Here is an example of the absolute irrationality and lunacy of right-wingers. Ignorance combined with paranoia and hate are a toxic coctail, and right-wingers seem to drink that cocktail regularly:
At the conclusion of the June 3-14, 1992, United Nations Conference on Environment & Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, President George H.W. Bush and the leaders of 177 other nations signed a document known as Agenda 21. At the time it was seen as a perfectly sensible planning paper, a nonbinding statement of intent aimed at dealing with sustainability on an increasingly crowded planet.
That’s the introduction to a report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “AGENDA 21, The UN, Sustainability and Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory“.
Agenda 21 is not a treaty. It has no force of law, no enforcement mechanisms, no penalties, and no significant funcing. It is not even a top-down recommendation, seeking instead to encourage communities around the world to come up with their own solutions to overpopulation, pollution, poverty and resource depletion. It is a feel-good guide that cannot force anyone, anywhere, to do anything at all.
Yet Alabama has passed a law meant to outlaw any effects of the plan. The legislatures of Kansas, New Hampshire and Tennessee all passed state resolutions condemning it…
In communities like Carroll County, Md., politicians have been voted out of office for supporting local plans. In Baldwin County, Ala., all nine members of the Planning and Zoning Commission quit in disgust after the County Commission killed their plan “on a pretext so devoid of relevance and merit as, in our opinion, to elicit only ridicule,” as they wrote.
This relatively innocuous document became the rallying point for right-wing lunacy and hate. The Birchers began the attack and were soon followed in the battle of fools by Republican politicians, who claimed it was part of a “new world order”.
The demonization of Agenda 21 began among extremist groups like the John Birch Society, the same outfit that was effectively ejected from the conservative movement after accusing [Republican] President Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a communist agent.
Numerous Republican politicians joined in the ignorant and maniacal condemnation of Agenda 21, creating widespread alarm — particularly among the right-wing borg.
Read the report. It’s astonishing.
