(1970s)
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Not a single vote was cast against the Wilderness Act of 1964 when it finally reached the Senate. Congress thought it was setting aside nine million acres of wilderness so posterity could see a sample of what their forefathers had to conquer in order to create America. The new law was the crowning achievement of the Wilderness Society, to which its Director, Howard Zahniser had devoted five years of constant lobbying. Though unnoticed at the time, the new law signaled an end to the traditional "conservation” movement and the beginning of a new environmental "preservation” movement. The conservation movement might be characterized by the idea that private land owners should voluntarily conserve natural resources; the environmental preservation movement is characterized by the notion that the government should enforce conservation measures through extensive regulations. By this distinction, the Wilderness Society brought the environmental movement to Congress. Robert Marshall, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold - all avowed socialists - organized the Society in the early 1930s and proclaimed their socialist ideas loudly. Marshall's 1933 book, The People's Forests, says: "Public ownership is the only basis on which we can hope to protect the incalculable values of the forests for wood resources, for soil and water conservation, and for recreation.... Regardless of whether it might be desirable, it is impossible under our existing form of government to confiscate the private forests into public ownership. We cannot afford to delay their nationalization until the form of government changes.”37 This significant event failed to register a blip on the radar screen of public awareness. Instead, public attention focused on the racial strife, the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the Viet Nam War which tore apart the convention, the party, and the nation. The First "Earth Day” in 1970, which perhaps coincidentally was celebrated on Lenin's birthday, April 22, was viewed as little more than a festival for flower children. The anti-war fervor, again, brought a quarter-million protesters to the Mall, and Watergate brought down the Nixon Presidency. The Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 served as beacons to attract the energies and idealism of a generation of young people who had successfully forced the world's most powerful government to abandon a war they saw to be unjust. The 1970s witnessed an unprecedented explosion in the number of environmental organizations and in the number of people who joined and supported these organizations. Among the more important but lesser known organizations formed during this period are the Club of Rome (COR - 1968) and the Trilateral Commission (TC - 1973). The COR is a small group of international industrialists educators, economists, national and international civil servants. Among them were various Rockefellers and approximately 25 CFR members. Maurice Strong was one of the "international” civil servants.38 Their first book, The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 unabashedly describes the world as they believe it should be: "We believe in fact that the need will quickly become evident for social innovation to match technical change, for radical reform of the institutions and political processes at all levels, including the highest, that of world polity. And since intellectual enlightenment is without effect if it is not also political, The Club of Rome also will encourage the creation of a world forum where statesmen, policy-makers, and scientists can discuss the dangers and hopes for the future global system without the constraints of formal intergovernmental negotiation."39 That "world forum” was authorized in 1972 by UN Resolution 2997 (XXVII) as the UN Conference on the Human Environment. Maurice Strong was designated Secretary-General of the Conference which, among other things, recommended the creation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which came into being January 1, 1973, with Maurice Strong as its first Executive Director.40 The Conference held in Stockholm produced 26 principles and 109 specific recommendations which parroted much of the language in the COR publications. The difference is, of course, that the Conference Report carries the weight of the United Nations and has profound policy implications for the entire world.41 Another COR publication, Mankind at the Turning Point, provides further insight into the thinking that underlies global governance: "The solution of these crises can be developed only in a global context with full and explicit recognition of the emerging world system and on a long-term basis. This would necessitate, among other changes, a new world economic order and a global resources allocation system.... A ‘world consciousness' must be developed through which every individual realizes his role as a member of the world community.... It must become part of the consciousness of every individual that the basic unit of human cooperation and hence survival is moving from the national to the global level.”42 A companion work by the same authors, Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, entitled Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System, introduced and described a system of regionalization which divided the globe into 10 regions, each with its own hierarchical system of sub-regions.43 The Trilateral Commission published a book entitled Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World's Economy and the Earth's Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. David Rockefeller wrote the foreword; Maurice Strong wrote the introduction. Strong said: "This interlocking... is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life.”44 In retrospect, it is clear that the early work of the United Nations was an effort to achieve global consensus on the philosophy upon which its programmatic work would be built. It is also clear that, despite the disproportionate share of the cost borne by capitalist nations, the prevailing philosophy at the UN is essentially socialist. The fundamental idea upon which America was founded - that men are born totally free and choose to give up specified freedoms to a limited government - is not the prevailing philosophy at the UN, nor at the CFR, the COR, the TC, or the IUCN. Instead, the prevailing philosophy held by these organizations and institutions is that government is sovereign and may dispense or withhold freedoms and privileges, or impose restrictions and penalties, in order to manage its citizens to achieve peace and prosperity for all. In his book, Freedom at the Altar, William Grigg says it this way: "Under the American concept of rights, the individual possesses God-given rights which the state must protect. However, the UN embraces a collectivist worldview in which 'rights' are highly conditional concessions made by an all-powerful government.”45 Another description of the difference between the two ideas is offered by Philip Bom, in The Coming Century of Commonism: “In the western Constitutional concept, limited government is established to protect the fundamental natural human rights of the free individuals in a free society. In a radical socialist concept of the state, the citizen has a duty to the state to help the state promote the socialization or communization of the man.”46 These fundamentally different, conflicting ideas have been described differently by different people at different times. In 1842, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels preached their gospel through an organization known as the "Federation of the Just.” In 1845 it was the International Democratic Association of Brussels that promoted their ideas. By 1903 the organization that championed Marxism was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party before Lenin transformed it into the Communist Party. The names used to describe the prevailing philosophy at the UN are confusing to Americans. Regardless of the name attached, the underlying philosophy has several common characteristics that readily identify it as different from the philosophy upon which America was founded. Chief among those characteristics is the abhorrence of private property. As Philip Bom points out: "In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels identified communism with democracy. ‘The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations... to win the battle of democracy'. They also pointed out that, 'The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.... The distinctive feature of communism is... abolition of private property.’ ”47 Another tell-tale characteristic of socialist/communist philosophy is the assumption of omnipotent government. Philip Bom addresses the semantics problems as well as the omnipotent government issue this way: "The war of words and world views of democracy continues but with greater confusion of priorities. President Reagan professed that 'freedom and democracy are the best guarantors for peace.’ President Gorbachev confessed that peace and maximum democracy are the guarantors of freedom. 'Our aim is to grant maximum freedom to people, to the individual, to society.’“48 In the Gorbachev statement, it is assumed that 'freedom' is the government's to give. The U.S. Constitution clearly views 'freedom' to be the natural condition of man and assigns the protection of freedom as government's first responsibility. International equality, equity, social justice, security of the people, democratic society all are terms used in UN documents that have a completely different meaning in a socialist context from the meaning understood in America. These differences become exceedingly important in the context of official UN documents. Consider the language in the UN's Covenant on Human Rights, a document that bears approximately the same relationship to the UN Charter that the Bill of Rights bears to the U.S. Constitution. Article 13 says: "Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law....” By contrast, the Bill of Rights says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” Article 14 of the Covenant says: "The right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to certain penalties, liabilities, and restrictions, but these shall be only such, as are provided by law.” The Bill of Rights says: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.... “ Period. The philosophy of omnipotent government permeates virtually all of the documents that have flowed from the UN since its inception. Consider the preamble to the report of the first World Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) held in 1976 under the auspices of Maurice Strong's newly formed United Nations Environmental Programme: "Private land ownership is a principal instrument of accumulating wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.” Their recommendation: "Public ownership of land is justified in favor of the common good, rather than to protect the interest of the already privileged.”49 Morris Udall and others tried unsuccessfully to implement the Federal Land Use Planning Act in the early 1970s influenced by those seeking to impose global governance. In the early 1970s the UN created a Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. As if singing in the same choir, the U.S. created a Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. On May Day, 1974, a proposal was submitted to the UN General Assembly calling for a New International Economic Order (NIEO); it was adopted as a Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States on December 12, 1974. It called for the redistribution of wealth and political power, and the promotion of international justice based on the 'duties' of developed countries and the 'rights' of developing countries. Throughout the 1970s, college students and others joined environmental organizations in droves. They protested, carried placards, picked up litter, preached recycling and organic gardening, mostly unaware that their leaders were attending conferences and promoting agendas based on the same philosophy that America had opposed in Viet Nam, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. Carefully crafted documents, magnified by a cooperative media, elevated the environment to a most noble cause. The object of near-worship for an army of energetic activists, “the environment” as an international issue was ripe for the picking by the advocates of global governance. |