Posted on 08/25/2002 12:03:29 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Nearly four years ago, a group of freedom-loving organizations met in Washington, D.C., to organize the Freedom 21 Campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to "Advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century."
At its first national conference, leaders from dozens of grassroots organizations adopted the Principles of Freedom, based on the founding documents of the United States.
At its second national conference, the grassroots leaders launched an initiative to develop a more comprehensive document which sets forth very specific policy recommendations to advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century, as an alternative to the U.N.'s "Agenda 21."
Dr. Michael Coffman, CEO of Sovereignty International, and David Rothbard, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, are leading a delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, to share this document with the delegates.
They will not be allowed to officially present these ideas to the assembly, since the U.N. controls the agenda with an iron fist. They will, however, be able to unofficially share the document with delegates between sessions and in private conversations, and direct them to the website where the document is available to the world.
At the third national conference of the Freedom 21 Campaign, leaders of more than 50 grassroots organizations from 34 states adopted the Sawgrass Rebellion as a high-priority project to demonstrate how the principles of freedom should be applied to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan to prevent further expansion of the Wildlands Project which has the effect of expanding wilderness, by flooding private landowners off their land.
The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is a classic example of how the machinery of sustainable development works to drive people off the land through policies that are developed by non-government organizations and government agencies, with little or no input from the people who are most affected by those policies.
The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife Fund all maintain paid staff who sit on advisory and "stakeholder" councils, who attend every meeting of every agency to lobby for their vision of wilderness utopia. Land owners, on the other hand, work for a living. Their organizations do not receive multi-million-dollar grants from the government, and are run by volunteers, who donate time after work.
Consequently, the "restoration" plan is devised, and well on its way toward implementation before many of the affected people even become aware that the plan will displace them. The same procedure is followed in communities across the country. Small volunteer groups of land owners and resource users are unable to compete with the sophisticated tactics, and well-funded full-time staffs of the professional environmentalists.
Few people realize that these same environmental organizations actually participated in the development of the international policies that are now being implemented in Florida, and across the country. The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society funded Dr. Reed Noss' writing of the "Wildlands Project." All of the organizations listed above are members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – the International NGO that drafted the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as most of the other international environmental treaties.
All of these organizations will be well represented in Johannesburg at the WSSD, lobbying the delegates to take more dramatic action to "save the world" from exploitation by humans.
All of these organizations are well represented in South Florida, and in virtually every community where the Wildlands Project and Smart Growth are exploiting the private property rights of free Americans. All of these organizations draw heavily from the U.S. taxpayers who unwittingly fund their operations through federal and state government grants, in addition to voluntary contributions and membership dues.
The American people are growing weary of the relentless pressure applied by these organizations, and their friends within government agencies. People are beginning to recognize that the land-control measures in their community are only a part of a national, and indeed, an international effort to transform the world into a global village controlled by the environmentally enlightened elite, through the agencies of global, national, state and local governments.
As Americans discover what is happening, they are saying no! No way! They are saying that it is time to rediscover the principles of freedom on which this nation was founded. They are saying "we've had enough" of this environmental extremism that burns our forests, denies water to Klamath farmers in favor of a sucker fish, while flooding Florida farmers into oblivion to save a sparrow that no one has ever seen.
In numbers that grow every day, Americans are rejecting "Agenda 21" in favor of Freedom 21 – and are willing to stand up and be counted – especially on election day.
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