Exclusively for LifeSite by Lorne Gunter
I was in New York City last week, but didn’t go to the Millennium Summit over at the United Nations. Summits are too predictable. The real work takes place months and years in advance among UN bureaucrats and the foreign ministries of developed nations, such as Canada, that support strengthening the international body.
By the time the leaders show up to clog traffic on Manhattan, the decisions have all been made and the final declaration drafted. The leaders enjoy their five minutes at the lectern (the photos make them look statesman-like at election time), then they joy ride around in limos from swank receptions, to posh hotels, to exclusive little bistros, to hoity boutiques. Speak, eat, drink, shop, sleep: Tough life.
Instead of crowding into the press room at UN Headquarters to watch closely scripted addresses by princes, presidents and premiers on closed-circuit television, I struck out for Mikhail Gorbachev’s State of the World Forum (SWF) 15 blocks west at the Hilton hotel.
In many ways, the SWF was a typical UN-related conference. There was lots of capitalism bashing and United States bashing. And plenty of calls to cherish one another and “our eco-system.” Delegates cheered for the “love economy” versus the current “money economy,” and heartily supported the notion of imposing a one per cent tax on all international financial transactions (known as the Tobin tax) to fund a separate UN army and an army of bureaucrats for the UN.
But there was a difference, or two - important differences.
Delegates paid between $2,500 and $4,500USD just to register. Then they had to get to New York, and pay for a hotel and meals, tips and taxis. The SWF was within the reach of only the well-healed. That’s difference One: Attendees to the SWF were much richer than those at an average UN conference, and disproportionately drawn from the entrepreneurial and managerial classes.
The second way in which this crowd was unlike those at most UN wing-dings was its failure to call for population controls. Demands that births be limited and that abortions be made freer and safer are so common at UN meetings, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if whenever three or more UN workers gather to order lunch, there is an internal regulation that requires them to discuss population control.
Still, I am not optimistic. Too many of those in attendance at the SWF have histories of supporting mandatory birth control in the Third World, and more liberal abortion laws in Catholic and Muslim countries. Billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner are both closely affiliated with the SWF, and both are well-known supporters of limiting the world’s population.
No, I suspect the subject didn’t come up because delegates didn’t have to raise it. They are probably in fundamental agreement on the principle, and thus didn’t have to talk it to death. “You for mandatory sterilization and imposed limits on family size?”“Yep. You?”“Yep. Me, too.”“Next!”
What scares me about the SWF is the calibre of people involved. They are self-made go-getters. They know how to make things happen, even if those things strike an outsider as lunatic or improbable. And they have the money to do it. Moreover, a good many of them are into eastern mysticism, New Age or Amerindian spirituality. They have no basic, rock-solid moral codes beyond those they have set for themselves, and even those are highly trendy, they change with the liberal fashions of the times. Their god, or gods, are also mostly self-created.
That’s why the whole idea of the SWF getting more involved in world affairs makes me fear what they will do in the future.