The Craziest Right Wing Outrage You Have Probably Never Heard Of
Tea Party Activists Fight Agenda 21, Seeing Threatening U.N. Plot
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Tea Party activist Judd Saul admits that he can sound a little unhinged when he gets talking about an issue close to his heart that most Americans have never heard of.
“Agenda 21 is an elusive enemy that floats in and chokes you gradually,” said Saul, of the Cedar Valley Tea Party in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “They want to destroy the middle-class way of life.”
“Agenda 21 aims to undermine your property rights and force you” to live in cities, Jake Robinson told Tea Party members at a meeting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in April.
For Joe Dugan, leader of the Myrtle Beach Tea Party in South Carolina, “Agenda 21 is nothing short of treason.”
If you don’t know what Agenda 21 is, you’re not alone - only about 15 percent of Americans do. It is a nonbinding U.N. resolution signed by more than 170 world leaders (including Republican U.S. President George H.W. Bush) at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro as a way to promote sustainable development in the face of a rapidly growing global population.
A small percentage of Americans say it is an attack on their very existence - part of a grand conspiracy to take away their gun rights, destroy suburbia and turn America into a modern-day Soviet state.
At a local level across the country, conservative activists linked to the Tea Party movement have rallied around the cause of blocking development they say is part of the conspiracy.
Kim Simac, a member of the Northwoods Patriots in northern Wisconsin, believes a local sustainable development plan will shut down her horse-riding school because her business takes up more land than the plan allows for. Heather Gass says she has been fighting sustainable development plans in the San Francisco area that she says will include hefty road tolls and deliberately drive up gas prices “because they want to force us out of our cars.”
“It sounds crazy, but it’s true,” she added.
I admit this is the first time I have heard of “Agenda 21” but it doesn’t sound any more awful than mandatory vaccinations and fluoridated water. We actually have a “sustainability” proposal on our state ballot and the wingnuts have been seething with mass mailings and TV ads. Of course I am voting YES.
