A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-One ... Number Thirty-Six ... September 13, 1974
THE CONTRIVED EVOLUTION
OF REGIONAL GOVERNMENT
PART NINETEEN
REGIONALISM -- THE
NEW WORLD ORDER
If you were asked to name some of the many forms of government that exist throughout the world today, you would probably name republics and democracies, kingdoms and monarchies, and the various forms of totalitarian government that have cropped up since socialism became a fashionable economic system. But whenever a person thinks of a government, he is thinking of some kind of a political system.
Regional Governance is different in this respect: It is not a political system per se. It is a corporate management system, a social control system, an accountability system, a system that seeks to manage and direct all human development. But these are not the functions of a political system.
We need to get back to first principles and understand that political systems, whatever their form and however good or bad they may be considered to be, properly concern themselves with three distinct yet related areas of civic organization: with the making of laws, with the administration of those laws, and with the maintenance of those laws through a system of justice which repairs broken laws by punishing those who broke them.
Law, then, is the principle concern of any political system; it is out of a proper regard for the revealed law of God that there must develop a proper regard for life, liberty and property. But Regional Governance has no regard for law as the cardinal principle of social organization. For law it substitutes regulation, and for justice it substitutes the Marxian concepts that the end justifies the means and that the greatest good is the "good society," as that utopian ideal is extrapolated by the Regionalists.
Webster's Third Unabridged Dictionary gives an excellent definition of what makes up a political system in its ethical and purest sense. "Politics," says the dictionary, "is primarily concerned with the conscious definite purpose of society to establish authority (government) and to determine its function (law); it does not go back to the origins of social institutions (sociology) nor to the causes of human actions (psychology) nor does it deal directly with social phenomena connected with materials (economics) nor with individual human beings as causative factors (history) ... "
The point is important: political systems should not concern themselves with sociology, psychology, economics, or even history; their concern is with Law (and happy is the Nation whose Law is the Lord's).
In diametric opposition to this, Regional Governance does not concern itself with law as such. Indeed, under the concepts of Regionalism, laws upholding representative government are negated and appointed officials replace elected officials (even in the case of Presidents and Vice Presidents) and equal justice for all is ignored in the treatment of those guilty of political crimes. But Regionalism does concern itself greatly with sociology (in its attempts to create a new kind of world society); with psychology (in its attempts to develop a new kind of human who will fit properly into this new kind of society); with economics (in its determination to control land use, natural and human resources, production and distribution, etc.); and with history (in its attempts to predestinate and direct the evolution of man and the world which man inhabits).
In short, Regional Governance is not a political system; it is a corporate management system designed for the control of the world and all that's in it, on it, over it or under it!
If Regionalism is a management system for the whole world, then one would not expect this concept to be confined to the United States Regionalism would be rearing its authoritarian head in other Nations of the world. And this is exactly what is happening.
As an example, the following press release came from the French Embassy, 972 Fifth Avenue, New York 21, New York; and we quote verbatim:
It has taken two hundred years for France to move from the system of provinces set up under the ancien regime to today's 'regions.' The original idea for regionalization was proposed as far back as 1890, but it was not until 1944 that certain reforms were undertaken to reorganize regional administration and establish a new administrative hierarchy. From that time on France has been engaged in adapting regional administration to the exigencies of the modern state.
The chronological development of regionalization is shown below:
Subsequent major stages in regional reform were:
The major steps taken toward decentralization in 1964 and again in 1970 were dictated by the need for an efficient economic administration; in other words, the level at which "flexible, liberal and adaptable" decisions in administrative matters are made passed from the national ministries to the regional administrations.
Among the new (regional) institutions are:
... The future of the regions will depend to a large extent on the way in which the existing legislative framework will be utilized and expanded. Additional resources will eventually be channeled into the regions either in the form of allocations from the state or from local communities. The Regional Councils and the Regional Economic and Social Councils do in fact serve to promote the policy of regional development. In view of their composition and representative character, regional bodies like these bring imagination and creative talent to regional activities just as much as they assist in deciding and implementing regional development policy.
The accompanying "administrative map of France" carries this descriptive caption:
"France has traditionally been divided into Departments, each headed by a Prefect representing the Government. In July 1964, new Departments were created in the Paris Region, raising the total number of Metropolitan Departments from 91 to 95. All these Departments have been regrouped for economic and administrative purposes into 22 Regions, each headed by a Regional Prefect who coordinates activities in the Departments composing his Region."
We have quoted at length from this French Regionalism report to illustrate how, though the French Republic and the United States Republic are basically different in composition and construction, the concept of Regionalism follows exactly the same blueprint in both France and the United States!
There are 51 million Frenchmen in an area only about one-eighteenth the size of the United States. Because of this population density, France has been divided into 22 Regions, whereas the United States has been divided into only ten Federal Regions. Italy, also densely populated, has been split into twenty-odd Regions. On the other hand, that huge land mass known as the USSR has also been Regionalized, and the fifteen "Republics" which make up the Soviet Union have been regrouped into only seven regions, to be governed by seven Regional Councils (taking their orders from Moscow, of course).
This same general trend of delineating Regional boundaries according to population density is especially apparent in Canada. Here the "Metro" pattern has been followed and, rather than Regions as in USA, France, Italy, USSR, etc., Canada has concentrated on "reorganizing government in metropolitan areas."
An ACIR report of some 134 pages on the subject of "Canadian Regional Experience" Departmental Boundaries Regional Boundaries Seat of Region begins with the statement that "Americans interested in local government reform have remarked enviously about Canadian success in reorganizing government in metropolitan areas." It seems that this success is partly due to the fact that "most of Canada is uninhabited" and "in area, Canada is larger than the U.S. and second only to the USSR." More important, however, is the fact that Canada's governmental structure is different from that of the United States:
"In the Canadian version of federalism, the provincial legislatures have limited, explicit powers, while Parliament has general and residual powers. This reversal of the United States constitutional formula has been the subject of continual debate .... Our Constitution does not mention substate governments, but the British North American Act of 1867, Canada's Constitution ... gives the provinces complete authority over municipal institutions .... As Donald Tansley expressed it, in Canada, 'Local government ... is whatever the provincial government says it is'."
In other words, because of the difference in Constitutional authority, it has been much easier to install Metros and Regions in Canada than in the United States.
In Canada, as in all other countries of the world that are not patterned after the United States Constitutional system, political power extends from the top downward to the local level; whereas in the United States -- before Regionalism began -- the political power began at the local, or grass roots, level and extended upward to State Capitals and then to the Federal Capitol in Washington. In order to make the United States "more like Canada and the other countries of the world," the United States Constitution has been amended, misinterpreted and ignored, while State Constitutions have been entirely rewritten, and local governments have been swallowed up by Federal Regions, Substate Regions, and Metros.
ACIR makes the point that Regionalism has been quite successful in Canada, although it has been installed only in the more populous areas such as Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.
In ACIR's summary of the "Canadian Regional Experience," written by Guthrie S. Birkhead of Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, we are informed that "Canada no doubt is on the threshhold of a period when a reordering of policies and priorities among the levels of government may take place. A few critics are asking the federal government to establish direct relations with major municipalities, and there is even a suggestion that Toronto and Montreal ought to be made separate provinces. The parallel with the United States in the sixties is again salient. If we may judge from the Canadian record of local reorganization since World War II, however, more firm action to strengthen local governments may be at hand. The case studies in this volume are, therefore, timely indeed."
If ACIR thinks that Canadian Regionalism has developed better than United States Regionalism, but is still not good enough; it is regrettable that ACIR has not published (yet, at least) a case study of the "Russian Regionalism Experience." For the way in which Regionalism can be developed in a totalitarian nation should please ACIR immensely.
You see, Regional Governance is not necessarily the management system that has been selected and that will be installed as the World Authority simply because the Western Nations such as Canada, France, Italy, et al, have followed the United States in the Regionalization of their countries. This could be but an Atlantic Alliance project, not a Regionalization of the whole world.
But when the USSR also adopts the concept of Regionalism so that Regionalism is made to apply to totalitarian as well as so-called democratic political systems, then we can assert with evidence to back up the statement, that Regionalism is the Corporate Management System that has been selected for the Rulership of the World!
Soviet Party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, in his keynote speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, spoke of the changes that were being planned. Then, the April 1973 issue of'the Soviet Government's planning journal, Planned Ecorromy, made the establishment of seven Regional Councils official. The overall policies of the USSR, declared the journal, now would be based on the new Regional Planning Units.
Of course, the concept of Regionalism includes the use of a Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (which is little more than a technological modernization of a Soviet Five-Year Plan); and computers and data banks are essential to Regional Governance. In this latter requirement, IBM and other computer manufacturers have been happy to help the Communists. Recently Control Data Corporation announced a $500-million deal with the Soviets for the development of an advanced computer and communications network. So, with Soviet Secret Police techniques, concentration camp know-how, brainwashing methods, torture chamber knowledge plus American technological superiority in accountability systems and computerized memory banks, the USSR soon should be able to lead the world in corporate management, even as it is now said to lead the world in nuclear fire-power.
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