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Statement by
Tom DeWeese
American Policy Center
July 20, 2002
Freedom 21 Conference
Nashville, Tennessee
If only the world had read and acted upon the rantings of Adolph Hitler’s
"Mein Kampf," we could have prevented World War Two.
If only the world had acted to toss Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto
on the trash heap, we could have saved Russia 70 years of horror - and
millions would not now be suffering the tyranny of Red China.
Today you and I have another chance. Sustainable Development is the new
threat. Sustainable Development is the new enemy dredged up by those who
seek to control the world.
Worse, Sustainable Development is a horror that hardly anyone in this
nation understands or even cares to oppose.
Ignore Sustainable Development at the peril of everything you hold
dear. Individual liberty, private property, free enterprise, free travel,
free association, life itself.
My task today is to discuss Sustainable Development and Agenda 21. Part
of my assignment is to discuss and describe "Stakeholder
Councils," The "visioning" process, Zoning abuses, open
space and land grabs.
But I believe that if I were to attempt to use such language – their
language - I would be guilty of committing a very grave mistake. One that
the proponents of sustainable development hope I commit. A mistake that
has been committed time and again by our side when we use their
innocent-sounding terms to describe something so horrible.
Were I to do that, I believe that when I finished you would have as
little understanding of sustainable development as you have now. And you
would be unable to go home and fight it on a local level.
So how do I present this information in a way to demonstrate that
Sustainable Development is not just about environmental protection – but
affects every aspect of our lives and our liberties?
Let me try it this way.
With a show of hands, how many of you consider yourselves to be
grassroots activists? Politicians or elected officials? Business
representatives?
How many of you are fighting in your local communities against
abortion? Against illegal immigration? Against federal intrusion of
education? Against higher taxes? Against government intrusion into your
business? Against local, state, or federal government land grabs? Against
the United Nations and global government?
I’m not finished yet.
How many of you believe that you have a right to own and control
private property?
How many believe that you have the right to raise your children with
your values?
How many believe in free enterprise?
How many believe that you have the right to enter a restaurant and
order the meal and portion of your choosing?
How many of you believe in the sovereign borders of this nation?
Do you believe in limited government where individuals are free to live
their lives as they choose, making personal decisions on family, career,
personal health care, religion, clothes, food, transportation, type and
location of your home, or any other personal decision you decide to make
for your life, so long as it doesn’t entail killing, robbing or cheating
another person?
Well,- I must tell you that none of you have any hope of winning your
fights or fulfilling your vision of life, unless you first understand that
sustainable development invades all of these issues.
And every one of these things are to be controlled by decisions made for
you by government bureaucrats, members of private, non-government
organizations or NGO’s, in partnership with private businesses and
elected representatives working together in specially organized councils
with names like sustainability councils, stakeholder councils or the
progress for Nashville Council.
The names are endless, the control absolute.
If you try fighting the battle for your single interest, you are going
to get rolled. It’s called divide and conquer. While they have you
working to fight a local initiative concerning easements on your property,
or you’re going to the school board to question a strange new
curriculum, you are missing the whole picture.
America is changing right before your very eyes. The America envisioned
by the Founding Fathers is fast becoming a faded memory in our minds - and
most Americans don’t even know things are changing.
Sustainable development is a term seldom heard, even in places where it
should be triggering alarms.
So what is Sustainable Development?
Imagine an America in which a specific ruling principle is created to
decide proper societal conduct for every citizen.
That principle would be used to consider everything you eat; what kind
of home you live in, how you heat it and where it is located; the way you
get to work; the number of children you have; availability of medical
care; employment decisions; even the attitudes, values and beliefs that
you possess.
Imagine, too, that all of these decisions were called
"voluntary," but your ability to discuss, dispute or vote on
such ideas would be impossible, as taxes, penalties and something called
"revisioning" would be imposed on you for non-compliance.
That ruling principle is Sustainable Development.
The logo used in Sustainable Development literature depicts three
concentric circles, each labeled with a defining category of the ruling
principle. One is labeled "social equity," another,
"economic prosperity," and the third, "ecological
integrity."
They sound innocent enough. But these three categories encompass every
aspect of human life. To achieve the goals behind these three very basic
items would demand unlimited government authority to control business
decisions; eliminate private property and personal achievement, and create
a completely managed society under top-down bureaucratic control.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Social Equity: The Report of the President’s Council on
Sustainable Development describes "Equity" as the effort to
"ensure that all Americans are afforded justice and have the
opportunity to achieve economic, environmental and social
well-being."
What do we need in order to achieve social well-being? according to the
planners of this grand plan? For starters, we need adequate housing,
medical care, and a job. You have a right to all of them, they say.
Government will provide them if they aren’t available otherwise.
Social equity means cultural diversity in a world without
discrimination. Intolerance, say the Sustainable Development proponents,
causes disruption in daily routines, thereby damaging the social
well-being and security of others.
Anyone who disagrees with that is guilty of spreading fear and hate and
must not be tolerated.
Social Justice requires that the earth’s wealth be shared between
those who produce and those who don’t. That there be equality between
male and female and between current and future generations.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Wife, Nane, said in a lecture to
the American Museum of Natural History that those working to restructure
our society through sustainable development are "resolved to free
future generations from the threat of living on a planet irredeemably
spoiled by human activities."
Economic Prosperity: The Report from the President’s Council on
Sustainable Development describes "economic prosperity" as a
sustained "healthy U.S. economy that grows sufficiently to create
meaningful jobs, reduce poverty, and provide the opportunity for a high
quality of life for all in an increasingly competitive world."
Gosh, why didn’t our Founding Fathers think of that?
Under Sustainable Development, business is a tool of the social
planning managers. Partnerships between business and government decide
what kinds of products are to be produced, who will produce them - and how
they will be produced. All must be done in accordance to environmentally
correct procedures.
Taxes to force compliance will ensure proper business conduct. Those
taxes will help pay for the equity programs.
Ecological Integrity: Well, that’s just the excuse for the social
planners to enforce there timeless schemes for power.
Americans would never concede their liberty to Swastikas or Hammer and
Sickles. But tuck it all in a green banner for environmental protection;
or for security and safety and we’ll toss it all on the fire like a good
old fashioned book burning.
The fact is, Sustainable Development is the social planners’ dream of
utopia. They think they just have to dictate the policies, make you comply
and they will create the perfect world.
There is no regard for your opinion. No reservation for your property
or business. No hesitation to consider your pain.
Experience is proving them to be right to believe that we will follow
their dictates, with few questions and fewer protests.
In the name of protecting the environment; in the name of social equity
and justice; in the name of safety and prosperity; Sustainable Development
is fast becoming official policy in the federal government, state
government and every large city and small burg in America.
I believe these people are demented. But they are powerful, well
funded, well placed and well organized. No matter how crazy the plan, they
are succeeding in building support from the American people.
Here’s how.
Your community is now a sustainable community. No exceptions. Go home
and look it up. Attend meetings of your town council or county
commissioners.
Listen to the discussions. Are they talking about how to curtail
growth? Are they talking about historic preservation? Are they talking
about how to create more jobs for the community? Has the subject of public
transportation come up?
Here is the definition of a sustainable community from the Report of
the President’s Council:
"Sustainable Communities encourage people to work together to
create healthy communities where natural resources and historic resources
are preserved, jobs are available, sprawl is contained, neighborhoods are
secure, education is lifelong, transportation and health care are
accessible, and all citizens have opportunities to improve the quality of
their lives."
Now break it down. How do you actually achieve these goals?
How do the people work together? We need some sort of committee or council to join. One that will set a vision for the
city.
We need all of the leaders, from elected officials to educators, to
business leaders, to the local chamber of commerce to the local news media. They will put a plan together for the future
development of the community.
(By the way, that plan isn’t really written by the committee. The
blue print will come out of Washington).
Now, to see that the committee can rally achieve its goals, it needs to
have some teeth. We need a partnership between the committee and
government. A plan will be drawn up and it will be the guideline for
legislation for laws and regulations.
Individual land owners and businessmen can’t share the vision on
their own. They must have such guidelines to properly protect open space
and historic buildings.
The Committee then must control the use of all private property. It
must decide what is historic and must be preserved. It must set boundaries
beyond which no new homes may be built. It must decide how the community
should look. Where open space should be. Where business can be allowed
to operate.
But we must do more. The vision can’t become reality unless the
people in the community have the proper respect for the plan.
They must have the right attitudes, values and beliefs in order to
support what the good folks on the committee are trying to do for the
common good of us all.
One place to start is in the schools. Here are our future generations.
It’s not as important that they can read and write and perform math
problems as it is to understand the importance of living together with
your neighbors in a happy, prosperous, safe, well organized community.
They can learn the basic academics on their own. But it’s vital that
they understand our goals.
So let’s add some classes to help them obtain the proper outlook for
the future.
Teach them that they must work together rather than selfishly setting
personal goals.
Teach them that our community only needs certain kinds of workers to
help the program along.
Help them select career paths that fit the needs of the community.
Help them understand that personal wants and dreams and ambitions are
selfish and will only hurt everyone’s future.
How best to teach them these things? Businesses know best. Let’s form
a partnership with businesses to help the children learn about work, right
there in the school.
In fact, we can even let the children take half of each school day to
go to the job as a volunteer. To make sure that everyone participates, we’ll
make it part of their grade.
And to make sure that they always keep the valuable lessons and don’t
stray from the special teachings they learned in the school to work
partnership, let’s keep their education going for life.
We’ll require that they come back for refresher courses periodically
through out their lives. To protect our sustainable community we’ve got
to make sure everyone maintains the property attitudes, values and
beliefs.
To make sure that they do attend life-long learning classes we’ll use
that partnership with business as an on-the-job incentive. That way,
life-long learning can lead to better jobs and better pay. It’s all very
organized.
For the adults, there can be public visioning classes for them, too.
After all, we can’t fully organize the community around our grand idea
if there is resistance from some of the people. That will spoil all of our
great plans for the health and security of the community.
So, again, with our business partnerships, and with the help of the
Chamber of Commerce, and the schools, we’ll work with the folks on a
neighborhood basis. The United Nations has a program we can use as our
guide. Chattanooga TN did it. So can we.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, we’ll bring the folks in, teach them
how important it is to protect the environment, how evil sprawl can be to
our well-laid plans.
And once we have helped them obtain the proper attitudes, values and
beliefs, we can set up some life-long learning classes and business
partnerships for adults too.
We must take care of our elderly and our sick. Doctors must not be so
greedy. We’ll set up government-sponsored clinics with tax-paid
healthcare so all can afford it. After all, we have a right to be taken
care of when we are sick.
Doctors will just have to form a partnership of their own with the
committee and accept a decent salary. It’s all for the public good.
Cars are a very nasty habit. We must teach our community that everyone
should be more open to public transportation. We must build light rail
trains and bus lines to get us around to our jobs.
And to make it convenient for everyone, we’ll design housing
developments around the rail and bus lines so they are within walking
distance for everyone.
We’ll eliminate cars from the community and that will relieve
over-crowded streets. Cars will be banned.
Our homes can be designed in buildings with office space on one floor
and stores on the main floor. We never have to leave our building during
our daily routine.
We don’t need yards that have to be mowed with smelly, gas-guzzling,
air polluting, noise polluting mowers.
We’ll just provide parks and other open green space for the people to
find recreation.
The committee will actively seek to bring in business to the community
to provide jobs for our people. But we only want certain businesses here.
We won’t accept those who lack the proper environmental attitudes.
They will either comply or be banned from operating on our town.
If we don’t have enough jobs, we’ll tax the businesses to raise the
necessary funds to help those who don’t have one. Social equity is key
to our committee’s plan.
People must have homes and medical care and food. It’s their right.
It’s the duty of those who have money to help those who don’t,
especially the businesses, which are so rich.
There are other things that the committee will find necessary to ban
– in order to assure that the citizens have the opportunity to improve
their lives.
Of course with our low and high rise public housing, single family
homes that waste precious land won’t be necessary. Suburban housing will
be banned.
But we must also look after public health for our people. They must eat
properly. That’s why we can’t allow precious farm land in our county
to be wasted on raising cattle for beef consumption. Beef is harmful to
your health, so it will be banned. Wheat and soy will be grown on that
land instead.
Ever had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner of tofurkey?
With our new healthy diet, as outlined by the committee, we will no
longer need things like 7-11’s and McDonalds and their unhealthy fast
foods and snacks. They will be banned.
There is one more danger to the happiness and security of our community
that must be addressed – overpopulation. The committee will decide the
proper number of folks who can comfortably live in our community limits.
If we don’t control the population, we will be overrun. Some strict
guidelines must be imposed, for the sake of the community’s well being
and for the protection of our environment.
Birth control education and supplies will be a major part of the
process for keeping the population down. But if our folks don’t heed the
committee’s warnings, if the population begins to exceed our limits,
drastic action will be required.
Limits on the number of children a family may have will have to be
imposed. Those conceiving children against those limits will have to pay a
high price.
Fines, of course. Imprisonment for exceptional cases. Now, what to do
about those yet unborn, but illegal babies…? Action must be taken, for
the sake of all of us in the community.
* * * *
Do you understand where we are headed, my friends?
Name the issue – name the aspect of your life that is not affected by
such a mentality.
All of this, and much more is the future under Sustainable Development.
This is not about "preserving the environment of future
generations."
This is about totalitarianism. It’s about controlling every aspect of
our lives with decisions made by committees that will grow more powerful
and more oppressive with each passing day and each new regulation proposed
by newly empowered special interests groups.
There will be no satisfying their lust for power. There will be no part
of our lives that is overlooked or uncontrolled
Our homes, our food, our babies our liberty. There can be no private
property under sustainable development. There can be no free enterprise
under Sustainable Development. There can be no individual liberty under
sustainable development.
Group thought, group plans, group action is how the community will work
together. It will be justified as we are constantly told that we are all
in this crisis together.
Usually, when we talk about Sustainable Development, we talk about
environmental programs like the Endangered Species Act; wetlands
regulations: conservation easements: water sheds; view sheds; heritage
areas; heritage corridors; heritage sites; historic preservation;
rails-to-trails; zoning; CARA; energy consumption; greenways; biosphere
reserves; Biodiversity; environmental impact statements; global warming
and the Wildlands Project.
But these are simply the tools being used to dismantle our society and
our culture. To beat them we must first understand the character of our
enemy and his true goals.
More importantly, we must understand the root of our own culture and
the values that produced our nation with the highest standard of living
ever known in human history.
We must understand that it is free men operating in free markets,
untetherd by government regulation that allows men to find solutions to
hunger, decent housing, superior medical care, education; overcrowded
highways and human happiness.
We must understand that it is only bad government that causes poverty,
overpopulation and environmental damage. Totalitarianism, socialism,
fascism and every other ism are the root of suffering on earth.
We must understand that none of this could be happening in this country
where our Founding Fathers made property rights the premier right –
unless we had first accepted the premise that we have a right to tell our
neighbor what to do with his private property.
It starts there, in a local home owners association or with local
zoning regulations and grows into the 800 pound guerrilla called
Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development is simply a homeowners
association on steroids. The premise is the same.
To gain power over our lives, proponents of Sustainable Development
will use any means necessary. That fact alone is enough to tell you the
color of their character.
They will lie about the science of global warming to enforce the United
Nations’ Kyoto Protocol to impose severe energy restrictions on rich
nations so that they can redistribute our wealth to nations with bad
government.
In fact they will go to any length to move that agenda along. Do you
think I exaggerate?
Then go to Loudoun County, Virginia, where this very day the County
Supervisors are considering a proposal to restrict the use of outdoor
lights in an effort to "protect the night sky" from light
pollution.
This regulation would force stores to shut off their signs after
9:00pm. It would also force residents to shut off security flood lights
and ban the use of outside Christmas lights – because some of the
residents can’t see the stars like they used to.
The culprits driving this demented agenda tell us the purpose is the
"protect our heritage of dark skies…"
There is no such thing as light pollution. There is no damage to the
environment. The stars are not taken away. It does not bother anyone
except a few amateur astronomers and a couple of lovers out for a
moon-light walk.
Yet, for this nonsense, the county will damage business, help increase
crime, destroy Christmas joy and infringe on property rights. Of course,
the real agenda is not light pollution – it’s a stealth effort to
enforce Kyoto restrictions on energy consumption.
And the lies and the hysterical warnings continue to mount.
The World Wildlife Fund just released a report stating that the earth
will expire by 2050 if Sustainable Development policies aren’t
implemented immediately. Their report says that nearly a third of the
world’s resources have been destroyed by humans over the past three
decades.
Environmentalists want to rule the world. Do you think that’s an
exaggeration? Then read Ron Arnold’s report on a proposed new
environmental "Marshall Plan" called "Restructuring the
Global Economy."
The plan, written in part by Randall Hayes, founder of the
ultra-radical Rain Forest Action Network, says "capitalism is an
absurd economic system rapidly destroying nature, cultural diversity, and
decent local life."
His plan calls for grabbing control of global economic decision making
and putting it in the hands of non-profit Non-government organizations
through the United Nations. This, says Arnold, is the smoking gun proving
the greens have planned all along to take over the world. Now we have it
in detailed black and white.
It should come as no surprise that one can trace the roots of the
Sustainable Development concept to the United Nations.
Specifically, the blue print is a United Nations’ program called
Agenda 21. It is a product of the 1992 UN Earth Summit and outlines the
means for a complete restructuring of nations to fit the desired mold.
Agenda 21 outlines in detail the UN’s vision of a completely managed
society, dictating the process to be used for industry, agriculture,
housing development and even education curriculum in the classroom. The
federal government’s drive to acquire and control massive amounts of
land is necessary for the full implementation of Agenda 21.
The United Nations, through Agenda 21 and the Biodiversity Treaty, and
through a slew of international policy making meetings has been mapping
out such plans for several decades. Sustainable Development is the
culmination of those plans.
If you doubt what I am saying about the dangers of the sustainable
development restructuring plan; if you think that I am exaggerating the
threat; if you still think that all of this must just be a
misunderstanding about necessary programs to protect the environment –
then consider these quotes from the Wildlands Project, which is the
underlying blueprint for the whole mess:
"To achieve this end, human civilization must be radically
restructured, vast stretches of land must be re-primitivized, roads must
be ripped from the landscape, and human populations must be forcibly
relocated."
"Does this mean," the quote goes on to say, "that Wild
Earth and the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial
civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized must go…"
Their words, not mine.
Now the full court press is on to speed up the process.
In August, next month, the heat will be turned up on the plan as the UN
sponsors yet another international conference called Johannesburg Summit
2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Here, the social planners will assess what they have accomplished since
the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil. And they will organize to accelerate
their efforts. They will not stop until free enterprise, private property
and individual liberty are fully replaced with the well organized
sustainable community.
The logo of Sustainable Development, with it’s three concentric
circles, should be viewed by all who love liberty as the new swastika of
our era. There is no greater threat to our way of life.
Sustainable Development is anti-science.
It is anti-knowledge.
It is anti-human.
It is anti-reason.
In a nut shell, Sustainable Development is designed to throw out
virtually everything man has learned since the beginning of time.
It is the creed of the mindless savage who seeks brute force over
reasoned thought.
And if we don’t learn of its evil now,
If we don’t heed the warning…
If we don’t rip it out of every level of government policy 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.
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