Understanding The Third Way

by Niki Friedrich Raapana, 8/30/01

President Bush set aside the Faith-Based Initiative after it died on Capitol Hill, quickly replacing it with the Values-Based Initiative.  Bush understands modern governance requires endorsing stronger community morals.01

With all the special problems facing humans in the 21st century, Bush agrees with ex-President Clinton that we must embrace a utopian ideology called Building Liveable Communities. Designed to create a grassroots, morality based, civil society, it's also referred to as the Third Way.1

All Third Way government plans endorse international capacity building. Assessing and mobilizing community capacity is the final solution to inequality. It will create a better quality of life, for everyone. The ultimate goal of the Third Way is to eradicate world poverty by the year 2020.2

Sounds like a tall order, but the futuristic policy of liveability can be achieved if we all work together to build a more responsive community that puts the needs of the collective first. If Americans put aside selfish individualism, everyone in the world is guaranteed a job and a home on a healthy planet.3

A Third Way government must assert judicial control over natural resources.  Third Way laws that govern natural resources cannot be limited to land, water, plants, and animals, because people are resources too. Enlightened consumers who contribute to the community are vital human capital; all non-contributors are potential hidden assets in need of an intervention.4

And interventions are at the very heart of Third Way ideology.5

Government interventions performed for the good of the community began in undeveloped nations and American urban ghettos in the mid 1970's, as the Vietnam War to stop the spread of Asian communism ended.  In the 80's, after the Cold War to stop the spread of Russian communism, America expanded the role of soldiers to include international peacekeeping efforts.6

Calling the Army peacekeepers allowed the Department of Defence, DOD to share equipment and technology with the Department of Justice, DOJ.  In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Act, and ex-President Clinton gave DOJ director Janet Reno 8 billion dollars to create a bureau of local police, called Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). By 1996, COPS
placed over 100,000 officers nationwide, granting a $5000 bonus to communities for each COP they enlisted having at least 2 years prior military service.7

COPS' programs come with the COPS. COPS are an integral participant in helping citizens design U.N. and State legislatively mandated Neighborhood Plans, called Habitat/Localizing Agenda 21. COPS taught locals the "Broken Window Theory," and expounded on the rationale behind Communitarian Council founder, Professor Amitai Etzioni's, "The Limits of Privacy." 8

Participating residents were further indoctrinated to believe in ex-Vice-President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government. They were convinced to use communitarian, utopian theory to define their vision of a safer, more moral community. As incentive, Gore's Safe Streets Initiative included hefty COPS funds for communities that would include COPS special pilot test programs in their neighbourhood  plans.9

Communitarians like Etzioni, Clinton, and George Bush Jr. insist individual rights are so harmful they require a balancing against the rights of the community collective. They say there's a dangerous tension between liberty and social order, and finding a peaceful solution mandates that reasoned deliberations must be replaced by moral dialogue.10

To the communitarians, argument and debate have no place in the creation of unconstitutional laws that support the new social order. Reasoned deliberations are disruptive and passionate, whereas moral dialogue is designed to reach consensus. Vigorous, open, public debate, so fundamental to America's founding fathers, is forbidden in a communitarian collective.11

Communitarians build moral bridges, not legal foundations.12

All Neighborhood Plans include a vision for building the character of the neighborhood, and encourage the local participants to identify the types of businesses, people, and behaviors that interfere with their vision. Some Neighborhood Plans include new enforcement procedures that help the community create and build a safer civil society.  These plans identify the particular problem people who spread disease, crime, and immorality.13

To rectify identified problems, FBI-COPS created Neighborhood Action Teams, NATS. NATS purpose is to find innovative solutions that will enable the community to address identified problems. Throughout the 90's, COPS combined forces with Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, using Neighborhood Plans to expand a communitarian based pilot program called Weed & Seed. Weed & Seed identifies the bad weeds and replaces them with good seeds. HUD distributes Community 2020 data software.14

In 1997, DOJ created the Crime Mapping Research Center, CMRC, giving out millions in DOD/DOJ high tech crime mapping grants to local governments  willing to use their communities to test expansion of Weed & Seed policy.  In 1999, DOJ created COMPASS, Community Mapping, Planning & Analysis for Safety Strategies, to help communities track problems using one main, combined, central, accessible database.15

By the year 2000, Building Livable Communities escalated into a military interventionist policy of controlling behaviors with armed force, represented best by Plan Columbia.  Columbia is one of the most unstable countries in the Western Hemisphere. Kidnappings are frequent, with victims
sold to and exchanged with unauthorized government soldiers. Still, the U.S./U.N. military help contribute to Columbia's quality of life. Mirroring the 1980's policies in El Salvador and Nicaragua, millions in American tax dollars are authorized by Plan Columbia for the US military to train and fully equip murderers/kidnappers with high tech weapons of death and destruction.16

Countries with a history of political instability and violence, (often a result of 20th century imperialist interventionist policies) are the preferred testing grounds for the most fascist aspects of the Building Community Capacity agenda. Even though historically people deprived of their civil liberties will often resist to the death, the majority of worldwide  rural peasants are much like the Chinese, the Cambodians, and the Vietnamese, i.e.: unarmed, peaceful, and effectively ruled by whoever holds the biggest guns.17

Now that the threat to world happiness is no longer communism, the Third Way can tackle the more humanitarian needs of the human spirit.18

International communitarian planners back the U.S. claims that drugs are the root cause of all crime and immorality. America's Drug War makes farming and harvesting of medicinal and/or recreational plants so bad that it warrants Blackhawk assault helicopter teams shooting at fields of pickers. Not in the United States of course, not against American citizens or farmers. But the
peasant growers of the world are not armed nearly the same way as Americans are, those arrogant, freedom loving descendants of the farmers who shot the pants off the British Imperialists in 1776.19

Without ever suggesting putting aside their own weapons, communitarian governments insist people defending themselves against invasions should give up their guns, to help create a nicer, safer world.  Good collective citizens also allow the Third Way government access to all their private information, so COPS can predict and prevent crime and war, before it happens. Civil citizens agree with the community agents coming to help them with career decisions and lifestyle choices, the core aspects of building capacity. Who else can be trusted to have enough information to determine exactly how people should contribute to the world collective?20

Not surprisingly, communitarians firmly believe gun ownership destabilizes a good society. Their preamble explains why the community government is the only group who should have guns. The communitarians plan to control crops and confiscate privately owned guns, worldwide. And, like Stalin and Pol Pot showed us, the government's use of guns will only be necessary in the
beginning, just until people learn their shared responsibility is: to only grow and consume products produced and approved by the collective.21

Many Americans, however, still cling to the outdated and harmful belief that protecting individual liberty is the law of their land, and their constitutional courts still support that notion.  Even with the success of the Drug War, the COPS can only swarm into U.S. neighborhoods with assault helicopters and tanks if there is an identified threat. While reports of drugs or dangerous citizens allow for Marshall Law, it's for a very limited time, usually only a few hours until the situation is resolved, (exceptions being FBI directed military actions like Waco, Ruby Ridge, and anti-WTO protest zones).22

Their Bill of Rights is plain and simply a barrier to fully implementing the agenda in the United States. It poses very special problems for the collective's plan to build international community based governments. It requires the combined efforts of thousands of academics with innovative
solutions. Unlike African nations or Columbia, America has restrictions to administering COPS' programs, especially the data gathering. The 2nd & 4th Amendments are two of COPS most difficult obstacles. Far too many law abiding Americans own guns, and it's difficult to get inside their homes.23

America is still a democracy. It has elected representatives and the right to bring issues before the public in Voter Sponsored Initiatives. But the federal courts can over-rule State Voter-Approved Legislation. This helps maintain the U.S. record for more Drug War prisoners per capita, than
anywhere else in the world. And now communitarian civil society groups, like 1000 Friends of Washington, are openly challenging rights of voters to initiate a ballot, suing those uppity, selfish, old-fashioned Americans who think they can use the initiative process to save their beloved
Constitution.23A

Regardless of the legal and constitutional barriers, the U.S. is moving ahead as if the barriers are already gone. In pilot programs across the U.S., COPS are gathering the data they require, with or without American's consent.  As the designated pilot program in Seattle shows, COMPASS doesn't need to comply with any of the federal rules that govern Human Subjects Research,
not as long as high ranking DOJ-COPS can be successfully placed.24

In 2000, Gil Kerlikowske, the D.C. Director of COPS' Grant Funding, was appointed Police Chief of Seattle, Washington. Corresponding to his arrival, Seattle was chosen as the first designated pilot site for COMPASS. Soon after, the Seattle Mayor's Office of Strategic Planning, SPO, expanded to control COMPASS, city housing inspectors, and neighborhood developers doing capacity building research.

In 2001, Seattle's SPO took control of COPS/NATS' Problem-Solving Partnerships, DOJ's preferred program of using collaborative efforts to identify, map, and mobilize local human resources for the community.25

Another pilot program that gathers socio-economic data is Asset Based Community Development, ABCD, based on "Mapping and Mobilizing a Community's Assets," by John McKnight. Promoted by the Institute for Policy Research at North-western University, ABCD is now its own institute.

ABCD was introduced to Seattle neighborhood groups in the summer of 2000, when ABCD co-author Jody Kertzman was invited to promote ABCD to interested community association members by the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods. Seattle began offering ABCD seminars to small invited groups in June, 2001, barring ABCD-opposed citizens from attending.26

In October, 2001, CMRC in Denver, Colorado begins the first in a series of seminars designed to teach senior American law enforcement analysts to combine crime-mapping data with socio-economic data.  DOJ provides lists of the source opportunities for gathering the data into one world master file.

While participants in oppressed African nations give up their personal data willingly, American's data will be gathered secretly, independent of the rules under the Code of Federal Regulations, thus enabling the U.S. to participate fully in all aspects of Third Way development programs in the future.27

The End
References:

01: * The Washington Post, 7/29/01, "Bush Plans Values-Based Initiative to
Rev Up Agenda," by Mike Allen.

      * S. 2952: Faith-Based and Community-Based Organizations in Housing
and Community Development Act of 2000 (Introduced in the Senate), 106th U.S.
Congress, 2nd Session, www.thomas.loc.gov

1:   * The Washington Post, 02/01/01, "Needed: Catchword For Bush Ideology;
Communitarianism Finds Favor,"
by Dana Milbank.

      * The Third Way: Summary of the Nexus on-line discussion,
www.netnexus.org/library/papers/3way.html.

      * Mother Jones Magazine, 1994, "I or We?" by Michael D'Antonio, based
on an interview with Communitarian Council President Amitai Etzioni,
www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/MJ94/dantonio.html

      * United Nations, Training and Capacity-Building Section: Strategy and
Activities, "..international capacity- building for management and
development of human settlements." www.unchs.org/habrdd/capstrat.htm

      * "U.S. Mayors Endorse Earth Charter," July, 2001, Part III: Social
and Economic Justice, "...Eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, and
environmental imperative." www.citizenreviewonline.org/july_2001/

      * The World Community Land Trust Proposal: 1974, EUTOPIA,
www.humboldt.net/`gaiajah/worldcomLnd.html

2:    * The Road to Sustainable Development, March, 1997, "A Snapshot of
Activities in the USA.. The President's Council on Sustainable Development,"
www.womensgroup.org/PCSD497.html  (this link provides 14 pages of laws,
institutions, organizations, and activities)

      * Center for Social Development, CSD, Projects,
www.gwbweb.wustl.edu/Users/csd/projects.html

      * Coalition for Low Income Community Development (CLICD),
www.clicd.org/

      * The Roosevelt Neighborhood Plan, Seattle, Washington, 1999,
www.ci.seattle.wa.us

      * The Washington State Growth Management Act, 1990,

      * World Bank Group--Living Standards Measurement Study Household
Surveys, www.worldbank.org

      * World Bank Group, Poverty in Africa,
www4.worldbank.org/afr/poverty/links_academic_research_en.htm

3:  * "Can the White House Help Catalyse Civic Renewal?"  Reinventing
Citizenship Project, A Proposal for a Civic Partnership Council," June,
1994, www.cpn.org/sections/new_citizenship/civic_part_council.html

      *The Responsive Communitarian Platform, www.gwu.edu/`ccps/catel.html

      *Communitarian Family Policy Statement, prepared by Don Browning,
University of Chicago, Director of Religion, Culture and Family Project,
www.uchicago.edu/divinity/family/communitarianpolicy.html

      *The Communitarian Preamble,
www.communitariannetwork.org/platformtext.htm

4:   *Community Toolbox, Part B Chapter 3 Section 8, "Identifying Community
Assets and Resources," ctb.lsi.ukans.edu/tools/EN/sub_section_main_1043.htm

      * The Critical Areas Code, Clallam County, Washington,
www.citizenreviewonline.org

      * Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Institute for Policy
Research, North-western University, Evanston, Illinois,  "A Path Toward
Finding and Mobilizing A Communities Assets," by John P. Kertzmann and
John L. McKnight, www.northwestern.edu/IPR/abcd.html

      * Founding Endorsers of the Communitarian Platform, signed by John L.
McKnight, ABCD Program Director, www.communitariannetwork.org/founders.htm

      * National Science Foundation and Department of Housing and Urban
Development, HUD Conference, July 10-12, 1995, sponsored by the National
Center for Geographical Information and Analysis (NCGIA), "Geographic
Information Analysis and Human Capital Research,"  "In it's 'strategic plan'
for the human capital initiative, the National Science Foundation (NSF,
1994) has recognised the practical importance of basic research into the
nation's human capital resources."

      * Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Research
Networks, www.sase.org