Stuck before you know it
By Henry Lamb
web
posted January 14, 2002
Some years ago, I left Florida in the midst of a rainstorm, driving North. Just across the Georgia line, I noticed that the rain seemed to be accumulating on the windshield wipers. I noticed that the fences along the road seemed to glisten. Before I knew it, the centerline disappeared and the road was white. Unfamiliar with these conditions, I touched the brake, which resulted in a spin-out and a backward slide down a 20-foot embankment. I was stuck.
Like the unexpected Southern snowstorm, global governance is likely to ensnare us before we recognize what it is, or its power to stifle our freedom.
I get letters from readers regularly, who say things such as: "I'll never accept world government!" The truth is, we are already in its grip. Global governance, or world government, will not march on Washington in the form of blue-helmeted troops. It is marching into our towns in the form of "smart growth" proposals; into our schools in the form of "tolerance" curricula; into our churches in the form of "The National Religious Partnership for the Environment;" and into our government in the form of a parade of bills to promote everything from global taxation, to a Department of Peace inspired by UNESCO HR2459.
Global governance is all around us; we just don't recognize it as such. Nowhere is global governance more apparent than in our land use policies. Way back in 1976, the U.N. set forth its policy on land use, saying:
"Land...cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable...."
Since then, through a series of treaties, agreements, laws, and administrative initiatives, the federal government has moved relentlessly to acquire land where possible, and control its use through regulation - where acquisition has not yet been achieved.
The Convention on Biological Diversity requires that each State Party initiate "a system of protected areas." The instruction book for implementation, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, identifies " The Wildlands Project (members only)" as the ideal system for protecting biodiversity.
The Wildlands Project seeks to set aside 50 per cent of the total land area as wilderness. John Heilprin reports, in the Anchorage Daily News, that since 1970, designated wilderness areas have grown from 247 to 741 million acres - to encompass about 15 per cent of the total land area of the continent.
When Congressmen introduce wilderness bills, they never say that the purpose of the bill is to comply with the U.N. policy of land use control. They say it is to "protect" the land and its resources for future generations. When Bill Clinton designated his Monuments and "roadless areas," he didn't say it was to advance to policy of the United Nations, he said it was to "protect" the land and its resources for future generations.
If the land and its resources are owned, or controlled by the government, it will be of no more value to future generations than it is to the present generation from which it is being taken.
Once land is owned by, or under the control of a government entangled in land use treaties, our government becomes little more than an administrative unit for the implementation of global governance policies.
The rash of "sustainable communities" initiatives that continue to plague cities in every state, did not emerge as the result of a spontaneous demand by citizens. It has been carefully calculated, orchestrated, and implemented by the international community of U.N. agencies and organizations, and a host of cooperating non-government organizations (NGOs).
As people are forced off their rural lands in pursuit of the 50 per cent wilderness panacea, they are to move to "sustainable communities," designed by government bureaucrats for easy control. The idea that a person should live where he chooses, in the home he chooses - is anathema to global governance. The 1976 U.N. policy statement on land actually recommends a national commission on population distribution. Global governance presumes the wisdom, and the authority, to dictate not only where, but how, private citizens should live.
I sat in my car until just before dawn, watching the snow accumulate around me. Finally, an old farmer, on an even older John Deere tractor came down the road. He hooked a chain onto my bumper, and with considerable effort, dragged my car back onto the road and helped me get headed in the right direction.
When enough people recognize that global governance is burying our freedom,
we may be able to collectively pull our country back onto the road paved
by our Constitution, and get this nation headed again, in the right direction.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization, and chairman of Sovereignty International.
Other related articles: (open in a new window)
- This could be the year
by Henry Lamb (January 7, 2002)
Henry Lamb pegs 2002 as the year that the global governance movement either becomes an unstoppable train or its agenda is derailed
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