Editing 76-06-B1 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Last June in Vancouver , British Columbia (which is very nice in June -- which is why they met there, no doubt), the United Nations held a conference -- title, "Habitat : United Nations Conference on Human Settlements". They'll sell you a copy of the report through their sales section in New York for $10. Before you send off a check, give a listen. Maybe you'll save $10.

The gist of their findings is a call for complete planning of all land, nation by, nation. By a coincidence, no doubt, the program they recommend is virtually a restatement of Point Nine in the Communist Manifesto as written by Karl Marx in 1848.

Before they get down to the specific program, their report expresses concern with unequal incomes, pollution and a number of other social ills as they perceive them. But then they get down to the business of the aforementioned Point Nine: "the gradual abolition of the distribution of population over the country". I thought that was what some of our environmentalists were objecting to and calling urban sprawl.

Well, the conference took note of that last and warned against "uncontrolled urbanization". It also was concerned with "rural backwardness" and "rural dispersion". They want to use land planning to encourage "massive shifts in population into specially designed habitats".

Here is the principle as they announced it. "Every state (that means nation) has the right to take the necessary steps to maintain under public control the use, possession, disposal and reservation of land . Every state has the right to plan and regulate use of land, which is one of its most important resources, in such a way t hat the growth of population centers both urban and rural are based on
a comprehensive land use plan." -- unquote.

They use terms that may not frighten them but they sure scare me. For example, they describe federal land use planning as a basic step in setting up "the New International Economic Order".

Now this was a U. N. conference, it's true, but somehow bureaucracy has a kinship and a communications grapevine that crosses all borders. We already have a "new town" program, sponsored by our own Department of Housing and Urban Development. There are some 15 cities involved, lured, no doubt, by federal funds. HUD, as the department is called, also has it's own "habitat" division.

I know we don't pay much attention to votes in the U. N. General Assembly, but remember that grapevine communications system. When the drums are pounded by one set of bureaucrats, another set is listening. Congress will return in January and there will be land planning legislation introduced -- re-introduced is the proper word because it was unfinished business when they went home. This time, the various permanent employees of HUD and other agencies will appear before the Congressional committees with that U. N. report fresh in mind. Who was it said, "No man's life, liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session"? 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.

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