“Dodd’s bill even created a new department of the federal government—the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities—with its own czar, which would have overseen development to make sure that each local community marched in lock step with Uncle Sam. It was a perfect forerunner to the Federal Municipal Planning Division. Dodd really understood that the bill that bore his name had laid the ground work for sustainable living. What he didn’t understand was that Americans were getting really nervous and angry about so much big government. His bill did not pass in 2010 because Tea Partiers and other activists started pushing back.
“In order to get a bill like this passed, Progressives had to resort to an old trick—they had to create a big crisis for which they could write a big bill full of solutions and attach this agency to it. Retire America was just what they needed. They could hide this huge, new agency inside an already huge bill. And now FMPD is authorized to dictate the planning, development and zoning of every city in the U.S. No one will be able to get a local permit to build a house, to renovate a business, to do anything involving building or construction. All permits have to be federal permits, and in order for the FMPD to approve those permits, the person applying has to be able to show that the project they are planning fits into the sustainable development of the community. In other words, every city and town in the United States will have to meet federal guidelines as a sustainable Smart Community. Those are the new guidelines that the FMPD published last week.”
“Smart communities have been around for years, Lena. I sold some houses in a Smart Community here in Scottsdale. They’re nothing new.”
“That’s because sustainable development has been working its way into American cities over the past twenty years. But it was on a local level. Without federal mandates, Agenda 21 was implemented into local communities through city planning and zoning boards. Local governments signed onto membership in ICLEI…”
“ICLEI?” Kris interrupted.
“The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. It began in 1990 at the World Congress of Local Governments at the United Nations in New York. In 2003, the organization changed its name to ICEI-Local Governments for Sustainable Solutions. ICLEI had over twelve hundred members worldwide and over six hundred in the U.S., but because membership in the organization and participation in its goals was voluntary, some cities began to pull out of membership in 2011 and 2012 when they started learning what ICLEI was really all about.
“Some states, Alabama for example, got so nervous about Agenda 21 that they actually passed laws prohibiting its implementation in their states. In fact, the five states that have been affected by the Gulf Coast illness had all passed some version of legislation that banned Agenda 21 initiatives from being implemented. Now, of course, because of all the deaths, the federal government has stepped in, suspended the states’ governments, and created a new regional governing authority which does not have to honor any of the laws passed through those states’ legislatures. As they say in Washington, ‘never let a good crisis go to waste.’
“Now, with the FMPD in control of zoning and city planning, cities and states won’t have the ability to opt out. Under the voluntary system, people could choose to live in a Smart Community or not. Under the new system, all roads will be designed solely for public transit. Big box stores and discount stores will not exist. Americans will be buying from local stores and getting local merchandise—especially locally-grown food. Community gardens will be mandated. Housing communities will be much denser, with many more people living in smaller, more confined spaces and walking or bicycling to work. Single family homes are going to become a thing of the past for all but the upper echelons of society. Life in the suburbs is over in this country—most people just don’t know it yet. And the sad thing is, most of them won’t know it until they get the eminent domain notice from the FMPD that their neighborhood is being turned into a park, or a Smart Community, or a landfill, or whatever the government decides it should be.
“And as bad as all of this is, that’s not even the most troubling part. In 2012, Agenda 21 celebrated its twentieth anniversary in Rio de Janeiro with a commemorative birthday bash called Rio 20. After Rio 20 the United Nations created a new powerful international environmental agency—the U.N. Environmental Organization. Through an international treaty ratified by the Senate and signed by the President in 2013, the U.S. is now under the governing authority of the UNEO. So even though the director of the FMPD does not answer to any elected representative of the United States; he or she takes orders directly from the U.N.. This is disgusting and frightening on every level.
“That’s why I wanted to meet with you, Kris. AFC is dedicated to getting the truth out to everyone who will listen—the truth about Smart Growth, the truth about Retire America, the truth about the fact that we are losing our freedoms at a faster rate than ever before in our history. We have a small staff, but part of each of our jobs is to spend some time each day reading new regulations coming out of federal agencies. There are hundreds of new regulations being introduced every day which are rewriting American life. We still have a Constitution in this country, but our government doesn’t follow it or abide by any of its restrictions. I think that there are enough people here who still care about this country that we can turn things around if we can get the information out. But we are running out of time; if we don’t get the word out right away, it is going to be too late.”
“Lena, I work for the government myself. It took me two years to get this job—I lost everything that I had worked for. I don’t like all of the aspects of my job or all of the people I work with, but most of them are basically okay people. Smart Growth is different; it requires a big adjustment for everyone. People don’t like change, and I understand that—I don’t like change. There are a lot of times that I wish I could turn the clock back and go back to my old life, but I can’t. None of us can. We have to move forward, and Retire America and the Federal Municipal Planning Division are moving us forward.”
“Forward,” Lena smiled a little as she repeated Kris’ word back to her. “Forward has been the catch phrase for every socialist movement since Karl Marx. It’s not enough to move forward. You have to be moving forward to a place where you actually want to end up. Otherwise, you may just find yourself racing pell-mell off a cliff. As C.S. Lewis once said, when you realize you are moving forward in the wrong direction, the most progressive person is the one who turns around first.
“Look, Kris, I don’t want to pressure you. It was a very difficult decision for Ed and me to leave the government after so many years. It was a decision that we made thoughtfully and prayerfully, together. So I know that it can be scary—that it can seem impossible. But if you look for God’s will in this, you will find it. And if you determine that it is His will for you to leave, He will provide a way out for you. Then it’s just up to you to take it. I want to leave my card with you. If you do decide to leave, and you would like to be involved with AFC and what we are doing, give me a call.”
Kris picked up the card, thanked Lena for it, and put it in her purse. The women had spent over two hours talking and Lena had barely touched her lunch, but she told Kris that she had another appointment, and so she asked the waitress for her check and then said goodbye to Kris and left the table.
Kris looked at her watch; it was now 2:00 and she could not catch the train until 2:45. It was so hot outside that she did not want to wait outdoors, so she ordered another iced tea and thought about her conversation with Lena.
She had really looked forward to this lunch—it had been such a long time since she had eaten lunch in a real restaurant and talked to a friend. Now she wished that Lena had not called her. Kris did not want to hear disturbing theories about the government—her own life was just starting to get a little better. All she wanted now was to do her job each day, forget about her old life, and forget about this conversation with Lena.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t forget, and as the we
ek rolled on she found herself thinking often about the things Lena had told her. She even entered the words “Agenda 21” into a search engine on her laptop after work one evening. She found pages of internet sites referencing bizarre theories, but she ignored them. She was interested only in what the U.N. website had to say. She spent hours reading pages of dry material about sustainable living, the need for environmentally-friendly ‘human settlements’, the need to empower women worldwide, the need to redistribute wealth and technology from developed to non-developed countries. She kept looking for a sentence that would make sense of what she was reading, something that would say clearly, “Agenda 21 is an evil conspiracy that is going to destroy the world,” or preferably, “Don’t believe all of those crazy lies you will hear about us; Agenda 21 is not an evil conspiracy which will destroy the world,” but she did not find anything that spoke that directly to her fears. Some of the goals looked worthy—empowerment of women through education and opportunity, and conservation of resources—but as a whole the document definitely had a globalist feeling to it. Would she want to live under this document? Did she already?
“I’m turning into Keith,” she sighed as she turned off the computer and tried to go to sleep. “Next I’ll be getting drunk and calling myself in the middle of the night with some insane theory.” The thought made her smile as she fell asleep.
She was glad when Thursday evening finally came, and Karyn sent a text message that they had arrived in town. Kris and her parents had already decided that they would meet Karyn and the family at their motel on Thursday evening and have dinner in one of the restaurants close by. As soon as the text message came through, Kris called Janine, who had also just heard from Karyn. Janine and Jim would take the train directly from W, and Kris would leave directly from work so that they could arrive at about the same time.
By the time that Kris got to the motel Jim and Janine were already in the lobby seated on the comfortable couches talking to Karyn and Jeff. Faith, who was now eleven, caught sight of Kris as she entered the glass doors and ran to greet her aunt. Kris squeezed her niece tightly and then held her back to look at her.
“My gosh! You’ve gotten so tall. The next time I see you, you’ll be as tall as I am!” Faith’s long medium brown hair had been carefully braided that morning, but during the day of traveling a number of long wisps had fallen down into her face, and now Kris brushed those away with her hand so that she could look at her, “You look so beautiful, and I have missed you so much,” and she hugged Faith again. Four-year old Seth was now looking around for his sister, and when he spotted her, he ran towards them too. Kris caught him up in her arms and gave him a warm hug and a kiss. He responded by kissing the side of her face and patting the back of her neck, which made her laugh—she had forgotten that even when he was a baby he had taken his tiny hands and patted the back of the neck of whomever happened to be holding him. He was smiling and affectionate, but Kris suspected that he was just happy to be getting attention and to have found his sister and that he actually did not even know who she was. They had been gone, after all, since he was two, and the family had made very few trips back to Phoenix to visit. Kris tousled his blond curls with her hand as she put him back down on the floor and let him run happily back to his mother.
Karyn had noticed her children running toward the door, so she had risen to come over and hug Kris. Kris noticed how good she looked. Karyn had always had a beautiful figure—she was tall like Kris but much shapelier. She had been getting some exercise in Dallas; she looked very fit and tan. She had been traveling all day in cotton Capri pants and a tank top, but Kris thought that anyone might see Karyn and think she was a former model or TV personality turned mom. Her thick medium brown hair hung to her shoulders in soft loose curls, and she had just a little makeup on her large brown eyes. For the first time in months, Kris felt self conscious about her own close-cropped hair streaked with gray. So much time walking in the sun and wind had aged Kris’ appearance—Karyn must be shocked at how old she looked. But just as quickly she pushed the thought out of her mind—she was not going to think about how she looked or how Karyn might think she looked. She was just going to enjoy their visit.
Jeff was standing a little to the side of Karyn. He was smiling pleasantly; Kris hugged him too. Jeff was quiet, but he had been a member of their family for over seventeen years now. Kris studied him and thought that except for the few gray hairs he now sported he looked very little older than the day he and Karyn had said “I do” at the First Baptist Church of Scottsdale. The years had been good to him as well as to Karyn—they still made a great-looking couple.
Within thirty minutes the entire party had walked across the motel parking lot to have dinner at a family-style buffet restaurant. Kris held Seth’s hand as they went through the line; Faith was old enough to get her own food, but Seth still needed a lot of assistance and supervision. By helping him through the line, she could spend time with him and give his mom a badly needed break from the endless demands of a happy and energetic four year old.
After what seemed like a long time, the entire family was seated at a table with their dinners. Seth had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese to look forward to, and after twenty minutes spent helping him select those items while trying to decipher his constant, often unintelligible chatter, Kris was ready once again for some adult conversation.
“So, do you have a good church at W?” Karyn was asking Janine.
“They have a church that meets every Sunday at the community center. Your dad and I tried it a couple of times, but it’s all just a lot of PC blather. Everything at W is designed around getting all of the residents to constantly volunteer to do the work, and this guy’s sermons all center on that theme. I hadn’t heard so many sermons about ‘God loves a cheerful giver’ since the First Baptist Church of Scottsdale did their last building fund campaign. So after about a month we looked at each other and said, ‘This isn’t for us.’”
“So what do you do?” Karyn asked. Kris was listening too; in all the months that her parents had lived at W she had never asked them whether they liked the community church. She had just assumed that they went there each Sunday. Now that she thought about it, she realized that she didn’t go to the church in her own community most Sundays, so there was no particular reason that her parents should attend the one at W.
Jim answered Karyn’s question. “Right after we moved in, a guy and his wife moved into the unit next to ours. His name is Todd; he used to be a pastor before he retired. He’s young—about our ages. We saw him at church a couple of times, and then one day he was talking to me outside, and he said about the sermon, ‘That really stank, didn’t it?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, actually, it really did.’ Then he said, ‘I was a pastor for 35 years. My wife and I have been talking, and we want to start a Bible study in our unit for people who want to come. Would you like to be part of it?’ I asked Janine and she said, ‘sure,’ so that’s what we’ve been doing.”
“Actually,” Janine interjected, “Todd’s group meets on Thursday evenings. Some weeks he and his wife host it, and some weeks Dad and I host. We have about a dozen people who are pretty regular attendees, and we study the Bible, and Todd prepares a teaching for us each week.”
Kris bit her tongue. Residents were not supposed to have meetings in their units; it was against the rules. She might bring this up to her parents later—or she might not. This was the first time she had seen them enthusiastic about anything at W, and it turned out to be something they weren’t supposed to be doing.
Now the conversation turned to Karyn and Jeff and life in Dallas. They both loved living in Dallas—the economy in Texas was much better than the economy in Arizona. Jeff was still working three jobs but only until the housing market improved and he could land a good construction contract. He was honest and hardworking, and he did outstanding work, so no one doubted that he would land on his feet as soon as an opportunity presented itself. Faith was on a soccer t
eam she loved and active in the Girl Scouts. Seth still spent his time hanging out watching movies and enjoying life, but his days of leisure would soon be ending—his mother announced that he was starting pre-K in the fall. Kris felt a little sorry for him as she watched him blissfully enjoying his mac and cheese—she was tempted to whisper, “Enjoy every minute, kid. These may well be the very best days of your whole life.”
With air conditioning, free drink refills, and endless food stations, the family was able to enjoy themselves for hours. Kris and her parents were so used to having no lights after 8:30 that by 9:00 they were conditioned to go to sleep, and Karyn noticed the exhaustion on their faces.“It looks like it’s past somebody’s bedtime,” she smiled.
“I’m sorry,” Kris tried to suppress a yawn. “It’s just that everything is solar powered at our community so we are used to not having any lights after 9:00. There is nothing to do but go to sleep, and after a few months, you are just conditioned to do it. Besides, I have to get up so early every morning to get to work on time that I am just about dead at the end of the day.”
“Well, I think you need to get some sleep—all of you,” Karyn replied. “After all, we have a full day tomorrow.”
W: The Planner, The Chosen Page 17
