July 2005

Jack Ward
Columnist

Guest Speaker and Board Member, Columnist Jack Ward

There is a cancer growing in America with the innocuous name of Sustainable Development. Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Fisheries etc. are all an outgrowth of the United Nation's insidious Sustainable Development plan. These UN plans are based on the premise that the environment is threatened, and only drastic action by self-styled elitists can save the world from certain destruction.

The Sustainable Development agenda has been developed, and is being imposed upon much of the world although most American's are still unaware. Unfortunately many citizens still don't understand the sinister elements of Sustainable Development and its implementing document Agenda 21. After President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) released ‘Sustainable America: A New Consensus’, it was obvious that the Clinton sold out to the UN plan.

These plans are promoting creeping socialism envisioned. When you cut through the warm fuzzy platitudes, ‘sustainability’ means that unelected bureaucrats will decide what activities are, and are not, sustainable. The bureaucrats that make these decisions will exercise control over the people. The people will be required to modify their behavior to satisfy the whims of the sustainability bureaucrats. This is hardly what was envisioned when the Bill of Rights was written. Have those that preach sustainability lost sight of our Constitution.

The sustainability agenda is designed to ensnare free people in a web of ever expanding government. Sustainability advocates blame free people for the exaggerated or imagined ills of the society. Prosperity is called over-consumption and success is condemned, while profits are taken from the productive to pacify the whining of the nonproductive. If this sounds like the tenets of socialism, welcome to the club.

The sustainability advocates consistently attack property rights. Property rights were sacred to the framers of the U.S. Constitution, but private ownership of land is not compatible with socialism, communism, or with global governance as described by the United Nations. Stalin, Hitler, Castro, and Mao didn't believe in property rights either and forcefully nationalize the land as an essential first step toward controlling their citizens.

The inalienable right to own -- and control the use of -- private property is perhaps the single most important principle responsible for the growth and prosperity of America. It is a right that is being systematically eroded.

The supporters of socialistic programs like Sustainable Development and Agenda 21 hope you will remain uninformed and silent. But if you are outraged with this attempt to subvert your constitutional rights, you need to begin active opposition.

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