Newt's New-Age Love Gurus {the tofflers}

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http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/newt-gingrich-new-age-love-gurus-alvin-toffler

A ghost from Newt Gingrich's past paid him a visit in South Carolina, and it wasn't the one you're thinking of. In late January, as reporters buzzed over the ABC News interview with the candidate's second ex-wife, Gingrich was finishing up a town hall at a dove-hunting ranch in the low-country town of Walterboro. That's when a balding, middle-aged man stood up and announced himself as a first-time caller, longtime listener: "I've been following your career," he said. "And I was excited about the revolution in 1994. I was so excited about it I read your reading list"—a reference to Gingrich's tip sheet for freshman legislators. "You know, Alvin Toffler…My eyes teared-up reading that stuff."

These days Gingrich doesn't spend much time talking about Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the world's most famous octogenarian pop-futurist power-couple, and the brains behind Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift. But the Tofflers, whom Gingrich has long counted as friends and mentors, have deeply influenced him, and their ideas have formed the foundation for much of what he says. He devoted a two-hour session of his mid-1990s college course to teaching The Third Wave, wrote the foreword to their fifth book (although Alvin's appears as the sole author of Future Shock and Third Wave, the two have always collaborated), and adopted their new-agey vernacular as his own. When, in 1995, a Wired reporter ask Gingrich what he thought of Al Gore, he called the vice president "totally Second Wave"—Tofflerese for "so last week."

There's a pretty good reason why Gingrich has stopped talking about the Tofflers, though: He's running for president. Their work focuses on outlining the social, political, and economic revolutions that will define the years to come: Future Shock posits that the great challenge of our times will be how efficiently we adapt to technological advances (analogous to "culture shock&quot ; Third Wave argues that mankind is transitioning from an industrial "second wave" of civilization to an information-based "third wave." But beyond their prescient analysis of the emerging information age, the duo predicted a new era of social norms that are straight out of Pat Robertson's nightmares—polygamy, baby-making factories, gay parents, and serial marriage. Not exactly the type of concepts that play well with the conservative voters Gingrich is trying to woo.