurring - outside, beyond the safety of their own suburban communities.

The truth is, much of urban America has, for all practical purposes, simply been SURRENDERED to urban gangs by America's police forces: Asian, black, and Latino gangs; the Bloods, the Crips, and countless others. These gangs have taken over the old public parks and playgrounds; they control the public schools; like wolf packs, these Uzi-toting street gangs prowl the inner cities and increasingly the older suburbs. They rape, they mug, they deal dope, they prostitute themselves - and many of them would just as easily kill you as look at you, and their numbers are increasing!

Take what's happening in Los Angeles where a relatively recent report issued by the staff of the L.A. county district attorney estimated that the region has about 1,000 gangs with a total membership approaching half a million. And that's not all! - when one counts the "peripherals" which surround these gangs, their numbers swell to many times more that number. And it's not just Los Angeles! According to a University of Southern California gang expert, Malcolm W. Klein, in 1961 there were 23 cities with known street gangs nationwide. In 1993 the number had grown to 187 - and by now, practically every middle-sized city and many small towns as well have some kind of gang problem.

Moreover, whites err in thinking that gangs are merely a black, Asian or Latino phenomenon. Skinhead thugs, white supremacists of every kind, white bikers, etc. are everywhere today, and some experts say that these groups pose a far greater threat - both in terms of membership, "peripherals," sophisticated weaponry, and potential for violence - than do all the black, Asian and Latino gangs combined - and that's not even counting the white militia movement. Andrew Serwer, an expert on white gangs, says that the Hells Angels and the other large outlaw biker gangs - the Sons of Silence, the Pagans, the Outlaws, the Bandidos (which is a white gang, despite the Hispanic implication of the name), the High Plain Drifters, etc. - earn billions of dollars a year dealing drugs and from their involvement in prostitution, gunrunning, theft, extortion, and contract murder.

This is what much of urban America is all about today - it's a world of Mad Max, the Road Warrior and Thunder Dome; out of control; lawless; armed to the teeth and swarming with defiant youths. A world of broken glass, smoldering buildings, the whine of police sirens, gunshots in the distance, abandoned cars, trashed apartments, and liquor stores. It's a place where people are beyond the reach of any form of family, community, or societal authority; a place where basic human values have simply broken down; a place which, as Wellesley College political scientist, Wilber Rich, puts it, is reverting back to -

"... a state of (animalistic) nature in the ... Hobbesian sense."

Plainly, the social contract in urban America is breaking down, and "the war of all against all" has clearly begun.

THE "DAVOS CULTURE"

Nonetheless, in the midst of all this chaos and anarchy there are increasing numbers of people who firmly believe that mankind is on the verge of a "New Age" of universal order - the emergence of what V.S. Naipaul calls a "universal civilization" of common values, a common religion, and a common culture. [Please see Constance Cumbey's books, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow and A Hidden Deception, which are probable still the best books ever written on the mindset of this culture.] Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard calls it the "Davos Culture." What does he mean by this? - well, each year about a thousand businessmen, bankers, government officials, intellectuals, and journalists from scores of countries all over the world meet at the "World Economic Forum" in Davos, Switzerland. Almost all these people hold university degrees in the physical sciences, social sciences, business, or law, work with words and / or numbers, are reasonably fluent in English, are employed by governments, corporations, and academic institutions with extensive international involvement, and travel frequently outside their own country. They generally share beliefs in individualism, market economies (i.e., capitalism), and political democracy (preferably, democracy that has been skewered toward the elites and the wealthy).

It is a privileged culture of the super-rich; these are the people who, over the last twenty years, are responsible for the globalization (such as it is) of the world; they are the ones who are now in charge of the world economy, and through their control of that economy, they command, ipso facto, much of the world's political and military affairs. Huntington says that these -

"Davos People control virtually ALL international institutions, many of the world's governments (especially in the West), and the bulk of the world's economic and military capabilities."

Given these realities, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the people who are involved in the Davos Elite are infatuated by the economic globalism they have unleashed on the world; they believe that globalism in the economic sphere will inevitably lead to globalism in the political and cultural spheres - even in the religious sphere. Indeed, they believe that the economic sphere trumps the cultural and political spheres, and if the world can once be united economically, it will unite politically and culturally as a matter of course - as sure as the sun comes up from the east and sets in the west. The Davos Elite is, thus, a money-driven culture (phenomenon).

These are the people who command the new "multinational" corporations - corporations like Ford, General Electric, Siemens, General Motors, Cargill, Nissan, Exxon, IBM, Mobil, Philip Morris, DuPont, Texaco, Chevron, Chrysler, Boeing, Procter & Gamble, Amoco, United Technologies, Pepsico, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, RJR Nabisco, Westinghouse, Sara Lee, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Apple, Hewlett-Packart, Unisys, Digital Equipment, Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Storage Technologies, Quantum, etc. It is precisely because these corporations are multinational that lends to the Davos Elite its universalist tinge; the multinational corporations they command operate on every continent, in every culture, and in every racial and religious context, and - as a result - the last thing this elite wants for itself is too great an identification with any one particular culture or race. Jack Welch of General Electric and former chairman of the National Business Council, reflecting the new globalism of America's corporations, recently remarked,

"We're all globalists now, and we are staying that way."

THE GREAT WEAKNESS OF THE DAVOS ELITE'S UNIVERSALISM

Worldwide, however, there are not many people who share this culture, who are - in actuality - "Davos People." According to Huntington, outside the West (and particularly the United States), it is probably shared by less than 50 million people or 1 percent of the world's population. Huntington writes:

"It (i.e., the Davos Culture) is far from a universal culture, and the leaders who share in the Davos Culture do not necessarily have a secure grip on power in their own societies. This 'common intellectual culture exists', as Hedley Bull points out, 'only at the elite level: its roots are shallow in many societies ... (and) it is doubtful whether, even at the diplomatic level, it embraces what is called a common moral culture or set of common values, as distinct from a common intellectual culture'."

And that is precisely the great weakness of the Davos Elite: there are so few people who constitute it! The globalist dreams the Davos Elite champions result not so much from a breath of vision as they do from an extremely short-sighted myopia - a myopia which leads those who share this culture to project (and even force) their "New Age" value system and "universalism" on those who are not members of this elite, and in doing so grossly over-estimating the appeal of their "universalism" insofar as the great mass of the people are concerned.

All this, of course, goes a long way in explaining the seeming paranoia of most average, "every-day" citizens throughout the world that they no longer control the destinies of their own lives; that some kind of "hidden presence" inimical to their interests is driving them in an "internationalist" direction they do not want to go - a direction which seems to demean national identities, national traditions, national heritages and everything that "ordinary people" hold "dear and near." And this is true not only in the United States, but also in Western Europe, Russia, the Islamic World, Africa, Latin America, Asia, etc.

It explains the lack of interest on the part of today's ruling elites in almost every nation of the earth for the cultural and religious concerns of the native populations over which they rule - again, from the elites in the United States and Western Europe to those in Guatemala, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. It explains why, for instance, the Bill Clintons, the Libbie Doles, the Al Gores, and the George W. Bushes of this world show such little regard (other than at election time) for "nationalism" (of the old fashion "patriotic variety"), cultural identity, religious identity, etc. It explains why there is - in reality - such little differences between Helmut Kohl in Germany (a nominal conservative) and his successor, Gehardt Schroeder (a nominal socialist). And it's the same for all the other elites.

To such people, concepts such as nationalism, cultural identity, religious identity, etc. are seen as impediments to the "globalism" that they are now a part of. While to ordinary people in Western Europe and North America, issues like unrestricted immigration, the maintenance of national and cultural identities, bi-lingualism, affirmative action, etc. are important matters, to the elites such issues are seen as anathema to the main thrust of what they are all about - globalism.2

THE VERSAILLES PHENOMENON

But in pursuing globalism without any real thought about what the masses are thinking, the globalists may - in the end (and very unwittingly) - be digging their own graves. It is the great curse of all elites that they fail to perceive (until it's too late) the "disconnect" between themselves and the great bulk of "ordinary" people, and the resulting loathing and disgust they eventually elicit from those over whom they rule. This is what happened between the French Aristocracy and the French people on the eve of the French Revolution; it's what happened between the Russian Aristocracy and the Russian people on the eve of their revolution. It's what I call the "Versailles Phenomenon."

Versailles is located just outside Paris in a beautiful expanse of French countryside; it was built by Louis IV as an exquisite and very sumptuous hideaway (really, "playground") for the French Aristocracy who wanted to escape the mean, narrow streets of the vast slum that was Paris in those days, and the filthy, evil-smelling and nauseous rabble which populated those streets. The lawns and gardens which surrounded Versailles were supposed to be (and were in fact) the most magnificent in all world, and were filled with exotic plants and animals from all over the earth. It is reputed to have been the most beautiful place in Europe - indeed, it was much more than a simple palace (like Buckingham in England or Potsdam in Germany), but was in fact a magnificent and lavish series of apartment complexes where the whole of the French Aristocracy could meet and entertain itself without ever having to be concerned with (let alone see) the poverty which was everywhere apparent throughout France in the years preceding Louis VI.

So completely cut-off was the French Aristocracy at Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, that when Marie Antonette, the French Queen, was told that the rabble in Paris had no bread to eat, she was reported to have said, "Let them eat cake." But what most people do not realize today is that she did not mean that as a cynical jest, she said it as one who - when told that a neighbor had run out of a particular brand of coffee - would tell them that they should drink tea instead (which she would have reason to presume they had on hand). She had no idea that what was meant here was that the people had NOTHING to eat. This is how great the "disconnect" between the French Aristocracy and the French people had become in France on the eve of the Revolution; neither had that self-same aristocracy any real idea of how hated they were by the French people. They were soon to find out! - the "Terror," which the Revolution unleashed, would make all that plain.

SO ALSO TODAY!! Why? - because that "disconnect" - the one that doomed the French Aristocracy in 1789 - is the same "disconnect" that Wall Street has with Main Street America - even today; the same one that Imelda Marcos had insofar as the Filipino people were concerned; the same one that Pinochet had with the Chilean people. And it's amazing and absolutely extraordinary to see the lengths to which this "disconnect" can extend itself. Imeldo Marcos? Pinochet? the Shah of Iran? - these leaders were not loved by their people, they were hated by them! - and for Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah, Suharto, and people like them to think otherwise is dizzying and stupefying in its absurdity. Yet this is the length to which elite disconnection can extend itself; thinking they are loved, they are hated; thinking that they are admired, the are held in absolute contempt; indeed,

"Professing themselves to be wise, they have become fools." (Rom. 1:22)

That's what money does to people! - it disconnects them from ordinary people, and in the end, it utterly blinds them!!

THE VERSAILLES PHENOMENON AND THE DAVOS ELITE

This "disconnect" haunts the Davos Elite; it follows the people who constitute this elite wherever they go - and as it does, it induces a frightening disgust and loathing towards them from people all over the world!

The fact is, in all cultures and in all societies everywhere there is nothing so contemptible, so base, so vile as someone whose only real concern is for money. Our literature is full of this contempt - from Uriah Heep in David Copperfield to Michael Douglas in Wall Street - and the plain fact of the matter is, money is what the Davos Elite is all about! Money is what drives this elite!! The lust for wealth; the lust for money - this is the common denominator for ALL members of the Davos Culture; the terms "liberal," "conservative," "secular," "religious," "Christian," "humanist" are all useless in "identifying" the members of this elite. Depending on the historical circumstance and the exigencies of the moment, the Davos Elite co-opts this or that label to "identify" itself; but the label is meaningless; it's merely a temporary mask or a momentary contrivance.

The very real truth is, the Davos Elite is not driven by principle; its only real concern centers around its own greedy, self-absorbed life-style and its preoccupation with piling up ever greater amounts of material wealth and worldly treasure. And for what purpose? - there is none! Remarkably, that's it: the accumulation of money! - that's its goal! There is nothing beyond that except an eerie and frightening emptiness - and then the grave! And though many in the Davos Elite preserve a certain front of "purpose" and "idealism" in their lives, there is nothing behind that "front" except a vacuum - a hollowness that resembles the emptiness of a body without a soul. Their idealism is nothing more than a subterfuge, a contrivance, a masquerade - an excuse for what really drives them, which is the actual process of wealth accumulation - which they presume is the measure of a man's worth. They are utterly blind to the contempt and loathing that ordinary people have for them - and completely oblivious to the disconnect that separates them from the masses; and that "disconnect" is growing! - especially as it relates to wealth accumulation.

Take the United States, for example, where four percent of the American population (approximately 3.8 million individuals and families) has in the past few decades managed to capture for itself through "restructuring," "free trade," "union busting," and unfettered immigration (which forces wages down) $452 billion in wages and salaries on an annual basis - the same as the annual wages and salaries of the bottom fifty-one percent (49.2 million individuals and families). And even this isn't enough; with each passing year more and more of this nation's wealth pours into their hands by "hook and by crook," much of which used to be held in the hands of the American middle class in the 1950s and '60s - and their is no sign that this phenomenon is abating.3

NO REAL USE FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE

Like the French Aristocracy at Versailles, the Davos Elite has no real use for ordinary people - whether in America, Brazil, Germany, India or China. Instead, the multinational corporations which are at its "beck and call" have targeted their marketing, their advertising, and their production to the developed and developing elite classes of those nations which can afford to buy their products in a sort of "to hell with the starving masses" spirit. After all, what reason is there in such circumstances to expect that Ford or GM or General Electric or AT&T or Disney or any of the other major multinational corporations "gives a damn" about the "minor" problems of American or German or Mexican or Indian unemployment - or, more likely, "underemployment" - or the development of an underclass in their own countries?4 There are more potential consumers in India and China than the ones who are being displaced back home. Indeed, Peter F. Drucker, a guru of multinational expansion, once made this revealing comment in reference to India:

"... within the vast poverty that is India (there is) a sizable modern economy, comprising ten percent or more of the Indian population, or fifty million people - a nation within a nation with more 'middle-class' consumers than the nation of France."

These people - for example, this 10 percent of India's population - have created for themselves what Robert D. Kaplan in his book, The Ends Of The Earth: A Journey To The Frontiers Of Anarchy, has called a "Bubble Society" - exactly what the French Aristocracy had become at Versailles.

THE VERSAILLES PHENOMENON AND KARACHI

Kaplan came up with this term when he was describing conditions in Clifton, a wealthy section of Karachi in Pakistan [India's next door neighbor (and arch-enemy)]. Kaplan recounts how Pasha, his Pakistani friend, described the situation in Karachi as it pertained to Pakistan's elite:

"A lot of water is lost on leaky toilets, which are easy to fix. But if a government inspector went around issuing a one-hundred-rupee tax on each homeowner for his leaky toilet, do you know what would happen? The inspector, a poor man, would accept a twenty-rupee bribe in lieu of the one-hundred-rupee tax, which would then go into his pocket. The government would collect no revenue, and the toilets would still leak. This is a culture of corruption. How else do you think the upper classes manage to survive and even grow?

"Pasha was alluding to what I call the 'bubble', a protective membrane inside which the Pakistani ... upper classes survive and prosper, thus increasing the consumer list of Western companies even as the state itself disintegrates. Clifton, a wealthy section of Karachi where wealthy Wall Street fund managers (who sell Pakistani bonds in the United States to American yuppies interested in investing in the financial rape of Pakistan by the multinationals) might be invited to dinner at the home of a rich local businessman, is such a bubble. The residents have their own electric power generators, their own water tanks, and their own security guards."

Ahmed Rashid, one of Pakistan's leading journalists, in talking about this "bubble," told Kaplan that -

"The seeds of destruction (for Pakistan's elite) are writ large and clear (here) if anyone (in the elite) would care to read them."

But no one is listening to Rashid! - just as no one was listening in Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A BUBBLE SOCIETY IN AMERICA

And it's not just in Pakistan that a "Bubble Society" has developed - it's happening right here in the United States. There are thousands of American Cliftons ("latter-day Versailles") scattered all over the country. Many of them - like the Clifton in Karachi - are walled-in enclaves; access to them is available only through guarded gates.

You can see these "latter-day Versailles" (Cliftons) today on the hills overlooking most any major metropolitan area in the country - clusters of expensively built single-family dwellings or "super-condos," beautifully landscaped and often dominated by steel and glass, high rise business complexes housing the corporate offices of many of America's best known futuristic companies. They have names like Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Santa Fe, Mission Viejo, New Town, Montrose, and Laguna Niguel. Many of these new outposts - which one researcher has called "New Communities" - contain their own shopping malls, private recreation facilities, parks, and bike paths; some have their own private security forces. They have been purposely cut off from the rest of the world - and so much so that residents can often live, work, and play without ever having to venture out beyond the safety of their walls.

The separation here of those who live in these new Versailles from average, working-class Americans goes so far as to include "private tax systems" - i.e., special "association or home-owner fees" germane only to the applicable association. Moreover, the range of goods and services bought by these "fees" goes far beyond what is available in the "public sector" and includes private garbage collection, private police forces, private systems of parks and grasslands, telephone answering services, central utilities, group home owners' insurance, etc. - all purchased for prices which are often far below what is available to the general public. The existence of these private "tax systems" goes a long way in explaining the tax revolt by the elites against public and municipal expenditures in recent years: so many people of means have opted out of the public system of parks, recreation facilities, and other municipal services that they no longer support the bonds and taxes necessary for the maintenance of such public systems. Why should the elites support a system of public parks and recreation facilities they no longer need? - they have their own private systems.

For example, one of the oldest such communities in America is River Oaks in Houston, Texas. It has been described by novelist Thomas Thompson as a place in which a "magnolia does not fall from a branch but a gardener is there to carry it away." It not only possesses all the usual amenities connected to these "private communities," but it also possesses its own private police department, the River Oaks Patrol Company, which is nothing less than a privately operated and financed police force - a police force which is funded totally by a special property fee; if you will, a "private tax." The patrol is even allowed use of Houston's police radio and dispatch system and is listed in the telephone book as a genuine police department.

These communities - River Oaks, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Santa Fe, Mission Viejo, New Town, Montrose, Laguna Niguel, etc. - are America's equivalent to Karachi's Clifton. This is the America of the "Davos Elite;" the America of the well-to-do, of computers and high-tech jobs, exotic imported goods, BMWs, Lexus', Jaguars and Volvos, "high amp," private schools, swimming pools, golf courses, and tennis courts - and all this on an impressively large scale encompassing surprisingly high numbers of people. But it is an America that - like Clifton in Karachi and Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution - is growing ever more distant from the rest of society, and one that is increasingly disengaging itself from the communal spaces, institutions and obligations of most other Americans. And - as a result - the same warning that Rashid applied to Pakistan's elite can be applied with as much vigor to the elites of the United States: "The seeds of destruction (for America's elite) are writ large and clear (here) if anyone (in the elite) would care to read them."

THE BUBBLE SOCIETY: IT'S EVERYWHERE TODAY

This is Versailles writ large!! - and it has taken hold everywhere - in America, in Western Europe, in India, in Indonesia, in Mexico, in Brazil - everywhere! It's an elite of American executives, Chinese entrepreneurs, two-career Mexican professionals, German investment bankers, French bureaucrats, Italian clothiers, Russian Mafia chieftains, "Third World" police chiefs, etc. who feel that they have more in common with their counterparts in Hong Kong, Mexico City, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Brussels, Bogota and Buenos Aires than have with their own fellow countrymen. National boundaries and national loyalties no longer have any hold on this elite. In describing this aristocracy of wealth, Robert Reich, in his book, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, writes:

"(These people have) ... slipped the bonds of national allegiances, and by so doing (have) disengage(d) themselves from their less favored fellows."

A THIN VENEER But this elite of wealth is perched perilously close to the edge of the abyss: it possesses no real following of consequence and no significant ideology or worldview (unless one can say that greed and avarice count as such) which could induce average people to follow it; and while it possesses unlimited funds and is a master of political chicanery and mass manipulation, there is not a lot to recommend it to ordinary people throughout the world. Consequently, it is much more delicate and fragile than most people suspect, despite the mythology of impregnability which surrounds it. The very real fact of the matter is, the so-called "universalism" that the Davos Elite has created vis a vis the world is nothing more than an illusion - much like a thin veneer of mahogany which overlays a plywood table which is rotting underneath; THE ROTTING PLYWOOD IS THE REALITY, WHILE THE VENEER OF MAHOGANY IS MERELY AN ILLUSION. This is the world that the Davos Elite has created: all illusion with very little substance, especially as it impacts the lives of ordinary people. As Hedley Bull has pointed out, it exists -

"only at the elite level: its roots are very shallow in ... (most) societies ..."

THE DAVOS SYSTEM, POPULISM, AND PAT BUCHANAN

The system of regulation and control which it relies upon to maintain itself in authority is by no means a reliable one - and is becoming ever less so with time. It is based NOT on the consent of the governed, but rather on a process of gross political manipulation which makes an open mockery of democracy (as is the case in the United States and Western Europe), or on the application of brute and very savage military force (as is the case in the so-called "Developing World."). It's ability to wield this force derives principally from its management of the American economy and the resulting influence it exercises over the use of America's military and intelligence apparatuses.

It is exactly here that the weakness of the Davos System is exposed: its heavy reliance on America. Should populism ever become a powerful force in American politics (and there always exists a very real possibility that it could), the game will be up, and the Davos System could very quickly fall victim to the mob. It's for this reason that people like Pat Buchanan loom as such a great threat to today's status quo. It's not so much their conservative social goals that frightens the world's elites (they really don't give a whit one way or the other regarding those matters), as it is his constant harping against "Free Trade," NAFTA, and the WTO (World Trade Organization) that concerns them.

"Free Trade" is what makes the Davos System work economically; it's the mechanism that allows the economic elites of this world to keep the cash flowing into their coffers (please see our numerous articles on this subject). And it is precisely for this reason (i.e., his stand against "Free Trade") that the elite press is savaging Buchanan so ruthlessly - though they would never dare say so! Instead, he is attacked as a loony right-wing nut, an anti-Semite [as if the elites - people like William Buckely, Robert Novak, Bob Bennet, Paul Gigot, and their ilk - really cared about the Jews; they don't], etc. This is, of course, exactly what they did to Ross Perot, and by the time they were finished with him, not only had he been marginalized, he had been made to look like a crazed nut.

America (as far as the elites are concerned) MUST be preserved for "Free Trade" AT ALL COSTS! - and in order to do so, people have been assassinated. Indeed, that's what the attempted assassination of George Wallace was all about three decades ago - he was threatening to coalesce a new party around Northern blue collar workers, economic nationalism, and poor white Southerners [and, ipso facto, "Old Time Religion"(no disrespect intended)]) - a coalition which could have undone the establishment elites in both the Democratic and Republican parties, and in the process destroy America's new regime of "Free Trade" which the elites had worked so hard to construct.

The press, of course, played the attempted assassination of Wallace in such a way as to obscure all this. Nonetheless, the assassination attempt had nothing to do with Wallace's racist rhetoric (which was, no doubt, a very real thing - Wallace was, in fact, a racist); the elites could care less about that. It was the threat of a worker / nationalist / Christian coalition that the elites feared. That would have been populism in the raw! - and that's precisely what the elites could not put up with. That's the kind of populism that brings people into the streets and creates mobs. And there is nothing that the elite fears more than a mob! It was just about then that an assailant from out of nowhere "fortuitously" (at least insofar as the elites were concerned) put a bullet into Wallace, crippling him and thereby marginalizing him permanently (please see our articles, "MK-Ultra: The Search For The 'Manchurian Candidate'," and "MK-Ultra And The Assassination Of John F. Kenney - More Evidence.").

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS HAVE IT ALL WRONG

The centrality of the American military and intelligence complexes to the Davos Elite cannot be overemphasized. And this is important to grasp - while the Davos Elite likes to hide behind the pretense of a "do-gooder" internationalism and the facade of the United Nations, it's not the United Nations upon which the Davos Elite ultimately depends, it's the United States. This is where most evangelical Christians have it all wrong - it's not so much the UN that evangelical Christians should be worried about, it's the United States. It is precisely here - i.e., the fact that America has already been co-opted by the Davos Elite - that makes the political nostrums of the Religious Right so fool-hardy and ineffectual. Robertson, Dobson, LaHaye, et. al. think that the US has not already been lost; that Christians can "win America back." Robertson writes:

"Satan knows that a world government must soon be prepared for the man whom he is preparing to receive his particular empowerment and authority.

"Such a world government can come together only after the Christian United States is out of the way. After all, the rest of the world can federate any time it wants to, but a vital, economically strong, Christian United States would have at its disposal the spiritual and material force to prohibit a world-wide satanic dictator from winning his battle. With America still free and at large, Satan's schemes will at best be only partially successful. From these shores could come the television, radio, and printed matter to counter an other-wise all-out world news blackout. An independent America could point out Satan's lies. If America is free, people everywhere can hope for freedom ..."

But nothing could be further from the truth. America is NOT the world's hope! Quite the contrary: it is the cause of much of the world's misery - and those Christians who think otherwise are in danger of being co-opted themselves.

THE CENTRALITY OF AMERICA TO THE DAVOS SYSTEM

The centrality of America in the calculations of this elite derives primarily from the manner in which the world has been structured since the end of the Second World War. As we indicated in our article, "The American Empire and the New Global Elite," that structure can best be described as -

"... a giant pyramid with America at its apex as the indispensable (military and economic) "Hegemon." In the second rank are Western Europe and Japan which act as America's "associate partners." The genius of including these two areas as associates (maybe the better word is "accomplices") lies in the fact that by merging them into it's empire as partners (albeit, as "junior partners"), the United States has essentially co-opted them ...

"After the second rank of nations (i.e., Western Europe and Japan) there is a third rank of nations considered vital to the American system, though not at the level of Western Europe and Japan; specifically, such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Turkey, Israel, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, etc.

"Finally, at the bottom of the pyramid that makes up the American system are the rest of the earth's nations (i.e., the so-called "developing world") acting as the empire's "client states."5 But just because these nations (i.e., those nations that we today call the "developing world") are at the bottom of the pyramid does not make them unimportant to the system; indeed, in a perverted sort of way, they are the most important nations of all. Why? - because these are the "worker nations."

"The glue that holds this empire together is a common AFFLUENCE based on access to the financial and economic perks the empire distributes through its web of multinational corporations to those who do its bidding - from the elites and their "hangers-on" in North America and Western Europe to the thugs and police forces who enforce its will on the indigenous populations of the developing world - an affluent, worldwide "super-elite" which reaches into every nook and cranny of the earth and binds the empire together as a whole.

A SYSTEM RULED BY DEATH
SQUADS AND THE USE OF TORTURE

As we indicated in "The American Empire And the US System of Client States:"

"The purpose of this globe-girdling empire of 'client countries' is to serve the interests of ... (the "Davos Elite's) system of multinationals, and - ipso facto - feather the nests of the wealthy shareholders of these gigantic corporations with the exorbitant profits which are possible when doing business in the "Developing World" - profits on investment which are not possible to achieve in the United States with its restrictions on the use of labor, with its banking regulations, with its laws against usury, with its trade unions, with its plethora of government regulations, etc. No worry in the Third World about overtime pay, sick leave, holidays, worker safety, etc. No concern there about toxic dumping. No concern about having to negotiate the clumsy political processes of democracy. [Please see our article on Chiapas.] It is a system ruled mainly by fear (i.e., through the use of "death squads" and state sponsored terror) which serves the interests of America's multinational companies (and, of course, the corporations of America's lackeys - i.e., Japan and Western Europe) plus a relatively small group of indigenous local businessmen and military oligarchs.

"The ugly truth of the matter is, governments in most of the Third World can be easily seized economically (oftentimes without ordinary native-born populations ever knowing what has happened), held at minimum expense and made to serve the economic interests of the multinationals. All it takes is the cooperation of the local military, the local police, the local business establishment (all of whom are cut in for a share of the profits) - and a smattering of "hangers-on" (but no more than 20 percent of the population, lest there be too many locals involved with whom the multinationals must divvy up the "goodies").

THE DICTATORIAL DISPOSITION OF THE
AMERICAN SYSTEM IN THE "DEVELOPING WORLD"

"Thus, the "new world order" in the US system involves the blatant and violent economic (and, ipso facto, political) suppression of the vast majority of the client state population; as we suggested this suppression takes the form of an alliance of convenience between the multinationals, the CIA and the American embassy (on the one hand); and the local military, police and business community (on the other hand). Together, this alliance then seizes control of the state, shatters the organizational defenses of the majority of the population and strives to reduce it to passivity through the use of terror.

"The dictatorial disposition of these client states with regard to the great mass of their native populations - including a propensity towards the systematic use of torture - is functionally related to the needs of the US multinationals and are designed to help stifle unions and contain reformist threats that might interfere with the freedom of action considered necessary by the multinationals in order to enhance (maximize) profits. The proof of the pudding is that US bankers and industrialists have consistently welcomed the "stability" of dictatorships in the American Empire whose governments are savage in their treatment of dissidents, labor leaders, peasant organizers or others who threaten "order" (i.e., corporate profits), and which are at best indifferent to the mass of the population - but states who otherwise are slavishly and fawningly accommodating to the large external interests of the multinationals which they serve; in other words, states who enforce their stability through the use of terror - all in the service of the multinationals. In an important sense, therefore, the torturers in these client states are in reality the functionaries of IBM, Citibank, Ailis Chalmers, Nike, Liz Claiborne, Ford, G.E., etc.

"This is what the Philippine Republic under Marcos was all about; this is what Chile under Pinochet was all about; this is what Iran under the shah was all about; this is what Argentina under the junta was all about; this is what Zaire (the Congo) under Mobutu was all about; this is what Indonesia under Suharto was all about; this is what Mexico under Salinas was all about; this is what Panama, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Malaysia, Columbia, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela on ad infinitum are all about. This is what the American Empire is all about - CORPORATE PROFITS!! "Free Trade" is the American elite's ticket to extravagant wealth - and hang all the people who get in the way.

THE DIFFICULTY OF EXPLAINING THINGS AWAY

This is, as a result, not a system that has been very well designed to elicit much mass support. Consequently, a great divide has emerged throughout the world between the "money interests" of the global elites, and the interests of average, ordinary people - and with each passing year it is becoming more and more difficult for the elites to hide this divide - not only from the native populations of such countries as Mexico [where the Chiapas revolt has broken out against the ravages of globalism (please see our article, "Chiapas: The Effect Of The New World Order On The Poor.")], but also from the American public, where it is becoming extremely hard to hide what globalism has done to the paychecks, job security, and working conditions of average Americans - and all this in addition to what globalism has done to the cultural and religious values ordinary people all over the world believe are important.

Indeed, despite the fact that just about all the ideological institutions of the country - all of which are in one way or another in the service of America's corporate elites - have been brought to bear in support of globalism (please see our article, "The Corporate State And The Mass Media"), the effort insofar as growing numbers of average Americans are concerned is beginning to fray at the margins, especially as they see their high-paying manufacturing jobs moved out of the country and into Third World sweat shops, with the pay differential being pocketed by Corporate America. And what's true of American workers is also true of workers in Western Europe and Japan. And it's also true with regard to the indigenous populations of the developing world as the First World agricultural juggernaut forces them off their land and into the "slave-labor" sweat shops the multinationals are building for them in places like Jakarta, Mexico City, Manila, Sao Paulo, etc.

And not only that, it is becoming ever more difficult for the elite to depict their Third World "henchmen" - thugs like Pinochet, Mobutu, Suharto, etc. - as respectable "leaders" worthy of America's subsidies and active support. Equally serious is the problem of portraying the United States as the "guardian of democracy" and "human rights" in the context of its sponsorship of an Empire controlled by what amounts to be an international Mafia of ruthless dictators and greedy multinational corporations whose only concern is the "bottom line" - companies like Nike, Ford, General Electric, etc.

A GROWING TENSION BETWEEN
THE ELITES AND THE MASSES

As a result, there is growing unrest among the populations of the empire. It is an unrest that has set in as a reaction against the elite's globalism. Nationalism and the resurgence of ethnic and religious identities are the "people's revenge" insofar as the elite's globalism is concerned. This is what the Iranian Revolution was all about! The very real fact of the matter is, Islamic Fundamentalism surfaced in Iran as the "people's" counterweight to the Iranian elite's globalism. It was "the people's" answer to what they considered to be the increasing "westernization" of their society, especially in the upper middle classes, but which was in reality the process of economic globalization that the world's elites had unleashed on them. What the "people" did in Iran was to use religion (in Iran's case, Islam) as a battering ram against the elites, both economically and culturally. Religion became the "marker" that separated the cultural and economic interests of the people from those of the elite.

This use of "religion" as a counterweight to the elites is now spreading throughout the world. Huntington writes:

"Religion ... is the principal defining characteristic of civilizations ... Fault line wars (i.e., wars between different civilizations) are almost always between peoples of different religions. Some analysts downplay the significance of this factor. They point, for instance, to the shared ethnicity and language, past peaceful coexistence, and extensive intermarriage of Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia, and dismiss the religious factor with references to Freud's 'narcissism of small differences'." That judgment, however, is rooted in secular myopia. Millennial of human history have shown that religion is not a 'small difference' but possible the most profound difference that can exist between people. The frequency, intensity, and violence of fault line wars are greatly enhanced by beliefs in different gods."

Huntington continues,

"Peoples and nations are (now) attempting to answer the most basic question humans can face: Who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have (always) answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against."

In other words, in defining those they are against, people are using "religion (or the lack thereof in their adversaries) as the test to define the "contestants" in an "us verses them" dichotomy. In the case of the elites (and the globalism they are pushing), it's a "lack thereof." And this is true not only insofar as those populations outside the United States are concerned, but it is also true of the elites' adversaries in the United States as well. Think about it! Isn't this what is happening insofar as the militias are concerned? the Religious Right? etc? Of course it is!

GLOBALISM MEANS THE UNITED STATES INSOFAR
AS COUNTLESS NUMBERS OF PEOPLE ARE CONCERNED

Increasingly, people throughout the world are identifying "globalism" as the "thing" they are against; and by "globalism," they mean the Davos Culture - and most especially the secular West and principally, the United States.

Indeed, to most "people" in the world, "globalism" means the United States. [And in all of this, we must be careful to differentiate the elites in America's system of client states from the "people;" the elites in these countries - i.e., countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, etc. etc. are standing with the United States, after all, that's where their economic interests lie; but the "people" themselves are increasingly coming to hate America.] By arraying themselves against the interests of the United States, people everywhere are asking the question, "Who are we?" And they are answering that question by saying, "We are not Americans and we are not America's (i.e., the elites') slaves!"

As a result, these elites (i.e., America's lackeys and "toadies" in the Third World) are finding themselves under increasing pressure from the "people" to disengage themselves from the United States. In a system of things where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer - the people are taking note of this fact, and the elites in America's client state system are finding it ever more difficult to maintain themselves in power without the help of the American military [or the military of America's "co-conspirators" (i.e., Germany, England, France, Turkey, Australia, Korea, etc.)] as a kind of "reserve army" ready to spring to their rescue when their own armies and local police forces crumble under the pressure of "the people."

THERE IS INCREASING PRESSURE FOR
THE US TO USE ITS MILITARY MUSCLE

As a result, the US [and / or the military forces of America's lackeys] is finding itself under increasing pressure to "intervene" everywhere throughout the empire in order to keep it together and stiffen the spines of their henchmen and thugs in the "Third World." The mainline media, of course, calls all this "humanitarian intervention" [if only because they can no longer pretend that they are intervening in the world to protect it from "godless" communism (how inconvenient for the old USSR to fold its tents up the way they did and steal away in the night)]. But the effort to picture all these interventions (interventions which are not forthcoming for black Africans in Rwanda, or the Congo, or Liberia, etc. who have nothing to offer the multinationals) as "humanitarian interventions" is farcical. It's only a ruse - and a very self-serving and transparent one at that (please see our articles on Kosovo, "The Elites Explanation Of What's Happening in Chechnya," and "More Lies And Deceptions Concerning Kosovo."). Unfortunately insofar as this farce is concerned, the more that populist pressure throughout the empire builds, the more the US is forced to intervene to dampen the pressure; and the more the US intervenes, the more the army and American military assets are stretched - and a breaking point is on the horizon.

The very real fact of the matter is, the so-called "All Volunteer" army is collapsing under this pressure. Recruitment is drying up; pilots are opting out of the airforce at an astonishing level, despite huge bonuses to stay in; and a similar phenomenon is underway in the army and the navy as well - and though very few Americans are aware of how bad this situation is, a very real and dangerous crisis in military manpower is developing.

THE "ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY"

The problem that an "All Volunteer" military faces is that - in the end - this kind of military is a "MERCENARY" one. Such armies fight for two reasons, and two reasons only; (1) adventure (what I call the "Macho Mystique" or the "French Foreign Legion Syndrome"), and (2) "good pay and benefits."

But "Political Correctness" has all but eliminated the first reason [after all, it's hard to be macho when a woman is in the same fox hole you're in (or in the same plane or on the same ship). No coming back to the "old neighborhood" then with all the "cool" stories when women come back to the same neighborhoods with the same "tall tales" - proving that they can do anything men can do]. Pretty difficult to impress your girl friend or your drinking buddies down at the local bar then!

In the world of "Political Correctness," where women are supposed to be able to do anything a man can do, and soldiers are "peace keepers" rather than "legionnaires," it's pretty hard to get "street kids" - and that, after all, is what armies are still all about, despite what elite recruitment posters would tell you - to sign up (which in the past they were eager to do) when it's fairly well understood by the "popular culture" that "men can't be men" anymore in today's army. And I speak here as a COMBAT veteran - a captain who commanded these kinds of men (and I mean no disrespect here towards all these "blue collar" kids - I pretty much felt the same way too in Vietnam). No man wants a woman with him in that kind of a situation - and that is the plain truth of the matter (and I mean here no disrespect towards women either). [And all this is to say nothing about the difficulty of establishing a "macho mystique" with openly gay homosexuals in the ranks.]

Moreover, no matter how good the pay is (and it's still not very good - the elites don't want to spend much money here - the kind of money they pay computer programmers to work for them; after all, the lives of these "blue collar" kids don't count much to the elites), it's still not worth very much if the kids can't spend it because of prolonged tours of duty in Bosnia, or East Timor, or Macedonia, or Kosovo, etc., or because the KIA or MIA factors have risen to the point of diminishing returns. After all, mercenaries don't enlist for "God and Country;" they enlist for money and adventure. If the adventure of it all has been stripped away because of "Political Correctness," then the only motivation left is money. But in order to spend that money, they have to have a reasonable expectation of staying alive and the opportunity to come in from the field at least occasionally, something the troops on deployment in the Balkans, etc. find themselves increasingly unable to do. Of course, there are such things as "causes worth fighting for." But the elites would be hard-pressed to find them; after all, it's pretty difficult to get people to risk their lives for the sake of Mobil Oil's bottom line.

A BIG PROBLEM: PRESSURE
FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT

The elites, therefore, have a very real problem - and it's much bigger than they are representing it to be to the American public. Outside America and Western Europe, the elites are beset by a rising tide of insurgency that they are finding themselves increasingly unable to handle; and inside Western Europe and especially America - the empire's "home country" - the elites are facing a rising tide of populism, the kind that can put people into the streets and create mobs.

With each election, populism becomes that much more potent - and now, with the advent of Buchanan running in Ross Perot's Reform Party, the elites are in a panic, and much more so than they are pretending in the "controlled media." Stories abound as to the elite's machinations that are afoot to stop Buchanan - from tales involving Bush operatives funneling money to Weicker, Ventura, and Trump (as if he needed any money) to prevent Buchanan from getting the nomination on the Reform ticket, to the increasing drumbeat from the "controlled press" that Buchanan is an anti-Semite, a charge which Michael Kinsley and Maggie Gallagher call disingenuous at best.

THE ELITE RUSE: CO-OPTATION

Buchanan has the elites spooked! - and it has nothing to do with his social agenda, and everything to do with his stand on economic nationalism (i.e., his policies against free trade). And it's not just populists on the right who have the elites spooked, but populists on the left - old-fashioned liberals (i.e., closet socialists) who have been smarting under the elite economic policies of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Bill Bradley (who, like Bush, Dole, and other mainline Republicans are slavishly devoted to NAFTA, WHO, and free trade) - who are threatening a resurgence of their own in the left, and the left is a far more dangerous opponent of the economic policies of the elite than is Buchanan and those who are arrayed with him on the right. What to do?

The first step most elites take when confronted with the kind of populism that they are confronting insofar as Buchanan is concerned is to ignore it; they have done that now for a number of years - and it's only getting worse.

As the unrest quickens and begins to "pick up steam" - as it is doing now with the threat from Buchanan - the elites move to a second level, which is to openly oppose it; and that is precisely what Republican Party "moderates" (who represent the elites in the Republican Party) are doing right now by attempting to quash the so-called Religious Right in their own party. How long this stage will continue is any one's guess. It will entail letting their "attack dogs" (i.e., "talking heads" like William Safire, Bill Buckeley, Bob Bennet, Paul Gigot, Robert Novak, etc.) loose against Buchanan and others like him in an attempt to savage them as they did Perot in the last election cycle. In the long run, however, the elites can't help but be unsuccessful here because without the Religious Right, they are incapable of forming a "mass constituency." This will be especially so as left-wing populism (which the elites really fear) gains strength. As Professor Huntington has suggested,

"... the leaders who share in the Davos Culture do not necessarily have a secure grip on power in their own societies ... (Their) culture exists, as Hedley Bull points out, only at the elite level: its roots are very shallow ..."

Finally - at some point, when open opposition proves futile (and as we just indicated, it eventually will) - the elites will move to a third step which is to accommodate themselves to the new reality - not necessarily by changing inwardly, but by changing outwardly thereby subverting the Buchanans of this world (along with their religious right followers), and finally co-opting them for their purposes. In accommodating themselves to the new reality, they will have to go with Buchanan and his ilk; they could not possible countenance an alliance with the political left (which to them means an alliance with socialists, something that would be anathema to them).

Elites accomplish this by adopting the "trappings" of the movement they are attempting to co-opt - i.e., its jargon, its style, its religious trappings, etc., while avoiding dealing with the inner realities of what people like Buchanan and his populist followers are really all about, especially as all this relates to the economic sphere. It's a popular and highly successful tactic - and it rarely fails. This is what the Caesars did with the Augustinan Revolution, what Napoleon II did with the French Revolution, what the Catholics did in the Counter-Reformation, what Republican Party Progressives did with Democratic Party populism (i.e., the populism of William Jennings Bryant) at the turn of the century, etc. It's a popular tactic, and it is a very deceitful one.

Moreover, for those who are familiar with the Prophetic Word, it's not that difficult to imagine the direction all this will take - maybe not with Buchanan, and maybe not right away, but at some point and at some time - the hour is getting late, and the pressure is mounting!!

A NECESSARY REVIEW; SURMOUNTING
THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE DAVOS ELITE

Let's back up a little and take a closer look at what might (indeed, what probably will) happen. We begin by reminding ourselves that there exists in the world today some seven or eight major civilizations of which Western Civilization is only one. All these civilizations, according to Huntington, are - to a greater or lesser degree - religiously-based civilizations, and all have deep roots in the populations in which they are entrenched.

Then there is the Davos Culture - the culture of today's governing elites - as we earlier indicated, pretty much the culture Constance Cumbey described in her books, Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow and A Hidden Deception. This is, however, not a culture that is deeply entrenched in any of the earth's populations - only in the elites. It is an elite culture only. The Davos Culture, therefore, does not have a "mass following," and - as a result - is decisively impaired in its ability to affect the larger society in the political and cultural realms. It lacks the ability to attract to itself large numbers of "dedicated warriors" who would be willing to lay down their lives in its service - and this is an essential prerequisite to any thought the Davos Elite might be entertaining (and it is) of establishing universal political (as well as economic) control over the world.

Given the fact that the earth is hopelessly divided into seven or eight mass civilizations - all of which (because they are religiously-based civilization) are competing with one another - if political unity is ever to be achieved, it will have to be achieved at the point of a gun. This means the Davos Elite will have to be able to field an army - and not just a mercenary army - the kind that will melt away in the night when things start going badly (the kind of army the UN might be able to field, an army that - by its nature - would have to be dedicated to "political correctness" and the bland concepts of multiculturalism) - but a Crusading Army - a TEMPLAR ARMY - the kind that will stand and fight no matter what the cost because it is composed of "True Believers."

Consequently, because their own elite culture has such shallow roots in the populations of the world and, as a result, lacks a mass following, somehow or other the Davos Elite will have to sink its roots deeply into one of the earth's seven or eight major civilization - if only because it will have to be able to field an army. They'll get nowhere with their own "New Age" culture. In an age where ordinary people all over the world (as opposed to the elites) are increasingly identifying themselves in terms of religion, somehow or other, the Davos Elite will have to capture one of the earth's religiously-based civilizations. But which civilization?

CHOOSING A CIVILIZATION TO CO-OPT

Given the fact that they really "don't give a damn" one way or the other insofar as the "spiritual thrust" of any of these religions is concerned, the Davos Elite will base its choice in terms of "Real Politik." - and if they do that, the choice will be simple: only one will do: Western Civilization - i.e., Christianity (not that the elites really care a whit for Christianity or the humble Carpenter from Nazareth).

But the center of the economic system they have constructed - the center of their system of client states - is America! The muscle that they depend upon is the muscle of the American military machine and the insidious apparatus of America's intelligence complexes. The elites must preserve America (and to a lesser degree, America's lackey, Western Europe) if they are to preserve the economic system they have so long been laboring on. If they lose America, they lose everything. And if preserving their hold on America [and, at the same time, quashing the liberal (socialist) wing of the Democratic party (which, as we just indicated, they fear far more than they do Buchanan and his ilk] means adopting the trappings of a Buchanan-like populism, then so be it.

Now one needs to be clear here; the elites will not go quietly or happily into an alliance with such a populism. Populism of any sort (whether of the left or the right) is repugnant to the "New Age" value system of the elites, but they'll do it - holding their noses as they go, but they'll do it. When? - that's anybody's guess. And will it be Buchanan? - maybe, maybe not. But it doesn't really matter. At some point, at some time, they will have to strike such a bargain!! It won't come about as the result of a "secret meeting" the elite will hold with itself - hidden away from the prying eyes of the outside world. It will be forced on the elite willy nilly and by degrees. But it will come. When and by whom? - again, that's impossible to tell.

THE GREAT DECEPTION

But by doing it, they will - so to speak - "kill a number of birds with one stone." First, they will capture for themselves a mass following - at least in the West; Second, they will preserve their "home countries" - i.e., America and Western Europe. And third, they may very well solve their military manpower problems! And how's that? you say. By turning their economic conquest of the world into a crusade to "Conquer the world for Christ and the church!!" - AND THIS IS THE DECEPTION OF THE "LAST DAYS."

Moreover, this is not something new in the history of the West. This is precisely what the British did in conquering India for the East India Company. By making the conquest of India (and Pakistan) appear as a "Christian Crusade" for "Christ and the church" (which is how England portrayed its colonial conquests to the people back home), they turned their economic rape of the subcontinent into a religious crusade.

Oh, God! - what a shame for true Christianity!! Well did Christ say,

"For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you ..." (Rom. 2:24)

And this was the pattern followed by all the Western nations - from England to France, and from Holland to Spain. Of course, in saying this, we certainly don't mean to say that the work of the countless numbers of dedicated European Christian missionaries who labored tirelessly in India, Indonesia, Africa, China, etc. went for naught - that's certainly not the case. But if the truth were really known, whatever success most of these missionaries had, they had DESPITE European imperialism rather than because of it - and this is certainly true of people like "Praying Hyde," Hudson Taylor, C.T. Studd, Sophie Muller, "Miss Barber," etc.

THE CRUSADER SPIRIT

The very real fact of the matter is, of all the earth's eight great civilizations, the West has proven to be, at least in modern times, by far the most aggressive and ruthless civilization. And to a very large extent, that aggressiveness has been the result of a "Crusader Spirit" that infuses Western Christianity.

Of course, this kind of spirit (Geist) has nothing to do with real Christianity - but nonetheless, it's precisely this Geist that made possible European expansion all over the globe prior to World War I. Once this kind of Christianity gets going, not even militant Islam can stand against it.

It goes without saying, naturally, that insofar as any of this older European expansion was concerned, Christianity was merely a convenient "excuse" for what the elites were really up to; it wasn't the concept of taking "Christ and the church to a lost and dying world" that was motivating them; it was the lust for wealth that was driving them.

People like Cecil Rhodes in Africa and the elites who sat in the board room of the East India Company and companies like that couldn't have cared less about Christ, despite the rather pathetic and shallow form of Christianity that Rhodes and his ilk (DeBeer, etc.) did their best to manifest in their offices in South Africa - while all the while they heartlessly and very savagely used black workers (really slaves) to mine their diamonds there. No! - Christianity was merely a convenient excuse for their economic activity - a sop to throw the people back home in England in order to get their support for a war of imperial expansion against the Bantus, the Zulus, etc., pretending all the while that what they were doing, they were doing for the sake of "Christ and the church."

But these people weren't serving Christ, they were serving Mammon; they didn't care at all for Christ and true Christianity. The Bible says:

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt. 6:24)

This is what the Bible says, and it means it! - but this is what Rhodes, BeBeer, the East Indies Company, etc. (along with all the rest of Europe's elites) were doing, and it was all a farce - a travesty, a sham, so much nonsense!

RENEWING CHRISTIANITY'S CRUSADER SPIRIT

Nonetheless, it the elites are to maintain themselves, both at home (i.e., in Western Europe and North America) and abroad, they are going to have to ingratiate themselves with the West's populations. That means, at some time or another, they are going to have to give up "... pursuing the chimera of multiculturalism ..." (Huntington's words) in their home base (again, North America and Western Europe). Huntington writes:

"If North America and Europe renew their moral life, build on their cultural commonality, and develop close forms of economic and political integration (using Western Christianity as the chief building block to do so) to supplement their security collaboration in NATO, they could generate a third Euroamerican phase of Western economic affluence and political influence ... If non-Western societies are once again to be shaped by Western Culture, it will happen only as a result of the expansion, deployment, and impact of Western (military) power. Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism."

Huntington believes that it is impossible to bring the world together on the basis of a common "Davos-like" culture. It will be accomplished - if it is accomplished at all - only if one of the earth's great civilizations does it under the banner of its own civilization. Huntington says that only one civilization has the power to accomplish this, at least at this present day and hour - Western Christendom. And what that would mean is that somehow or other the West MUST reaffirm Christendom's "Crusading Spirit." The West - like Islam - must return to its roots. Huntington continues:

"Western universalism (i.e., the Western "Crusader Spirit") is dangerous to the world because it could lead to a major intercivilizational war (of conquest) ... With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Westerners see their civilization in a position of unparalleled dominance, while at the same time weaker Asian, Muslim, and other societies are beginning to gain in strength. Hence they could be led to apply the familiar and powerful logic of Brutus [before Octavius (Augustus Caesar) at Philippi]:

In other words, Huntington says, if the world is to be united, it must be done now, before non-Western societies destroy all possibility of the world being united under its (i.e., the West's) aegis. [It should be noted here, however, that Huntington somberly warns against such a venture!]

WHAT THE SCRIPTURES INDICATE

Secularists, of course, are left to ponder whether or not the West will embark on such an adventure. Evangelical Christians, however, should have no doubt as to what the future holds - what course the West (meaning principally, the United States) will eventually take in this matter: specifically, that - like Islam before it - the West will, in due course of time, return to her "ancient fountains and primeval groves" - Western Christendom - and embark on the conquest (or, if you prefer, the re-conquest) of the world under the banner of "Christ and the church." Huntington's nightmare come true. Not the church of the gentle carpenter of Nazareth, that's for sure, but the church of Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, Bennie Hinn and the others of their ilk. For example, Bob Jones, one of the original "Kansas City Prophets," writes:

"As we see the day approaching there's going to be a cleansing ... there's going to be a purging ... coming forth ... and everyone that's living under the immorality cover ... will be brought down. And God's new breed will come forth ... "

Rushdoony writes:

"In winning a nation to the gospel, the sword as well as the pen must be used."

Gary Potter, President of Catholics for Christian Political Action, says:

"When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more abortion on demand, and no more talk of rights for homo-sexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism (i.e., multiculturalism) will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil."

Kenneth Copeland writes:

"This country belongs to God ... He's the One who brought the United States of America into existence. He had a special purpose for it ... He raised it up, and it's not going to be taken away from Him."

Catholic Yves DuPont says:

"We see the outlines of a new social and political order ... the state will no longer be separated from the church."

This is the kind of Christian militancy that's quite capable of launching a modern-day Crusade to conquer, not just the United States, but the world, for "Christ and the church." Moreover, this is exactly the kind of militancy that the Bible warns against in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Dwight Pentecost of Dallas Theological Seminary writes:

"Turning then to the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revelation, we see the whole stage (i.e., world) filled with two personalities only: a 'Beast' and a 'Woman' these two picture the future prophetic earth there can be no argument or discussion as to this speaking of both the CIVIL [political, economic, and military] and ECCLESIASTICAL [religious] conditions that will rule and characterize that part of the earth that is within the limits or boundaries of Prophecy. The whole of it will be filled with what shall answer to this 'Beast' and this 'Woman'. The two [the 'Beast' (which answers to the Civil Power) and the 'Woman' (which answers to the Religious Power) are thus indissolubly co-related, and tell us to what end all [this is] trending; and that is that there will eventually be a one World-Empire and a one World-Church ..."

Huntington and Pentecost! - basically they are saying the same thing; one as a secularist, and the other as a theologian.

FROM ALL THIS, A NUMBER
OF CONCLUSIONS FOLLOW

From all this a number of conclusions can be drawn: that soon, not many days hence, a condominium (joint administration) will be reached between the elites (on the one hand) and the Religious Right (on the other) which will, in the course of time, lead to the co-optation of the Religious Right by the so-called "Davos Elite" (Huntington's phrase).

The pressure for all this is building right now! The elites have to do something - and they have to do it soon! They are beset abroad and at home with impossible pressures which are threatening to destroy the economic globalism they have labored so long to create. If they don't act quickly, they may lose it all. Whether Buchanan (and the populist pressure) he represents will be the spark that will light the conflagration, or whether it is someone else, it will happen. It's just a matter of time.

What will this mean to all of us? - much in every way. For one thing, it means that, sadly, most of what we call the "Organized Church" (maybe not all of it, but most of it) will be a part of this condominium. The fact is, such a condominium lies at the heart of what we call "Western Civilization" - in re-establishing the relationship between the church and the state, the Western World would merely be returning to its roots - exactly what is occurring in Islam today.

AMERICANS IN ALL THEIR PSEUDO-SOPHISTICATION

Americans - in all their sometimes pseudo-sophistication - may recoil at the parallel of all this to what happened in Iran. However, the return of large numbers of Americans to a conservative brand of Christianity [which is continuing unchecked, despite the mainline media's effort to pretend otherwise (more about this in upcoming articles)] may, in the end, be traced not so much to a sudden desire to "find God" as to a primeval impulse to defend their traditional culture. Moreover, just as the secular elites in Iran failed to grasp the real meaning behind the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism until it was too late, so also the secular elites in the United States are in grave danger of failing to grasp the real meaning behind the rise of Christian Fundamentalism. The very real fact of the matter is, every so-called "Christian" in "Western Christendom" has historically had two loyalties: one to the "spiritual" church and one to the "temporal" state, i.e., those twin powers of Regnum and Sacerdotium that govern the lives of "Western Man" - most especially in the Middle Ages, but also - more than secularists would care to admit - even today. To the caesars of the state must be given some things, to the church of God must be given others. Hildebrand [Gregory VII (pope from 1073 to 1085)] put it this way:

"... the spiritual (i.e., churchly) and temporal (i.e., civil) powers are entrusted to two different orders, each drawing its authority from God, each supreme in its own sphere, and independent, within its own sphere, of the other ... the king is subject to the bishop in spiritual matters, the bishop is to the king in temporal matters."

This doctrine became known as the "Doctrine of the Two Swords" (i.e., the "temporal sword" and the "spiritual sword"). There is, of course, nothing Biblical about this kind of thinking; indeed, it is precisely this kind of reasoning that will lead to the disaster of the "end of days." And it is exactly this relationship between the state (Regnum) and the church (Sacerdotium) that the Bible portrays as a woman riding a beast (see above)!

It is exactly this - a woman riding a beast - that will lead to the one world system that the Davos Elite will be aiming at when it eventually seeks to co-opt Western Christendom in the service of its own globalist dreams.

Yes, as Pentecost suggests - "... there will eventually be a one World-Empire and a one World-Church ..." But when it finally takes the stage, it will not be as a servant of heaven, but rather as a servant of hell!

And the consequences of all this to us? Well, the Bible is quite clear about what will happen to real Christians, the kind who believe that Jesus meant what He said when He told Pilate:

"... My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered ... but ... my kingdom (is) not from hence." (John 18:36)

The repercussions will be fairly harsh to those who oppose this condominium:

"They shall put you out of the ... (churches): yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." (John 16:2)

Ostracism! Banishment! Expulsion! Excommunication! - even to the extent that the Bible says:

"...Ye shall be beaten, ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. (Mark 13:9) ... they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you ... into prisons ... (Luke 21:12) ... and some of you shall be put to death ..." (Matt. 23:24)

WHAT THEN SHOULD WE DO?

What then should we do? Well, first of all it would do us a world of good to remember what prophecy is all about. We begin there! Prophecy is like a road sign saying: "Slow down, sharp right hand turn ahead!" But if we fail to heed the sign, if we fail to slow down before we get to the turn, it will be too late to brake once we finally get there, and we will surely slide off the road and crash. Like a road sign, prophecy tells us things before they happen so that we can take evasive action before events catch up with us. If we wait until they finally overtake us, it will be too late to do anything - we will crash! Watch, therefore, for the "signs of the times," and don't wait to take action. You may wait too long! Jesus said,

"... When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" (Matt. 16:2-3)

And Paul warns us,

"But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober." (I Thess. 5:4-6)

WITH THIS IN MIND

With all this in mind, wouldn't it be a wise thing for us as evangelicals to begin reexamining the relationship of our institutions with the elites? - with corporate America? Wouldn't it be prudent to make ourselves less dependent on the largesse of these elites? Wouldn't it be wise - in fact - to sever any and all ties with corporate America?

And more than that, let me suggest something even more radical - wouldn't it be exceedingly prudent for pastors and elders to reexamine their connection with the rich in their churches - which is not to say, of course, that the rich should be "cut off," but it is to say that they should not be allowed to give inordinately to the church or to exercise undue influence over it (James 2:1-6).

Real giving to the church or to the ministries of God is a PRIVILEGE. Those who give to the church with the thought - no matter how hidden or subtle - of exercising influence over the church are in danger of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). It might seem a radical idea, but we say, let rich Christians take their money and give it somewhere else - perhaps to the poor, both Christian and non-Christian - rather than to the church (both for their sake and the church's sake), just as Jesus suggested to the "rich young ruler" in Mark 10:21.

Let most of the giving to the church be done sacrificially by the "every-day" saints of God, and do not let it become dependent on the largesse of the rich in the church, and most especially not corporate America. Of course, what that would mean is that the "every-day" saints of God would have to take a greater part in supporting the church financially - and many of them have become quite used to sitting back and letting those with money take that responsibility. Indeed, to a certain extent, much of the responsibility for the church's dependence on the largesse of the wealthy has resulted from the failure of the "average" saints of God to give. The "normal," "everyday" saints of God MUST have a radical change in their practice of giving if the church is to break its dependence on the rich.

REEXAMINING THE MISSION AND
STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH

In addition, there is also a need for a painful re-examination of the way we have structured our churches and our ministries. The fact is, over the years we have structured our churches and ministries in such a way that even the sacrificial giving of the average saints cannot keep pace with the financial demands of the church. The truth is, our churches have become dependent on huge flows of money just to keep them going - flows of money that average saints, no matter how hard they try, cannot keep up with - and it is precisely this dependence which makes American (and Western) churches so vulnerable to the blandishment of the elites and the wealthy.

There is, no doubt, much to be said with regard to our present concept of "church" in American society - one which encompasses Sunday Schools, youth programs, "singles programs," music programs, the beauty and majesty of "congregational worship," etc. - all of which presuppose the existence of a large church building and expensive ministry programs of all sorts. Indeed, It's difficult to believe that many of these programs and services - some of which provide very worthwhile services - could be carried on in the absence of these huge buildings and expensive ministries.

Still, given the course and character of prophecy, this kind of concept of "church" and "ministry" could prove to be our "undoing" as evangelicals - our "Achilles heel." When churches and ministries become too identified with their buildings and expensive programs, they then become very easy prey to outside forces which seek to control them - after all, buildings and ministerial programs of necessity are dependent on huge flows of money on a regular basis, and it's precisely this flow of money that is the "choke point" of the church's independence: whoever controls this choke point is in a position to control the church. We repeat - the weak point in any church's armor is its dependence on money, and nothing places a greater demand on church finances than its building program and its ministerial outlets. Now, in saying this, it's very important to differentiate between the danger the buildings and programs themselves present and the danger that the flow of money presents; it's not so much the buildings per se or the programs per se that's the danger in the first instance, as it is the flow of money which the existence of such buildings and programs necessitates. Why? - because (in this life, at least) money is the foundation of ALL Satanic activity:

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim. 6:10)

And to say, as some do, that there is a difference between the "love of money" and the "possession of money" is to walk a very fine line indeed, a line which is very rarely navigated successfully, despite the belief by most rich Christians that they are doing so -

"For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Luke 18:25)

A DIFFICULT DILEMMA

Thus, a very difficult dilemma (trade-off) presents itself: independence vs. the continued existence of many of those very valuable church programs which are predicated on the flow of large sums of money. As a result, most congregations - even if they agree with the propositions of this article - would naturally be disposed to delay "trading off" the existence of these programs as long as necessary - at least until the danger to the church's independence presents itself in stark and very real terms. The problem is, however, when that time finally comes, it will probably be too late for the church to extricate itself. It's for this reason that we must ask ourselves, what choice do we really have? - we may look awful silly moving to a church "life-style" which is free from "building-dependency" and "program-dependency" - but then, no more silly than Noah looked when he began building his ark on dry land.

There are, of course, many selfishly-minded "egalitarians" (those who, for small-minded reasons, are jealous of the fact that there actually is such a thing as a "full-time" worker), who would applaud such a move, thinking that by doing so they would be ridding themselves of such people. But that will never happen - nor should it! The fact is, there is - and always has been - a great necessity for such workers, and the move away from "building-dependency" and "program-dependency" on the part of the church would free more money than ever before that could then be dedicated to putting even more "full-time" workers into the "field" - workers to preach the Gospel; pastors to prepare the saints for their added responsibilities which a move away from such "dependencies" would entail; teachers to travel from house to house teaching the Word and preparing others to teach the Word as well - the possibilities for a real "magnification" of full-time workers is almost limitless - all this to say nothing of the REAL opportunities of giving ALL the saints a chance to make a meaningful (not pretended) contribution to the life of the church community - of bringing all the saints (both men and women) into meaningful function within the church - not just the "chosen few."

God bless all of you,

Steve
S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries

1. Please see their books, Out of Control (Brzezinski) and Paandaemonium (Moynihan).
2. And it's important to note in this regard, that the elites are not globalists because they have "bought into" globalism on any kind of a principled basis; they are globalists because that's where the money is!
3. Such remnants of free enterprise as remain within the U.S. and the other nations of the Western World are fighting an increasingly tougher battle for survival against these giants - a battle which is making it nearly impossible for the small business owner to compete, buying out the farmer, and either buying out, or under pricing, the small manufacturer.
4. Sasha G. Lewis, Slave Trade Today (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979) pg. 165-166
5. Please see Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism.