Posted on 05/19/2015 7:18:43 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Top Vatican adviser Jeffrey Sachs says that when Pope Francis visits the United States in September, he will directly challenge the “American idea” of God-given rights embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.
The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication, America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”
In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.
Sachs takes aim at the phrase, which comes from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These rights sound good, Sachs writes, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us. Global government, he suggests, must make us live our lives according to international standards of development.
“In the United States,” Sachs writes, “we learn that the route to happiness lies in the rights of the individual. By throwing off the yoke of King George III, by unleashing the individual pursuit of happiness, early Americans believed they would achieve that happiness. Most important, they believed that they would find happiness as individuals, each endowed by the creator with individual rights.”
While he says there is some “grandeur in this idea,” such rights “are only part of the story, only one facet of our humanity.”
The Sachs view is that global organizations such as the U.N. must dictate the course of nations and individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good. One aspect of this unfolding plan, as outlined in the Sachs book, The End of Poverty, involves extracting billions of dollars from the American people through global taxes.
“We will need, in the end, to put real resources in support of our hopes,” he wrote. “A global tax on carbon-emitting fossil fuels might be the way to begin. Even a very small tax, less than that which is needed to correct humanity’s climate-deforming overuse of fossil fuels, would finance a greatly enhanced supply of global public goods.” Sachs has estimated the price tag for the U.S. at $845 billion.
In preparation for this direct assault on our rights, the American nation-state, and our founding document, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon told a Catholic Caritas International conference in Rome on May 12 that climate change is “the defining challenge of our time,” and that the solution lies in recognizing that “ humankind is part of nature, not separate or above.”
The pope’s expected encyclical on climate change is supposed to help mobilize the governments of the world in this crusade.
But a prestigious group of scholars, churchmen, scientists, economists and policy experts has issued a detailed rebuttal, entitled, “An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Climate Change,” pointing out that the Bible tells man to have dominion over the earth.
“Good climate policy must recognize human exceptionalism, the God-given call for human persons to ‘have dominion’ in the natural world (Genesis 1:28), and the need to protect the poor from harm, including actions that hinder their ascent out of poverty,” the letter to Pope Francis states.
Released by a group called the Cornwall Alliance, the letter urges the Vatican to consider the evidence that climate change is largely natural, that the human contribution is comparatively small and not dangerous, and that attempting to mitigate the human contribution by reducing CO2 emissions “would cause more harm than good, especially to the world’s poor.”
The Heartland Institute held a news conference on April 27 at the Hotel Columbus in Rome, to warn the Vatican against embracing the globalist agenda of the climate change movement. The group is hosting the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, D.C. on June 11-12.
However, it appears as if the Vatican has been captured by the globalist forces associated with Sachs and the United Nations.
Voice of the Family, a group representing pro-life and pro-family Catholic organizations from around the world, has taken issue not only with the Vatican’s involvement with Sachs but with Ban Ki Moon, describing the two as “noted advocates of abortion who operate at the highest levels of the United Nations.” Sachs has been described as “arguably the world’s foremost proponent of population control,” including abortion.
Voice of the Family charges that environmental issues such as climate change have become “an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family.”
Although Sachs likes to claim he was an adviser to Pope John Paul II, the noted anti-communist and pro-life pontiff, Sachs simply served as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the release of a papal document.
In fact, Pope John Paul II had worked closely with the Reagan administration in opposition to communism and the global population control movement. He once complained that a U.N. conference on population issues was designed to “destroy the family” and was the “snare of the devil.”
Pope Francis, however, seems to have embraced the very movements opposed by John Paul II.
Sachs, who has emerged as a very influential Vatican adviser, recently tweeted that he was “thrilled” to be at the Vatican “discussing moral dimensions of climate change and sustainable development.” The occasion was a Vatican workshop on global warming on April 28, 2015, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Roman Catholic Church. Sachs was a featured speaker.
The plan going forward involves the launching of what are called “Sustainable Development Goals,” as envisioned by a Sustainable Development Solutions Network run by none other than Jeffrey Sachs.
“The Network has proposed draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which contain provisions that are radically antagonistic to the right to life from conception to natural death, to the rights and dignity of the family and to the rights of parents as the primary educators of their children,” states the group Voice of the Family.
In July, a Financing for Development conference will be held, in order to develop various global tax proposals, followed by a conference in Paris in December to complete a new climate change agreement.
Before that December conference, however, Sachs says the pope will call on the world at the United Nations to join the crusade for a New World Order.
Sachs says, “Pope Francis will come to the United States and the United Nations in New York on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, and at the moment when the world’s 193 governments are resolved to take a step in solidarity toward a better world. On Sept. 25, Pope Francis will speak to the world leaders—most likely the largest number of assembled heads of state and government in history—as these leaders deliberate to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals for the coming generation. These goals will be a new worldwide commitment to build a world that aims to harmonize the pursuit of economic prosperity with the commitments to social inclusion and environmental sustainability.”
Rather than emphasize the absolute need for safeguarding individual rights in the face of government overreach and power, Sachs writes that the Gospel teachings of humility, love and justice, “like the teachings of Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius,” can take us on a “path to happiness through compassion” and “become our guideposts back to safety.”
Writing elsewhere in the new issue of America, Christiana Z. Peppard, an assistant professor of theology, science and ethics at Fordham University, writes about the “planetary pope,” saying, “What is really at stake in the collective response to the pope’s encyclical is not, ultimately, whether our treasured notions of theology, science, reality or development can accommodate moral imperatives. The real question is whether we are brave enough and willing to try.”
The plan is quite simple: world government through global taxes, with a religious face to bring it about.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
The people (seems less so each day) of U.S.A. have outmoded ideas of individual liberty and economic freedom… that must be discarded... so we (and mainly our wealth) can join (surrender) the world collective. Global autocrat overlords will then redistribute wealth “fairly” to all (themselves first of course!). Fair??? Or totalitarian rule by the hyper 1%?
“From each according to their means (you DON’T OWN what you produce!)... to each according to their needs” (You DON’T get to DECIDE your “needs”... that will be done for you, by those who know “best”!)
We need to get out of the United Nations. Their crazy ideas to impoverish America won’t last long when THEY(All of the Communist Countries and Dictatorships who hate us) have to foot the bill. WHY do we pay almost a quarter of the U.N. expenses when we are just paying for our own demise?
The path to happiness may indeed lie through justice and charity, but the Christian tradition is that making things like “charity” compulsory ... isn’t really charity.
What the Declaration of independence and Constitution do is enshrine the ability of the individual to make such choices for themselves. Which is very much in keeping with the New Testament and Christ’s teachings on how to reach Salvation.
I don’t like commies, whether he decks out in a dress and calls himself “Pope” or whether he claims intellectual and moral superiority to give himself more rights than me, demand that I submit to his views, and hand over my assets. The US is NOT creating most of the problems of so-called “sustainability” of this world. The Pope and this clown are nothing more than con artists trying to coerce us into a life of slavery.
The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate, because his power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind, without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, torments, nothing of that nature can have any such efficacy as to make men change the inward judgment that they have framed of things.
Call it what you will, they are behind schedule and pushing hard for Global Totalitarianism.
.... These rights sound good, but they’re not enough to guarantee the outcome the global elites have devised for us....
North Korea is the benchmark for these ‘global elite’ fascists.
Just another ignorant jackass.
*comment cannot be posted due to graphic content, viewer discretion is advised* -and the horse he rode in on with a splintered telephone pole!
The Pope is a leftist leader of an entirely false religion. FUPF.
It seems to me it is the Opium of the “Intellectuals” we have to fear. Raymond Aron said it best, “The Opium of the Intellectuals in postwar France was Marxism.” This “Pope” is totally opposed to the freedom loving John Paul II. He needs to be made aware that America does not welcome his ideas. Sachs needs to be discredited.
"'. . . path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”
All of which, in the founding view, were best achieved by individuals, acting freely, and not by some coercively imposed collective vision of the meaning of "justice" and "charity."
Thomas Jefferson, that former President the Left loves to quote when they try to exclude references to "God" from the public square, wrote extensively about the superiority of the philosophy of Jesus, but we never hear about that from the Left.
The same Jefferson who penned our Declaration of Independence wrote that Jesus "preached philanthropy and universal charity and benevolence," that "a system of morals is presented to us [by Jesus], which, if filled up in the style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."
He wrote, "His moral doctrines...were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers...and they went far beyond both in inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants, and common aids" which, Jefferson said, "will evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all others."
Comparing the Hebrew code which, according to Jefferson, "laid hold of actions only," "He [Jesus] pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head."
That Jefferson cut out the statements which could be directly attributable to Jesus, pasted them into a little book which he kept by his bed and read from them daily, attests to the fact that his political philosphy may have been influenced by what he considered to be the superiority of the "philosophy" of Jesus.
It is unlikely that any person alive today, including the current President, has read the writings of as many of the great philosophers as Jefferson. His talents and abilities were legend. His devotion to liberty and to the ideas essential to liberty were based on simple principles, some of which, undoubtedly, came from his understanding of the basic law underlying all valid human law: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." As Jefferson stated it, "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him."
Jefferson seemed to understand that the philosophy capsulated in those ideas has the power to make people in a society more benevolent, more loving, more caring, and more willing to take care of each other voluntarily.
There is a sharp contrast between a philosophy of love exercised freely by citizens in a society, and the politics of hate which motivate those who utilize semantic tricks to spout platitudes in order to gain and accumulate power to themselves over their fellow human beings.
A “climate change encyclical?”
This is a bit too much of Church combining with State for me.
It’s one thing to foster charity, it’s another thing to make slaves of the productive in the name of Gaia.
The Pope has to be out of his depth here, scientifically speaking.
Jeffrey Sachs is merely another low-level writer attempting to raise ideas that he and the left want people to believe. In other words, he simply perverts the truth.
Be aware and awake people! Jeffery, groups of pseudo-academics, and the so-called journalists of our time all seem to be working together to promote a huge concert of misinformation. They are that desperate for approval! They blatantly attempt the use of bandwagon technique to persuade.
What a shame that we have a large segment of the citizenry that is so GULLIBLE!!!!
;-p
I’ll get the tree.
I’ll add this: if Francis decides to come here and really promote this line of thinking, I think it’s going to be a HUGE strategic mistake on his part.
Many American Catholics are already ignoring RCC teachings, doctrine, dogma on a whole host of issues related to individual choice, liberty and freedom (like birth control). I’m not sure the best way to put the brakes on that, let alone convince them to come back into any sort of compliance, is to advocate for more collectivism where the Church and Government are working/orcestrating in concert. Particularly on the enforcement end.
I don't particularly care for Jeffrey Sachs, or his opinions.
5.56mm
I don’t believe his claims.
_______________________
....which demonstrates that your intelligence quotient is above average for these days.
:-)
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