The all-​​seeing eye is more malev­o­lent than we thought. Still from the video “Agenda 21 for Dummies”.

Belief in a shad­owy con­spir­acy of pow­er­ful men and women who are try­ing to take over the world is a meme that won’t die. My first expe­ri­ence with this brand of polit­i­cal belief was in a men’s bath­room stall in the Nor­lin Library at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado, Boul­der. There, I first learned of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion’s plan to vapor­ize my cher­ished Amer­i­can freedoms.

Fear of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion peaked 30 years ago, and now it’s mostly a quasi-​​historical odd­ity, but that doesn’t mean they’ve given up try­ing to con­trol you.

The lat­est ver­sion of this ever­green meme is the cur­rent brouhaha over Agenda 21 which has inflamed the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee and sev­eral state par­ties, includ­ing Georgia’s.

Agenda 21 is a non-​​binding tooth­less state­ment of fairly gen­eral prin­ci­ples for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment adopted by the United Nations in 1992. The “21” in the title refers to the 21st century.

The peo­ple who wrote Agenda 21 are tricky. This may sound like the usual admin­is­tra­tive pablum to you, but buddy, it’s packed with all sorts of action items:

Sci­en­tific knowl­edge should be applied to artic­u­late and sup­port the goals of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, through sci­en­tific assess­ments of cur­rent con­di­tions and future prospects for the Earth sys­tem. Such assess­ments, based on exist­ing and emerg­ing inno­va­tions within the sci­ences, should be used in the decision-​​making process and in the inter­ac­tive processes between the sci­ences and policy-​​making. There needs to be an increased out­put from the sci­ences in order to enhance under­stand­ing and facil­i­tate inter­ac­tion between sci­ence and society.

A stir­ring call to arms, rem­i­nis­cent of Shake­speare chan­nel­ing Henry V’s St. Crispin’s day speech to the troops at Agin­court. “Should be! Needs to be!” Makes the pulse race, doesn’t it?

That’s because you’re not see­ing the larger pic­ture. From the first linked video:

Sus­tain­able devel­op­ment is the phi­los­o­phy designed to bring human beings across the globe under the full con­trol of a nar­row human élite.

Or take this quote, from a res­o­lu­tion adopted by the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee in Jan­u­ary and to be intro­duced as a plat­form plank at the Repub­li­can National Convention:

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is a com­pre­hen­sive plan of extreme envi­ron­men­tal­ism, social engi­neer­ing, and global polit­i­cal con­trol that was ini­ti­ated at the United Nations Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­ment and Devel­op­ment (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992; and,

WHEREAS, the United Nations Agenda 21 is being covertly pushed into local com­mu­ni­ties through­out the United States of Amer­ica through the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil of Local Envi­ron­men­tal Ini­tia­tives (ICLEI) through local “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” poli­cies such as Smart Growth, Wild­lands Project, Resilient Cities, Regional Vision­ing Projects, and other “Green” or “Alter­na­tive” projects; and

WHEREAS, this United Nations Agenda 21 plan of rad­i­cal so-​​called “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment” views the Amer­i­can way of life of pri­vate prop­erty own­er­ship, sin­gle fam­ily homes, pri­vate car own­er­ship and indi­vid­ual travel choices, and pri­vately owned farms; all as destruc­tive to the environment…

It’s like the shad­owy attempt to impose sharia law. The brave citizen-​​legislators of Okla­homa tried to fight it, but the Fed­eral courts over­turned that mea­sure and sided with the Mus­lims try­ing to take over the domain of civil law in this country.

Like the brave leg­is­la­ture of Okla­homa, fight­ing an implaca­ble foe, law­mak­ers of the State of Alabama have rec­og­nized this threat and begun the fight against it. Sen­ate Bill 477, passed through a Repub­li­can leg­is­la­ture and signed into law by Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Robert Bent­ley, states:

The State of Alabama and all polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sions may not adopt or imple­ment pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions that delib­er­ately or inad­ver­tently infringe or restrict pri­vate prop­erty rights with­out due process, as may be required by pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions orig­i­nat­ing in, or trace­able to “Agenda 21″…

(And note that the words “Agenda 21″ fall on the 21st line of the bill. Puz­zling evi­dence.)

As The Econ­o­mist’s “Democ­racy in Amer­ica” blog puts it,

Agenda 21 was rous­ingly con­demned at the state Repub­li­can con­fer­ence last month as “an encroach­ment on our sov­er­eignty” (which it might be if it were enforce­able, bind­ing, or actu­ally did any­thing). And [Bill Byrne], a for­mer can­di­date for gov­er­nor now run­ning for com­mis­sioner of Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, con­demned plans to build a jog­ging and bik­ing trail along­side a high­way because, “That’s Agenda 21. Bicy­cles and pedes­trian traf­fic as an alter­na­tive form of trans­porta­tion to the auto­mo­bile.” Hear that, hip­pies? Every time you walk or bike some­where instead of dri­ving your car, U Thant wins.

Google Trends graph of searches for the term “Agenda 21″

The Agenda 21 meme gained its pop­u­lar­ity in mid-​​2011, accord­ing to a graph of Google searches. It’s also inter­est­ing to spec­u­late on the geo­graphic dis­tri­b­u­tion: Ster­ling, VA and Mil­pi­tas, CA are the #1 and #2 cities search­ing for Agenda 21.

The #1 state for “Agenda 21″ searches is Mon­tana, by a wide mar­gin. Ten­nessee is #2, but states rank­ing 2 through 10 are in a vir­tual tie.

The Agenda 21 con­spir­acy meme is really not much dif­fer­ent that the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion meme, which is not much dif­fer­ent than the Bilderberg/​Illuminati meme which is not much dif­fer­ent than the Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion meme.

Agenda 21 fears (eikosieino­pho­bia?) seem to be a smooth con­tin­u­a­tion of this ever­green idea, con­sis­tently pro­moted by the John Birch Soci­ety and other groups, warn­ing us of impend­ing doom.

This graph com­pares the num­ber of “Agenda 21″ searches to the num­ber of “Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion”, “Bilder­berg” and “Illu­mi­nati” searches.

The Illu­mi­nati win. So far, it has been the only thing they’ve won. Since these sup­pos­edly pow­er­ful groups have been at it for so long, you think they’d have achieved their desired objec­tive, The One World Order, long before now.

Cecil Adams said about the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion con­spir­acy the­ory in his “Straight Dope” col­umn:

Among true believ­ers, opin­ions about what the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion is up to fall roughly into two cat­e­gories: the merely dubi­ous and the totally insane.

It reminds me of my father’s favorite joke. A man is stand­ing on a street cor­ner in a busy U.S. city, scream­ing at the top of his lungs. A police­man asks him, “Why are you stand­ing on a street cor­ner in this busy U.S. city, scream­ing at the top of your lungs?” The man says, “To keep the tigers away.” The police­man replies, “That’s silly, sir. There are no tigers for thou­sands of miles.” To which the scream­ing man replies, glee­fully, “See what a good job I’m doing!”

I, for one, appre­ci­ate the won­der­ful job the John Birch Soci­ety is doing at keep­ing the tigers (and sharia law and Agenda 21) at bay.

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