Keys of This Blood (5 page)

Again, as Gorbachev has done, the most influential leaders of this Globalist group, the Wise Men of the West, have taken account of the main sources of disequilibrium that must be addressed before their globalist design for a new world order can be stabilized. The ominous threat of an isolated People's Republic of China could be the spoiler and must therefore be offset and diverted. The role of West Germany—already powerful and now to be reunified with its eastern half—must be regulated in order to quell the fears of the Soviets and of most Western Europeans concerning any renascence of German imperialism. And—tribute of tributes—Mikhail Gorbachev must be aided so that he will be able with impunity to reform the economico-political structure of the Soviet Union.

If these main sources of disequilibrium can be taken care of, then—given the time—this third contender group in the millennium endgame sees itself within reach of a geopolitical structure. Indeed, the Globalists already see themselves in the very midst of an orderly transition—an organic evolution—from the divisive nation-state politics of yesterday to a new world order. More, they see the whole process as in the nature of a logical consequence. Their presumption is that the old internationalism, allied with the new capitalist-based transnationalism, will carry democratic
egalitarianism to a geopolitical level. They presume, in short, that the new world order will be a logical consequence of yesterday's mode of democratic politics.

With that facile transition already visibly under way around the world, the Western Globalists don't feel they are jumping the gun by much when they speak of the final prize to come. Just over the horizon, they say, still out of sight but firmly presumed to be there waiting for us all, stretch the smiling upland meadows of plenty for all; and not far beyond that lie the rolling plains of man's continuing perfectibility.

There is no doubt in John Paul's mind that the Western Globalists are true and powerful contenders in the millennium endgame; or that they are already determining certain contours and aspects of our global life. But that is not to deny specific and practical weaknesses of an important kind in the West's position.

Of the three principal contenders in the struggle to form a new world order, the Western capitalists are the only ones who must still form a truly geopolitical structure. The most serious question they face, therefore, is whether there can in fact be an organic evolution of the democratic egalitarianism of the capitalist camp into a geopolitical mode.

In this vein, surely it was the recent democratic evolution in Eastern Europe that prompted Francis Fukuyama, a Harvard-trained official in the American State Department, to argue categorically that there can be no organic evolution of democratic egalitarianism into anything further of its own kind. To argue, in fact, that there is no evolution of political thought possible beyond the idea of liberal democracy.

So adamant is Mr. Fukuyama that his persuasion amounts to nothing less than an interdict. A serious argument taken seriously that human thought in the matter of democratic government has reached the outer limit. A serious argument that, if history can be defined not as a series of events, but as the living force of new ideas incarnated in political institutions adequate to vehicle those ideas, then the history of democratic egalitarianism is at an end.

The fundamental idea of democracy—government of, for and by the people, with its ancillary institutions guaranteeing both continuity in government and fundamental rights on the personal and civic levels of life—is inviolable in its structural elements. Take away any element—the right to vote, say; or the right of free association—and the entire structure loses its integrity. Tip the balance in favor of one institutional arm—executive over legislative, or legislative over judicial—and the orderly
system is jiggered. Adopt only one proviso of democracy—take the right of free association again—or even three or four, and as Mr. Gorbachev is presently learning the hard way, you will not have anything resembling the democratic egalitarianism of the United States or Great Britain.

The fact of the matter is, however, that any geopolitical structure worthy of the name would necessitate an entirely different regime of rights and duties. In a truly one-world order, it would not be possible to regulate an election of high officials in the same manner as democratic egalitarianism requires. General referenda would also be impossible.

So obvious has this difficulty been—and for far longer than Mr. Fukuyama has been on the scene—that warning scenarios have long since been prepared in the democratic capitalist camp itself. Scenarios that show in considerable detail just how and why, in the transition to a world order, the various processes of democracy would have to be shouldered by select groups, themselves picked by other select groups.

It takes little imagination to see that such a situation is not likely to lead to egalitarianism, democratic or otherwise. Nor is it likely to lead to wide rolling plains and smiling upland meadows of popular contentment.

Even if the most dour assessments of the globalist structure that is likely to come out of the capitalist design are correct, that is not the only weakness faced by the West. Intent as they are on winning the competition, the Western democracies tend to conceal from themselves two additional problems that are paramount in John Paul's assessment of their likelihood of success.

The first is the problem of time. There is not at the present moment a geopolitical structure—or even the model for such a structure—native to democratic egalitarianism or born from its own specific sociopolitical principles. Quite apart from the stark Fukuyama interdict, which indicates that such an elaboration of democratic egalitarianism is now impossible, there does not seem to be any leeway of time available for the champions of Western democracy to attempt such an elaboration. The speed and urgency of events, together with the ongoing geopolitical readiness of Gorbachevism, afford no leisure for cautious experimentation. A new world order is all but upon us, demanding a geopolitical structure in the immediate here and now.

The second is the problem of morality: of a moral base as the necessary mooring for any system of government, whether national or global. In and of itself, capitalism does not have, nor does it require for its specific functioning, any moral precept or code of morality. What currently passes for such a moral base is nothing more than moral exigency; pressing
needs calling for immediate action are responded to on a situation-by-situation basis.

Speaking at Prague Castle on April 21, 1990, John Paul was pointed in his warning to the newly liberated Czechoslovaks that in getting rid of Communism, they should not replace it with “the secularism, indifference, hedonistic consumerism, practical materialism, and also the formal atheism that plague the West.”

Already John Paul sees that the exigencies forced by Gorbachev and Gorbachevism upon the Western democracies can and do evoke from them the same brand of ruthlessness and incompassion that the Soviets have long displayed as a daily behaviorism. He has already seen, for example, the United States' attitude to the rape and genocide of Tibet; to the cruel oppression of democracy in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and in the PRC; to the Indonesian genocide of the East Timorese; and to the war of extermination Syria's Hafez Assad has waged against Christian communities in his land.

It is sufficiently evident, therefore, at least to Pope John Paul, that as Mikhail Gorbachev elaborates his ideological position within the new architecture of Europe, the main trends of the new global society begin to take on the color of Gorbachev's Leninist-Marxist design.

Put another way, it is sufficiently evident that, if Gorbachev's greatest geopolitical triumph to date has been the creation of a new mind in the West that is compatible with his great Leninist design for the new world order, then the corollary weakness for the capitalists' design lies in the fact that the Western Globalists think they are in charge of the forces of change.

Admittedly, there is little quarrel between Gorbachev and the capitalists about the need they both see to fill our bellies with fresh food, and our minds with fresh knowledge, and our world with fresh air and water.

The difficulty comes, however, with the Leninist proviso embedded within Gorbachevism that we must never more repeat the famous cry of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger: “I know that only God can save us.”

Even granting Western Globalists the necessary time to achieve their one-world design, therefore, the questions of structure and moral underpinning lead Pope John Paul, with many others, to anticipate the total effect of the Western Globalist model on the society of nations.

Good intentions notwithstanding, one can foresee the demise of democratic egalitarianism as we have known it. One can predict the rise of massive bureaucracies to govern every phase of civic development. One can expect the insertion of the statist element in all phases of private life,
and the slow elimination of compassion; of good taste; of the wild hopefulness that has made mankind venturesome in this cosmos; and finally of truth itself as the basic rule of the human mind in its quest for knowledge.

Unfortunately for us all, the basic lesson is not quickly learned that on this new globalist plane, once a geopolitical structure is established, powerful forces take over that are difficult to change. As Czechoslovakia's new leader, Vaclav Havel, has already observed, “In organizational decrees, it is truly difficult to find that God who is the only one who can save us.”

The contemporary world over which Pope John Paul casts his wide-sweeping gaze is not a tidy place. It is cluttered with all manner of groups, large and small, able to command greater or lesser publicity, all making their own globalist claims.

Well before Karol Wojtyla took up his own position in the geopolitical arena as Pope, in fact, many such groups had already claimed a place on the world stage. Some were inspired by the creation of the United Nations. Others who disliked that institution proposed their own form of globalism. Still other groups, ancient and modern, elaborated extensive plans in the name of some religious belief or philosophy about human life.

Common to all of these aspiring globalist contenders is the fact that, of themselves, they lack even the most basic tools for practical geopolitical contention. They have neither an extensive, articulated organization nor even the means to network all the nations, much less the power to entrain the world in the globalist way of life of their choice.

Some of these groups have simply decided to wait out their own geopolitical impotence in the belief that someday they will somehow achieve a global status and capacity commensurate with their ambitions.

Of principal interest to John Paul in terms of their present influence, however, are certain more venturesome groups, who plan to piggyback a ride to global status and supremacy by straddling any vehicle that appears to be headed in their direction.

Such in particular are the thousands of New Agers in our midst. And such, too, are the so-called Mega-Religionists—those who are persuaded, and who work to persuade us all, that all religions of the world are fusing into one globe-spanning mega-religion of mankind.

The members and spokesmen of both of these groups wax poetic about their vision. In their imagined grand design, the new world order will be
one great Temple of Human Understanding. The truly global home of all nations will still resound with the languages of every race and tribe; but they will all be harmonized into one. Their Temple of Human Understanding will be roofed over with the all-inclusive allegiance to the common good. Its walls will be decorated with the icons of the new values—peacefulness; healthfulness; respect for Earth and environmental devotion. But over all, there will be the great icon of Understanding. What divinity exists will be accepted as incarnate in man; divinity of, for and by—and only within—mankind. All other shapes and concepts of divinity will melt—are already melting; fusing gently and irresistibly into the Understanding of mankind's own inherent and godly power to fashion its own destiny.

The chief interest of these groups for Pope John Paul is that they spend their days leeching off of the geopolitical power of others. Intent upon predisposing as many minds as possible to the task of achieving heaven on earth, they have developed infiltration to a high art. Chameleon-like, they are to be found basking at the height of power everywhere in the West—in Transnationalist boardrooms and Internationalist bureaucracies; in the hierarchies of the Roman, Orthodox and other Christian churches; in major Jewish and Islamic enclaves already dedicated to the total Westernization of culture and civilization.

Neither New Agers nor Mega-Religionists are any less helpless finally than the many globalist pretenders crowding at the edges of the arena where the millennium endgame has already developed into a game of power—power understood, power possessed and power exercised.

Beset by delusions of grandeur and illusions of a favorable geopolitical future for themselves, New Agers and Mega-Religionists not only lack a geostructure. They must go a-begging for bits of georeligion and pieces of geo-ideology; and they are totally bereft of a realistic and rounded geo-mind-set.

The important effect of these globalist dreamers in the geopolitical contest is the weight they add to the forces already intent upon disposing the world toward the idea of an earthly Utopia and away from any knowledge of the transcendent truth of a loving God who, as John Paul is convinced, has a very different design in store than any they are able to imagine.

Among the primary contenders dominating the economic and political moves to form and control the new world order, Pope John Paul stands apart in several ways.

He is, first, the only one of the three whose vision of the grand design for that world order has undergone an abrupt revision of the most major kind. And he is the only one who has, from the first moment of his assumption of power, faced a concerted effort from within his own organization—indeed, on the part of some of the most powerfully placed members of his hierarchy—to wrest his entire georeligious and geopolitical structure from his control as Pontiff. An entrenched effort to take the Keys from Peter, and to divide the spoils of power that lie uniquely within his authority.