The Conservative Blind Spot

There is a blind spot in the main stream Conservative movement that threatens everything the movement says it stands for. The blind spot is refusal to acknowledge the threat of Sustainable Development, the policy of the UN’s Agenda 21 that now permeates into every American city. Somehow, the Conservative leaders who have always been there to fight off such utopian, socialist nightmares now seem to slumber blissfully in their ignorance at the very moment when vigilance is most urgently needed.

Sustainable Development is the greatest threat ever perpetrated against the American ideal of liberty. Sustainable Development is based entirely on the concept of wealth redistribution. Under Sustainable Development there can be no free enterprise, no individual liberty and no private property. If you doubt that, then here is a direct quote from the UN’s Habitat I 1976 conference where Sustainable Development was first being developed: “Land…cannot be treaded as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore, contributes to social injustice.” That quote alone should bring the libertarians to battle-ready.

Yet, as I attend traditional Conservative meetings around the country where the defense of property rights should be paramount, Sustainable Development is rarely mentioned. Speaker after speaker addresses the audience about issues like abortion, taxes, and national defense. They declare their dedication to the fight for limited government. Only a few years ago I even heard some of these speakers gleefully declaring that we are in a “conservative era.” If they believe this then they are seriously deluded.

Sustainable Development is not a partisan issue. Both parties are guilty of its enforcement. The Bush Administration did more to help entrench Sustainable Development policies than the Clinton Administration could have hoped for. Of course, Obama continues the assault.

Respected Libertarian and Conservative organizations such as CATO, Heritage and Reason Foundation support and promote the Agenda 21 concept of Public/Private Partnerships (PPPs), calling them a free market answer to government. They tell us this is a way to use private money to build infrastructure without raising taxes. How can people who say they advocate free markets ignore the fact that PPPs are right out of the Mussolini fascist play book where government and private companies meld together until they are inseparable? The image of the pigs and the farmers in George Orwell’s Animal Farm comes to mind.

The PPPs are tied together through agreements for special treatment, tax breaks and guarantees that no one can compete with them, creating an elite that can use government and the market as their own unhindered play ground. That is not free enterprise by any definition of the word. How can anyone who says they believe in free enterprise support these government – sanctioned monopolies? They call it Free Trade – but that’s Sustainable Development as promoted through the United Nations.

Again, these groups are great at fighting policies like Smart Growth, Global Warming and Cap and Trade and doing a great job of defeating such monstrous plagues on human society. Yet, they fail to make the connection to Agenda 21. They don’t talk about the land grabs and the controls on farming and the banning of technology. They ignore statements by Supreme Court Justices about using international policy as the basis for their decisions. And they downplay the threat and significance of the UN, saying it is not relevant to the policy process. If the UN is not relevant, then why does the United States spend billions of dollars supporting UN programs – most of which are based on Agenda 21 and have a direct affect American domestic policy?

Through enactment of Agenda 21, American government is being transformed, controlled by “stakeholder councils.” These councils enforce Sustainable Development through the “consensus process” whereby debate on issues is control to the point of non-existent through the use of trained facilitators. The facilitator’s job is to control the discussion, leading it to a pre-determined finish, all the while making the group think it was their idea in the first place. Such a practice is used in nearly every public meeting in every community in the nation. Where is the outrage by these Conservative leaders to the destruction of free speech and the open process designed by our Founders?

Worse, these advocates of freedom ignore the most important plank of Agenda 21 – social equity. Sustainable Development’s Social Equity plank is based on a demand for something called “social justice,” a phrase first coined by Karl Marx. Social Equity means that individuals must give up selfish wants for the needs of the common good or the “community.” Through such a policy, everyone has the right to a job with a good wage, a right to health care and a right to housing. To assure those rights, wealth must be redistributed. Property ownership is a social injustice which brings wealth to some. Business and property are to be controlled by all of society. How can those who led the fight against communism during the Cold War now ignore the exact same policies today, especially when they are now entrenched in every government planning decision?

Many Conservative donors are woefully ignorant of Sustainable Development. They think they are giving their money to help the environment or to preserve historic places. Instead they are only helping to murder the very freedoms they profess to uphold. Conservatives would never concede their liberty to Swastikas or Hammer and Sickles, but tuck it in a Green blanket called“environmental protection” and they will toss those liberties on the fire like an old-fashioned book burning.

Conservatives must heed the warning now! Sustainable Development is anti- science, anti-knowledge, anti-human and anti-reason. It is the creed of the mindless savage who seeks brute force over liberty.

If Conservatives don’t learn of its evil now, if we don’t heed the warning and rip Sustainable Development out of every level of government by its well-entrenched roots, then American life, indeed human existence as we know it, will enter a new dark ages of pain and misery unlike any ever experienced by the community of man.

The Conservative philosophy advocates limited government intrusion into the lives of individual citizens. The root of that philosophy goes back to the ideals of the Founding Fathers and particularly John Locke who said, “man creates value and therefore property out of his own labor.” He said that no government could take the fruits of one’s labor without a compelling public need and without just compensation and then only through the rule of law.

James Madison used that theory to write the Fifth Amendment. John Adams said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and there is not the force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

Under the guarantee that government’s only real job is to protect the rights of individual Americans to engage in commerce and to protect their property and person from thieves and murderers, Americans set about creating the most prosperous and free nation on earth.

Today, these American ideals are under severe challenge from the international community under the banner of Sustainable Development. Time and again, news reports indicate that sustainable development is an

environmental issue. It is not. Sustainable Development is the driving force of what Al Gore called a “wrenching transformation” that society must endure to repair what he perceives as the damage of the 20th century’s Industrial Revolution. It is the same Industrial Revolution that gave us modern transportation, medicine, indoor plumbing, healthy drinking water, central heating, air conditioning, and electric light.

Sustainable Development is not about environmental clean up of rivers, air and litter. It is an all-encompassing socialist scheme to combine social welfare programs with government control of private business, socialized medicine, national zoning controls of private property and restructuring of school curriculum which serves to indoctrinate children into politically correct group think.

Sustainable Development advocates seek oppressive taxes to control and punish behavior of which they don’t approve and there is much these advocates disapprove, including air conditioning, fast foods, suburban housing and automobiles.

Every aspect of our lives is affected by Sustainable Development policies. It is top-down control from an all-powerful central government; specifically the United Nations which seeks to assert such control. That is the true significance of all of the international conference on climate change and Sustainable Development.

The question is whether Conservatives will rally to American principles of freedom against the onslaught of Sustainable Development’s socialist tyranny, or remain blind to the threat.

Avatar
Tom DeWeese
[email protected]

Tom DeWeese is President of the American Policy Center and National Grassroots Coordinator for CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) working to help local activists organize into Freedom Pods (www.CFACT.org). He is also the author of three books, including Now Tell Me I Was Wrong, ERASE, and Sustainable: the WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property, and Individuals.