Sustainable nightmare to plague Napa CountyBy Kevin Eggers | Posted: Sunday, July 11, 2010 12:00 am Napa Valley Register
It’s been over three years since Napa County Supervisor Bill Dodd told me Agenda 21 was the plan for Napa County. Agenda 21 is the blueprint for implementing the United Nations (U.N.) Sustainable Development goals for “Economy, Equity and Environment.” These U.N. goals are in the Napa County General Plan. The U.N. continues to sell Agenda 21 as a sustainable utopian dream for Earth’s future, but Agenda 21 will be a sustainable nightmare for Napa County.
When I researched U.N. Agenda 21’s website and read related documents and articles in 2006, it was obvious the laws and regulations to meet Agenda 21’s international requirements were going to gradually smother our freedoms. Thinking I was doing the right thing, I hand-delivered Michael Shaw’s “Understanding Sustainable Development (Agenda 2l): A Guide for Public Officials” to Supervisor Dodd’s office in October 2006. Shaw was a member of the Agenda 21 bureaucracy in Santa Cruz, and described the scope of sustainable development in his guide. I was warning Dodd because we were already conversing about stopping Measure I. Dodd wasn’t in his office when I arrived, but Shaw’s guide was left on Dodd’s desk with a note from me. The next morning when Dodd called, I was shocked when he told me Agenda 21 was already the plan for Napa County. Until Dodd told me, I had no idea Agenda 21 existed in Napa County. Since then, I’ve done more research and learned from citizens exposing Agenda 21 in other communities.
I recently visited Niki Raapana, an expert on communitarianism, who has collected over 10,000 documents relating to communitarianism and Agenda 21. Communitarianism is the collectivist philosophy behind most of our government’s policies, including Agenda 21. While discussing how the health care bill passed, former president Bill Clinton said on ABC News that America is “more communitarian” than in 1994.
Communitarianism calls for “balancing the rights of the individual with the rights of the community.” Public officials decide what “community rights” are, which are really their goals. By convincing citizens, “we’re doing it for the community,” public officials believe they can balance away our constitutionally protected rights (through laws and regulations) to accomplish their goals. Raapana became aware of Communitarianism when Seattle officials were telling Raapana that America had “evolved” and her Fourth Amendment rights had been balanced against the rights of the community. Napa County’s General Plan also calls for balancing “the rights of the individual with those of the community.”
Agenda 21 is rarely called Agenda 21 and is usually called some kind of “community vision for the future” — they want citizens to believe their community plan was developed within their own community, not from U.N. guidelines. When Raapana confronted Seattle officials in 1999, she was labeled a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting Seattle’s plan was U.N. Local Agenda 21. Originally denying it, now Seattle City Council member Margaret Pageler (who Raapana confronted in 1999) states on her website how Seattle’s plan “parallels Local Agenda 21.”
The Spokane Patriots (The Action-Driven Tea Party) discovered Agenda 21 in their city. The Spokane Patriots went through the legal process and are obtaining the nessessary signatures to get U.N.-connected organizations (and U.N. directives) on the ballot in November, to vote them out. This hasn’t deterred Spokane’s City Council that voted June 28 to adopt “sustainable development” as Spokane’s goal for the future.
Rosa Koire, a Santa Rosa resident, is a Democrat whose partner Kay was president of the largest neighborhood association in Santa Rosa. Koire discovered firsthand how government-sponsored “neighborhood associations” are being used to “create the illusion of community buy-in.” According to Koire, “The government wants citizen buy-in, but they actually manage it by creating their own government-sponsored neighborhood associations and then manufacture consent.”
Raapana also discovered how neighborhood associations “rule the community by consensus.”
Do neighborhood associations influence Napa’s consensus? Are they connected to Agenda 21? According to the Village Napa website, Napa City council member Peter Mott helped form a coordinating committee called Association of Napa Neighborhoods, which is “to assist and mutually coordinate neighborhood associations.” Village Napa describes how to organize your neighborhood. Village Napa also boasts how Cuba is the only country to meet the “minimum standards” for “sustainable development” and how Cuba is a “model of sustainability for the rest of the world.”
What freedom do Cubans have in their “model of sustainability?” According to Wikipedia, Cuba is guided by the ideas of “ ... Marx, Engels and Lenin.” Cuba’s constitution describes the Communist Party of Cuba as the “leading force of society and the state.” Cuba has a “state-controlled planned economy.” Cuba’s government “represses nearly all forms of dissent” and systematically denies nearly every “basic right.” Are these the lofty goals of Napa County’s Agenda 21 Sustainable Development plan?
Significant websites: Rosa Koire: www.santarosaneighborhoodcoalition.com; Niki Raapana: www.nord.twu.net/acl; Michael Shaw: www.freedomadvocates.org; and Spokane Patriots: www.spokanepatriots.com.
(Eggers lives in Napa.)
After months of emails and phone calls, Kevin and his wife came to visit me this past May. It was a short visit and all we did was talk. He told me he uses our book,
2020: Our Common Destiny in his speeches and presentations about UN Local Agenda 21 in Napa County, California. He brings copies of Etzioni's book and ours to show there are two underlying opposing arguments. He tries to make it clear that communitarianism is not the perfect solution to the conflict between the left and the right. He shows there is well referenced opposition.
When Marx said the final solution to all the Hegelian conflicts would be so perfect it gives rise to no opposition, he meant all opposition would be silenced. Our ACL arguments against the perfect solution
prove it is not perfect, and that is why our arguments can never enter the (non-existent) national debates. That Kevin has managed to introduce the core opposition issue to Napa County is nothing short of a miracle. Of course it's possible most residents who read the
Napa Valley Register have had no training or education in logic or critical thinking; this will make it somewhat difficult for them to identify fallacious reasoning. But, Americans can still see b.s. if they take the time to absorb the communitarian arguments for "community government."
This response to Egger's letter to the editor is a perfect example of how communitarians think. It's also revealing that the
Napa Valley Register labeled the response an "alternative approach to communitarianism," when in fact the letter perfectly describes the communitarian synthesis!
The bottom line here is the communitarians think Americans are so stupid they will fall for this:
An alternative approach to communitarianism "This model combines elements of the libertarian and communist philosophy."
By Alex Shantz | Posted: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 Napa Valley Register
On July 11, Kevin Eggers wrote a scathing article against communitarianism entitled “Sustainable nightmare to plague Napa County.”
Eggers states that communitarianism is a philosophy whereby individual rights are balanced with community rights. He then goes on to claim that “public officials decide what ‘community rights’ are.” It is presumed that under communitarianism (or likely any collective situation according to Eggers), community rights are determined by public officials rather than the people. This isn’t necessarily the case.
Allow me to put forth an alternative model. People gather collectively and autonomously, independent from any public official, to form their own associations. The people within these associations can structure their associations however they want. Perhaps some associations will have a voting system to elect leaders to make decisions. Perhaps some associations will have people vote on every decision made. Perhaps other associations will be entirely consensus based.
The functions of these associations would be to facilitate the process whereby people’s needs are met, conflicts are resolved and resources are combined and allocated.
This model combines elements of the libertarian and communist philosophy. It is libertarian in the sense that this model is radically decentralized.
The state would be entirely eliminated from the picture. Communities would be truly localized and entirely autonomous. However, this model would also be communist insofar as it would be a stateless and classless situation in which every individual would have equal say within the decision-making process.
The libertarian element would ensure that individual needs and desires are not overlooked by valuing autonomy while the communist element would offer a support system to alleviate certain burdens from the individual. This model could be described as libertarian communism or even anarcho-collectivism. {link added by niki}
Most importantly, and to dispute Eggers’ point, this model would necessitate the people determine the rights of the community rather then public officials.
While sustainability practices limit the individual freedoms in places like Cuba or Europe, it is not the philosophy of sustainability that is at fault, but the big government which oppresses the people.
Agenda 21 is merely an advisory plan, not a blueprint to Cuban-style statism. Need I add that there are thousands of people in Napa Valley that would fight to prevent a dictatorship from occurring in our cities?
To end on a personal note: in many regards I wish to see the Tea Party as allies. Their rhetoric claims to critique tyrannical government. However, they are inconsistent in terms of applying their critique of tyranny to corporations. Furthermore, their rugged individualist ideal undermines any notion of community.
A new generation is rising up. This generation is calling for an end to the tyranny of government and corporations while emphasizing the need for autonomous collectivism.
(Shantz lives in Napa.)
Notice Shantz uses ZERO references in his rebuttal letter, whereas Eggers gives numerous citations. Readers are to believe Shantz because...... well... just because.
Communitarians loosely base their autonomous collectivism on British/Dutch Imperialism, Fascism, Nazism, Marxism, Kibbutzim, the Kaballah, Gaia, Dagon, the Talmud and Christianity. They always insist America's rugged individualism is the big barrier to global communitarian peace and justice. But "rugged individualism" is just a replacement term for the U.S. Bill of Rights, which defines the LEGAL rights of individuals. Communitarian plans, programs, policies and Executive Orders change US Rule of Law into
Global Communitarian Law.
Shantz does tell the truth about how communitarianism combines elements of libertarianism and communism. For this he could have cited numerous communitarian books by A. Etzioni and his followers. Hell, he could have cited our
Anti Communitarian Manifesto to prove this point.
Shantz's biggest lie about communitarianism and LA21: "People gather collectively and autonomously, independent from any public official, to form their own associations. " There is absolutely zero evidence that one neighborhood meeting in the USA that planned a vision for the community's future based on sustainable development and LA21 was not started by communitarian agents for change. Most Americans still do not even know these meetings are taking place. This is nation taking by stealth and lies, and the less people know about it the better the comms' chances for successfully merging the United Soviet States of Russia & America with Cuba, China, the EU, the UK and Israel.
LA 21 Plans exist for every nation in the world.
Notice Shantz never once addresses the fact that if sustainable development and LA21 were legitimate plans then the American people would have been asked to vote on adopting such dramatic and unconstitutional changes. Instead, because it's a total lie, these plans were introduced and passed across America by little groups of communitarians like Shantz.
Shantz claims, exactly like the theory of communism does, that once everyone agrees to adopt their noble collectivist principles, "The state would be entirely eliminated from the picture." Did anyone notice the Russians or the Chinese eliminating the State from the picture, even after they eliminated all the opposition? When did Castro hand over his power to the "people?"
Did anyone notice how many "former" KGB agents and Chinese police chiefs are training American police in communitarian policing these days?Why didn't Shantz use what communism did for Cambodia in the 1970s as an example?
Where is there one shred of evidence that communist leaders eliminate their state power once they gain power? They don't. It doesn't exist. But gee, maybe... since millions already fell for that lie... and the rest were shot... millions more will keep falling for it. Right Shantz?
