A Tool Chest to Transform North Dakota
28th June 2005
By [post_author] –
An axiom of political theory holds that the riches of all the people can be gathered up by simply blurring the boundaries of the people and by raiding the public treasury. Today, the public policy strategy designed to implement this goal is called Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development has become well established in communities from Santa Cruz to Bismarck and states including California and North Dakota.
Transforming government – North Dakota and California
In North Dakota, the Consensus Council directed the drafting and lobbied for passage of the so-called “tool chest” legislation. The tools in this chest are designed in the words of the Consensus Council; “to restructure government in North Dakota.” The budding leviathan working from the brain cell at Bismarck’s Consensus Council works to take people’s property with its grassland initiatives and the Greenway on the Red program and to regionalize governance and greatly expand the scope of government power over your life and property. The tool chest includes a “Transboundary initiative” (comprehensive zoning powers given to city planning departments over land 4 miles outside city limits) and agency “joint powers” authorization. The real purpose of this tool chest is to blur local political boundaries, extend vast powers to unelected councils and subvert the principles of individual liberty.
The Sustainable roots in North Dakota, run deep. In 1987, a “consensus” process called Vision 2000 was formed. The program was lead by a Californian named Eric Hanson from the Stanford Research Institute. Mr. Erickson is noted for his proclamation that he was working to “change the world – one region at a time.” This “visioning council” was funded by the Northwest Area Foundation. (In the Monterey Bay “region” the Packard and Irvine Foundations provide consensus council’s seed money. Could it be that a clique of wealthy foundations is regionalizing control of America?)
The primary support for Vision 2000 came from the Greater North Dakota Association (Chamber of Commerce). The vision called for “Growing North Dakota” via the establishment of “public/private partnerships.” Public/Private economics necessarily destroys free enterprise because the master of business becomes the government partner not the customer. It is the system of government used by Mussolini and Hitler. The Governor of North Dakota now calls for “Smart Growth” implemented though public/private partnerships.
California non-elected regional governments are assuming huge increases in authority. Regional Water Control Boards control timber harvesting and farm management; regional associations of government control city transportation and housing policies. The Governor has released his California Performance Review (CPR) calling for the “restructure of California government.” He calls his new system “the first 21st century government in the United States.” The 2500 page report calls for the elimination or consolidation of elected offices often replacing elected officials with appointed ones, the elimination of local school boards replacing them with 10 regional boards and the elimination of county government, the core of America’s civil government system. The press is mostly quiet. There are a few press cheerleaders for this new-world form of government.
The North Dakota “tool chest” advances the Wildland project goals of Sustainable Development. The American Wildlands Project seeks the elimination of human presence (roads, utilities, irrigation, etc…) from over 50% of the American landscape. A key component to the Constitutional administration of equal justice is the local presence of a court of law. County government was formed to bring justice to the countryside. The tool chest legislation uses “efficiency” as the ostensible reason many rural counties in North Dakota will have their courts closed. But the real motive behind closing the courts is to make life increasingly difficult for the remaining few by withdrawing the local administration of justice. When justice packs up, people will not be long to follow. Closing rural county courts in North Dakota will mark one more little victory for the American Wildlands Project and one more loss for Americans.
These changes in state and local government are intended to shift the premise upon which American government is operated.
Contrasting theories of government
American premise:
The theory of the American system of government is premised on the idea that man has certain unalienable rights endowed by his creator that are natural to him because of his status as a human being. Among these natural rights is the right to a life that is one’s own. To live a life of one’s own requires the freedom to act and express oneself in accordance with one’s choosing and the right to the use, management and enjoyment of one’s property. The system of government that protects man’s equal rights to life, liberty and property, is a government with islands of legitimately delegated powers within a sea of individual or natural rights. The founders pursued this vision and framed the American system of government as a democratic Republic that strictly limited the scope of government authority. They designed a federal system of dispersed power together with a system of checks and balances in order to protect individual rights, decentralize authority and limit the opportunity for abuse by government officials.
Sustainable Development premise:
The political theory underlying Sustainable Development is that man’s actions must be controlled and managed in accordance with the global ‘freedoms and rights’ as arranged in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Article 29 Sec 3 of that document states; “In no event may the freedoms and rights be exercised contrary to the principles and policies of the United Nations. Under Sustainable Development policies your “rights are granted, withdrawn or withheld by an unseen political force that pretends to understand and pursue a global “common good.”
To achieve such a transformation of American culture and its governmental system is grandiose indeed, but not impossible.
Transforming American government – understanding a soviet system
Russia’s soviet system of government did not begin with the Russian Revolution 1917. In fact, soviet styled councils were initiated in Russia as early as 1905. They were readied for power by 1917. Across America, a system of councils with a coordinated purpose is proliferating.
A soviet is a system of councils which report to apex councils and implement a predetermined outcome. The modern process used to build a soviet system is called “consensus.” Consensus is arranged via group manipulation conducted by trained facilitators and other “change agents” charged with choosing and managing citizen involvement. Most people have filtered knowledge or no knowledge of the council’s activities. Most participants on the council are unaware of the real reason driving the council’s agenda.
The ostensible purpose of each American Sustainability council is to advance one or more of the sweet sounding “three E’s”: Equity (social justice replacing equal justice) Economics (the international redistribution of wealth and public/private partnerships in place of free enterprise) Environment (putting nature before man). Together the three E’s advance the real goal of Sustainability policy– the elimination of private property and individual liberty in order to form a global state collective.
In order to protect private property, individual liberty and equal justice, the American system of government recognizes that the basic governing unit in a system of self-governance is the family. The most power granted to civil government is delegated to the county, closest to the people, with some of its police power exercised by city governments. A lesser amount of power is delegated in state government with the least amount of power over people’s liberty assigned to the federal government. The establishment of these political boundaries is essential to the workings of the American free democratic Republic.
The emerging system of American soviet councils seeks instead to govern “regions” (nullifying political boundaries), largely directed by non-elected “sustainability” councils. In America that goal can be achieved in two ways: have the legislature grant authority to the council or have the legislature adopt the policy proposed by the council. Across the country the trigger for implementing this grandiose plan is being pulled and legislators are missing the right call. Left unexposed the paper tiger called Sustainable Development is getting close to being able to grow its tyrannical fangs.
Sustainable Development policies are infiltrating society’s institutions without much public awareness. I assert that this infiltration accounts for the rising disillusionment, confusion and division within the nation.
The Sustainable Development “Action” plans are now directly assaulting the structure of local government.
Rising to the Challenge
Not just political boundaries are being blurred in the United States. Cultural boundaries are also becoming blurred; the role and values of parents are blurred by an increasingly doctrinaire school system while the culture is being rocked by increasingly unrestrained sexual mores. Personal boundaries are being blurred by a consensus process that turns individuals into pegs in an orchestrated plan, while the boundaries provided by private property rights are under assault. Unrestrained democracy and government subsidy are creating dependency which results from abandoning the boundary of self worth. We are falling, victims of our own making while posterity’s liberty hangs in the balance.
More people are beginning to recognize that something is wrong. Many now understand the political nature of Sustainable Development and the price associated with Sustainable Development “carrots.” As one discovers the reality of today’s political-economics it may necessary to reestablish your own boundaries. Learn to understand the issue. Then spread the word.
California, for all its magnificent potential, is a difficult place to muster the necessary light to shine on my state’s well established soviet. The money and global focus on transforming California is amazing. Federal and state treasuries have been raided. California and federal legislatures and executive branches are mostly in lock step with Sustainable Developers. In California political corruption and the number of victims of Sustainable Development policies are on the rise.
North Dakota with its citizen legislators, Midwest ethics, small population and base of people who already understand Sustainable Development may be ripe for organizing public awareness around the choice between Liberty and Sustainable Development. After all, the axiom that tells us that our liberty and riches are lost when our boundaries are blurred and treasury raided, only proceeds upon our failure to lift our wings, or make a peep.
Our civic duty has been challenged. Lift your wing; make a peep; hold your ground. Don’t let the Consensus Council’s tool chest transform North Dakota into a regional soviet.
North Dakotans can get started by repealing the Sustainable Developer’s “tool chest” legislation.
In December 2004 Michael Shaw, representing Freedom 21 Santa Cruz [now Freedom Advocates] http://www.freedomadvocates.org, met with citizens and legislators in Bismarck North Dakota to examine Sustainable Development policies. He also gave the keynote address to the Landowners Association of North Dakota (LAND) with a talk entitled “Liberty or Sustainable Development.” Michael Shaw is an Abundance Ecologist and is proprietor of Liberty Garden, www.LibertyGarden.com.
Copyright 2005, Freedom 21 Santa Cruz.
