This month marks the 30th anniversary of the The New American. On such an occasion, it is appropriate to reflect on the magazine’s track record, from the accuracy of our facts and the soundness of our analysis to the stories we unearthed and the influence we’ve exerted.

We are proud of our track record. But there is one recurring theme that seems to be particularly striking when reviewing the articles we’ve published, and that is the extent to which we have accurately projected the lines — even (or perhaps, especially) in cases where the mainstream media was offering contrary projections.

Below we survey some of the predictions we’ve made over the last 30 years, divided into 10 categories. We believe you’ll agree that these predictions have withstood the test of time amazingly well — certainly much better than the establishment opinion cartel’s analysis on the same subjects.

1. Energy

Our October 8, 1990 cover story opined that “America was not running out of energy in 1973-74 [during the oil embargo], and it is not running out of energy today,” despite having “become so heavily dependent on foreign supplies.”

But why the dangerous dependency? “U.S. governmental treatment of our enervated energy sector is akin to strangling a patient, then exclaiming that this patient is undergoing an oxygen crisis,” we analogized in our 1990 essay. “Indeed he is, but this does not mean that the supply of oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly disappeared. American entrepreneurs will be able to alleviate whatever energy woes exist just as soon as the government stops strangling our free-enterprise system.”

Regarding oil, we not only cited specific examples of where drilling has been restricted or prohibited such as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, but we also predicted that the development of new recovery techniques would result in “deposits now deemed unrecoverable” becoming recoverable. Regarding “unconventional oil” such as “oil that can be extracted from tar deposits or shale stone,” we observed: “Should extraction of a significant portion of this unconventional oil become economical, America’s oil resources would increase dramatically.” And “increase dramatically” America’s oil resources did, as soon as fracking made the unlocking of the oil found in shale formations practical and economical.

Today it is well known that annual oil production in the United States has been steadily climbing in recent years. But when we wrote our 1990 assessment about America’s abundant energy resources including oil, U.S. annual production had been declining for years, seemingly supporting M. King Hubbert’s widely accepted forecast that U.S. peak oil would be reached around 1970. But Hubbert’s prediction of peak oil has turned out to be premature, to say the least.

2. Climate Change

We have on many occasions examined the scientific debate regarding global warming, and have consistently concluded that the prediction of runaway global warming is wrong. In our coverage of the subject, we have looked at the computer climate-change models relied upon by alarmists, as well as the actual temperature record including the satellite readings, which fail to show the dramatic rise in temperature that should already have occurred according to the models. We have also pointed out that climate-change doomsayers were terribly wrong even before making global warming their cause célèbre, noting in the Fall 1993 edition of our “Resilient Earth” special report: “Approximately 15 years ago … ‘credible’ authorities were still warning that the pollution man was pumping into the atmosphere would bring about a new ice age. Now the doomsayers are claiming that man-made pollution will result, not in global cooling, but in catastrophic global warming.”

Such claims do not seem to have waned in the major media. In fact, the establishment opinion cartel even tells us that runaway global warming is taking place, despite the fact that global warming has now been on pause for almost two decades. (See our January 19, 2015 online article “NASA’s Own Data Refutes 2014 ‘Warmest on Record’ Claim.”) And the mounting climate evidence that has been accumulating with the passage of time is undoubtedly causing many to distrust the media-propagated alarmism. Interestingly, despite the incessant alarmist propaganda, Gallup reported in March of this year that its polls show that Americans’ “public worry about global warming was higher from 2006 to 2009 [than now], and higher still in 1999 and 2000.”

3. Agenda 21

When The New American covered the original United Nations “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, we sounded the alarm that Agenda 21 — a then-little-known treaty adopted by the summit — was a “massive global plan for regulating the entire planet” under the guise of achieving sustainable development and protecting the environment.

We continued sounding the alarm, hoping to make the contents of Agenda 21 as widely known as possible in order to build informed resistance to it. In our October 4, 1993 article “Shackling Planet Earth,” we warned that, in Agenda 21, “the UN earth saviors … have set forth a truly frightening master plan for global population growth, health care, land-use planning, hazardous waste, pesticides, ozone depletion, food production and distribution, energy production, transportation, homeless shelters, drought relief, species protection, biotechnology, and regulations to ‘protect’ forests, mountains, deserts, wetlands, oceans, rivers, streams, lakes, coastal waters, etc., ad nauseam.”

In the same article, we quoted UN/Agenda 21 cheerleader Daniel Sitarz as acknowledging that Agenda 21 “proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on Earth” and that its “effective execution … will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources.” These admissions appear in AGENDA 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet, a 300-page abridged version of the treaty edited by Sitarz and endorsed by 1992 Earth Summit chief Maurice Strong.

“Those who cannot (or will not) recognize in this grand scheme for global central planning a green Mein Kampf for the planet,” we observed, “had better not be caught moralizing about the failure of the German people to comprehend and oppose Hitler’s totalitarian agenda.” Yet, we predicted, “skepticism” toward Agenda 21 “will surely increase and graduate to outrage as the true totalitarian nature of this plan unfolds to public view.” And over the years many have become outraged, so much so that Agenda 21 has become a hot-button issue for conservatives and constitutionalists.

4. Immigration

“If the immigration situation sounds alarming now, we can expect it soon to get much worse — unless the President and Congress take serious action to address the issue,” we predicted in our June 2, 1986 cover story “The Silent Invasion.” How much worse? “In Mexico and the Central American countries alone, there are more than 100 million people; and, as the political and economic structures of those nations continue to deteriorate (due to socialist policies), a sizable percentage of that population can be expected to arrive at our doorstep. South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe will contribute legions more.”

The article warned that amnesty, then being considered by Congress, “rewards the lawbreaker and will encourage continued lawbreaking by setting a precedent and creating an anticipation and expectation of future amnesties. It is wrong. In principle and practice it would prove calamitous.” That same year, Congress passed and President Reagan signed into law the so-called Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Predictably, the amnesty component of that landmark bipartisan legislation not only encouraged more illegal border jumping, but created “an anticipation and expectation of future amnesties.”

5. European Integration

The economic and political integration of Europe did not occur suddenly or openly, but incrementally and deceptively. The first step in this process was the creation of the super-national European Coal and Steel Community by the Treaty of Paris in 1951. Other steps included the creation of the European Economic Community (renamed the European Community) and the creation of the European Union.

It is widely recognized today that a supranational government of Europe is swallowing up the sovereignties of European nations. But this was not the case until the relatively recent rise of the EU, for the reason that the process leading to European governance was deceptively packaged in order to beguile the unsuspecting peoples of Europe to support the steps leading to merger. Specifically, those steps were “sold” on the basis that they would create a European Common Market — a “free trade” zone facilitating the flow of goods and capital leading to more jobs and prosperity. And who could be against that?

All along the intent was to create a European super-state, as was acknowledged by the architects, including Jean Monnet, whose role was so prominent that he became known as the “father of Europe.” But these acknowledgments were made to fellow internationalists; the public at large had no idea of the subversive designs behind what they believed were free-market reforms. Nor did the public at large in America.

It was in this milieu that The New American published a major exposé of the game plan in our April 19, 1989 issue. Entitled “United States of Europe,” the article explained that “the much-touted ‘free-market reforms’ are really only bait laid out to entice Europeans into the trap of an (eventually) all-powerful supranational government.” When the article appeared, the notion that the supposed Common Market would morph into a “United States of Europe” was considered preposterous. No more!

The New American has also repeatedly warned that the European integration process is serving as a model for North American integration, though in North America the process is far less advanced. For example, more than a full year before the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, we wrote in our December 28, 1992 article “NAFTA: The Misnamed Treaty” that “internationalists intend to use NAFTA to foster economic interdependence between the United States and other nations, and then to use economic integration as a means to achieve political integration. This is precisely how Western Europe was [even then] politically united.”

Indeed, if the United States ratifies TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) with the EU, U.S. citizens will find out en masse that America is on the same path to regionalization as the EU, only a few steps behind. Under TTIP international governing entities will have the power to dictate to countries rules, regulations, and laws about issues as wide-ranging as trade in goods, textiles and apparel, copyright law, the environment, services, investment, labor, and competition, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Neither the American people nor their representatives will have a say in the matters.  

6. Education

In the letter from the editor introducing our August 8, 1994 special issue on the subject of what went wrong with public education, we emphatically stated: “In the final analysis, state control of education raises not only the question of who shall teach but who shall have stewardship over the child — the parents or the state. Make no mistake about it: Unless federal encroachments are reversed and the Constitution restored, the state will eventually replace the family as the most important institution in the heart and mind of the child.” This special issue warned that the “morally and academically bankrupt public school system” that existed even then could not be fixed through more government control, but that exactly the opposite course of action was needed.

This special issue was published years before the government’s continuing and growing encroachment over education was manifested through enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which was supposed to fix public education but didn’t, or the current push for Common Core, which is also supposed to remedy the education problem. The latter would effectively create a one-size-fits-all national “core” curriculum, giving the national education bureaucracy even more control over what children are taught and continuing the trajectory toward total state control.

Of course, this decades-long trajectory has not reached the point where the state has supplanted the family as the most important institution in the eyes of the child. But it would be a mistake to assume that this trajectory could not eventually take us there, as we warned in our 1994 education issue. In 1996, then-First Lady Hil­lary Clinton adopted the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” as the basis for the title of her book It Takes a Village. And just this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for government boarding schools, since there are “just certain kids we should have 24/7.” When it is understood that statists desire government control of the children, then such a proposal makes perfect sense. And so does the educrats’ gradual expansion of the role of government schools to include instruction in nontraditional subjects such as sex education, feeding children multiple meals per day (based on the presumption that kids may be fed poorly or not at all at home), occupying and entertaining children through after-school care and programs, and providing for their physical and mental needs through school-based health clinics and psychological counseling.

Recognizing that this trend toward growing state control of education and the children will not solve our educational woes or help the children, The New American has advocated moving instead toward a separation of school and state. An early supporter of one very positive development in this area, we published a favorable cover story on homeschooling way back in our June 22, 1987 issue, when it was not nearly so popular or “mainstream” as today.

7. Homosexual Agenda

In our June 8, 1998 article “The Queering of America,” we predicted that “‘tolerant’ citizens who think that, ‘Hey, I’m not gay, but they’re not harming me,’ have a rude awakening coming. The militant sodomites have made it explicitly clear that tolerance is not sufficient; they demand positive ‘approval’ from society, manifested in the enactment of laws granting them special rights, and the abolition of the residual laws that impede their full homoerotic expression and deny their full access to children. Moreover … they insist on the complete ‘conversion’ of ‘straight’ society, which involves the therapeutic cleansing of all ‘homophobic,’ ‘homohating,’ ‘anti-gay bias’ attitudes.”

The same article also warned that the agenda of the homosexual revolution included “legalized marriage and adoption rights”; “explicit homosexual ‘education’ at all levels of schooling”; “broad dissemination of explicit homosexual literature in schools and public libraries”; “criminalization, prosecution, and persecution of ‘homophobes,’ i.e. religious ‘bigots’”; “a dramatic increase in the visibility of provocative and ‘diverse’ manifestations of the gay subculture,” and “admittance of homosexuals and lesbians into Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other private youth groups.”

This warning was issued 17 years prior to the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex “marriage” and the Boy Scout decision to allow avowed homosexuals to become scoutmasters. And of course, it was also many years before the persecution and prosecution of bakers for refusing to violate their religious convictions by baking wedding cakes for homosexual wedding ceremonies.

8. Iraq

When President George W. Bush declared in front of a large “Mission Accomplished” banner on board the USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003 that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and that “Iraq is free,” most Americans were jubilant and possessed little information to doubt the president’s assessment. But The New American, which opposed going to war against Iraq for constitutional and other reasons, offered a much more sobering assessment than the president. Our analysis, as it turned out, was also much more accurate.

In our “What Did We Win?” cover story in our May 19, 2003 issue, we observed: “Removing Saddam did nothing to avenge our innocent dead [Saddam did not attack us on 9/11] or make our nation more secure. It did little to free the long-suffering Iraqi people, and may actually result in the emergence of an even nastier and more militant regime in Baghdad. Our military victory has left our nation saddled with the prospect of a long, bloody, expensive occupation, and an escalating terrorist threat.”

Two months later, in our July 14, 2003 article “The Four A.M. Knock,” we warned: “Under U.S. occupation, with American troops being used to carry out a mission that will create anti-American hatred, Iraq is becoming an even more dangerous incubator of terror.”

More than a decade later, ISIS is taking full advantage of that incubator to build its murderous Islamic State. But ISIS itself may not have become a threat if the U.S. government did not back supposed “moderate” jihadists in Syria who formed ISIS. The folly of supporting “moderates” to topple Assad was also predictable. As we warned in our September 11, 2012 online article “U.S.-funded Jihadist ‘Holy War’ in Syria Seeks Sharia Dictatorship”: “Contrary to claims by Western governments and Islamist tyrants financing the ‘revolution’ in Syria, foreign jihadist forces and al-Qaeda terrorists battling the secular Bashar al-Assad regime are not trying to create a ‘democracy’ with ‘human rights’ for all. Instead, they are waging so-called jihad, or ‘holy war,’ to build an Islamic dictatorship under Sharia law as part of an emerging international Muslim system.”

9. Libya

In 2011, the American political establishment celebrated “victory” when Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi was toppled with the help of the NATO air war, just as the establishment had celebrated “victory” in 2003 when Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was toppled. But as was the case with Iraq, the celebration of Libya’s liberation was premature.

This was predictable. As we observed in our November 21, 2011 cover story “Libya: Now What?”: “There are many critical and possibly irreconcilable fault lines dividing Libyan society — Islamists, liberals, tribal chiefs, ethnic groups, Gadhafi loyalists, desert nomads, regional factions, and more. Some of the competing groups and interests were able to unite around deposing the Libyan government. But now that it is officially ousted, the already-tense situation is becoming even more complex.... More violence is likely. And tensions are so high that some experts have suggested that a second ‘civil war’ is a distinct possibility.”

Today, Libya is mired in civil war.

10. Y2K Computer Bug

In 1998 and 1999 we forecast that the “invisible hand” of the free market would result in the Y2K millennium computer bug becoming much less consequential than others were predicting. At the time some widely trusted voices went so far as to warn that the computer bug, which did not accommodate for dates after 1999, would result in the collapse of our computer-dependent society with catastrophic consequences. Many who feared the worst stockpiled large quantities of food and made other preparations to survive. There were fears too that the impending collapse of society would also result in the imposition of martial law and loss of freedom.

In our September 14, 1998 cover story “Millennium Mayhem,” we acknowledged that “while the Millennium Bug is a real problem,” it is a solvable problem and “fear of it is a much greater problem.” Disagreeing with the doomsayers, we noted that private efforts — not governmental — were leading the way in making Y2K a non-crisis: “Individual entrepreneurs grappling with Y2K may be attempting to save their own businesses from disruption and possible destruction, but their combined efforts are accomplishing far more than government planners ever could.”

After December 31, 1999, the whole world found out how wrong the alarmists were, and our readers found out how right The New American was.

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Of course, our ability to project the lines has nothing to do with prophecy or magic. It does have to do with studying the available evidence, and recognizing that people, not random forces, shape history. The politically powerful who formulate and implement government policies have not-so-hidden agendas often at odds with the political rhetoric intended for public consumption. When the real agendas are understood, then it is relatively easy to project the lines. But such projections are by no means inevitable, since informing, activating, and organizing liberty-minded Americans can thwart the harmful political agendas now moving forward.

In the future, we will continue to project the lines, and to do all that we can to create the awareness that’s necessary to expose and change the harmful agendas, eventually enabling us to offer — accurately! — much more positive projections regarding political and economic trends.