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Communitarianism and Civil Society by Niki Raapana The
following is a speech delivered to "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." I never imagined, when I memorized Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in the fifth grade, that someday I would be quoting from it in a real speech, at a 21st century political convention for a party conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men have equal rights and responsibilities. But, because of my random selection and unauthorized placement in a Department of Justice pilot test, I am compelled to come here today to honor Lincoln's words. He wrote, "we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I had to come here today, because Lincoln's "government of the people" is degenerating into a community consensus, and the individual rights of the people are almost extinct. I've been told, repeatedly, that the word "communitarianism" is just too obscure to merit discussion, because nobody knows or cares what it is. But, I've been studying the communitarians for 2 years, ever since my neighborhood became the pilot test for the enforcement of new communitarian laws. Third Way government programs eliminate the right to privacy in the home; I live in the pilot test that is testing warrantless searches, so for me, the meaning of the word communitarianism is not obscure in the least. What is communitarianism? Communitarianism is the theory that individual freedoms have weakened the bonds of community, and that as a result, individual rights must be balanced against the more moral interests of the community. They never explain exactly what the interests of the community are, but they do insist they use a "more moral set of values" to create communities, compared to the selfishly motivated immorality our forefathers used to write The Bill of Rights. The communitarians insist the best way to foster the "new morality" is through neighborhood associations, small groups of unelected, "concerned citizens" who rule the community by consensus. They claim the new community government is more democratic than democracy. The communitarians insist our government can no longer protect and maintain individual rights. How did this happen? Back in the early 70's, a small group of modern sociologists came into existence as an elite Washington D.C. government think tank. Led by Professor Amiati Etzioni at George Washington University, the founding endorsers of the communitarian manifesto now hold key positions in the White House, the US Congress, and at most American Universities involved in government policy research. Amitai Etzioni advised President's Carter, Reagan, and Clinton, and now he has seven additional communitarian thinkers helping him advise George Bush Jr. But I'm almost positive Lincoln would never have said, "four score and seven years ago, communitarian thinkers brought forth upon this continent a newer, more moral nation, conceived in elitism, and dedicated to the proposition that common men are created to be targeted, mapped, analyzed and identified by the community government as potential human assets, addicts, abusers, or criminals." The Communitarian Preamble says that the rights of individuals can not long be preserved without a communitarian perspective. They arrogantly dismiss the fact that two hundred years of jurisprudence in this country has resulted in hundreds of landmark cases defining the proper boundaries of government action. American law has already established when the individual's interest in privacy outweighs the government's interest in the invasion, as in the "balance test." And, while nobody seems to know exactly what their perspective is, we should know it was the Communitarian perspective that created the new American community based governments' job. We should know that the new community government manages all privately held land, people, and natural resources. We should know that anyone who openly opposes to their agenda is an person of questionable moral values. We really should know that the new community groups get to use the new academic definition of moral values, that new, more communitarian morality, a morality that cleverly identifies individual rights to property, privacy, and bearing of arms to be the bottom line cause for all of America's immoral problems. For over 30 years, under the disguise of growth management, communitarians successfully targeted portions of the Bill of Rights, and now, individual rights are a threat to the health and safety of the public at large. Under public health and safety, they have new ways to distort search and seizure requirements, they say the right to bear arms included a communitarian clause, and they play Orwellian word games with separation of church and state. The communitarians seek "balance," and one by one, our individual rights are being "balanced" into oblivion. It was the Communitarian perspective that defined the skills and abilities of low-income people as undeveloped assets. Our individual skills are to be gathered, mapped, and utilized by the new neighborhood collective. Asset Based Community Development, ABCD, is so advanced it is an Institute for Policy Research at Evanston, Ill. ABCD was created by Professor John McNight, an openly committed Communitarian thinker who signed and endorsed the Communitarian Platform. It was the Communitarian perspective that expanded the use of the mapping power of the Geographical Information System to include mapping our individual, private data. Our new community government is using the GIS to combine utilities records, land use records, police incident reports, and census reports, with corporate databases like Experian's "individual household information." Our individual, personal data can be critically analyzed to determine our potential worth, or it can identify us as detriment to the new American idea of "values." It's the Communitarian crime prevention and neighborhood blockwatch perspective that created the new community COP, a federal agent masquerading as a mental health worker, who performs psychological evaluations and "potential" for addiction interventions. The faith-based initiative will add religious organization's meticulously kept records to the data gathered by new community "health care teams.". The Communitarian ideal is of a utopian, controlled, monitored, common collective, created to balance our outdated, selfish, individual rights against the values of the "common good." They incorporate both far left and far right ideology, which helps explain why nobody can follow what the hell they're actually talking about. Like the WTO, the communitarians wrote their own dictionary. Did anyone really "listen" to George W's acceptance speech? Every time you hear him say the words "civil society," Bush is endorsing communitarianism. Every time you hear anyone use the words, "the Third Way," "community values," "neighborhood vision," "armies of compassion," "citizen based government," "quality of life," "public health and safety," "sustainability" and "livability," you are listening to communitarian propaganda. Seattle adopted 38 neighborhood plans in 1999, and ours includes laws based on communitarian principles. The new community governments have their own policies, and the neighborhood plans establish City directed land management "courts" that work with the new Community Police to enforce the new policies, and to promote the ever expanding rights of the community at large. In my neighborhood, the only thing that we want the government to protect is our constitution, we say our contract with them is based on our individual, natural right to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. We're tired of them acting like they are our evil step-mothers. They don't get to take pictures and make floor maps of our messy bedrooms. We are full grown adults protected by a Bill of Rights. We don't want a community government, we never voted for a community government, and unless we have a voice or representation in our government, we will not hold ourselves bound by their communitarian laws. Not one of us living in the designated pilot test are allowed on the "citizen committee" where they design innovative enforcement against us. We have zero voice in our community government, and now our only hope for justice is to file civil rights suits against Seattle, to claim violations of our 4th Amendment Rights. Thank God for the nine people filing, it may finally come out how Seattle worked with federal agents to target Seattle residents in a DOJ pilot test of new enforcement powers, powers they gained under communitarian development laws. We insist we cannot be conscripted and forced to participate in warrantless search pilot tests against our will. We insist we are fully protected from warrantless government invasions of our homes. We insist government officials sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution are required, by law, to do their real job. Article One, Section One of the Washington State Constitution clearly defines the only legitimate purpose of our state government. Our state constitution established our government to protect and maintain individual rights. Our constitution says nothing about protecting a common good, nor does it uphold a "common definition of justice." Our constitution says nothing about character education in the public schools, nor does it say government can enforce rules that will create a "good, moral society" based on someone else’s idea of what values means. Our federal constitution says nothing about there being communitarian "clauses" to the Second Amendment, nor about communitarian clauses to any other amendment to the US Constitution. The communitarians are tricky, but listen closely; they use vague, bogus definitions and recognizable communist theory against the Bill of Rights, the only thing that keeps Americans free from oppression. They actually sneer and call us "constitutionalists" at public meetings where we try to debate or oppose their premise. They shut us down at their back door meetings, they refuse to answer our questions, and I'm eternally grateful to the brave people in my neighborhood who are bringing the communitarian agenda before our constitutional courts. I come here today to insist the communitarian platform is too powerful to ignore anymore. I think it's sheer madness to deny the communitarian influence on American Jurisprudence. I think we need to stop pretending the communitarians don't exist, simply because we can't spell or pronounce their name. The nine civil suits in Seattle are about liberty and justice for ALL!
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