Article IV Section 4 and the NGO Virus

The environmentalist movement is attacking America's republican form of government.  Republicanism, by definition, requires the election of public officials.  In turn, the public officials appoint executive agencies overseen by the president to implement policies. In a republic government is by elected officials and appointed officials who answer to the elected officials.  Alternative forms of government involve non-elected officials.  These can involve officials who use violence to obtain office, as in the case of a dictatorship, or it can involve a hereditary system whereby the descendants of those who used violence to win power are given power as monarchs.   A form of government where the government hires a firm, the firm appoints officials, and the firm's appointed officials then govern without public redress is not republican.

Article Four section four of the US Constitution requires that states maintain a republican form of government.  It states:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

The environmentalist movement has advocated replacing the states' republican forms of government with non-governmental organizations that are appointed and then become organizational dictators.  For example, Agenda 21, chapter 27 states:

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy. Their credibility lies in the responsible and constructive role they play in society. Formal and informal organizations, as well as grass-roots movements, should be recognized as partners in the implementation of Agenda 21. The nature of the independent role played by non-governmental organizations within a society calls for real participation; therefore, independence is a major attribute of non-governmental organizations and is the precondition of real participation.


In practice, NGOs have replaced governmental decision making in the name of regionalism and globalism.  A resident of the Town of Olive wrote the following of a group called the Central Catskills Collaborative, an NGO:

Far more troubling than amusing is the stated goal of this group to become a state agency such as the Tug Hill Commission or the Hudson Valley Greenway. Although Peter Manning is removing such references from the CMP rewrite, the intentions of this group are well stated. They refused a Shandaken board member's request for language that would limit the CCC from becoming such an agency at the April 19 meeting. Anyone voting on this byway resolution must take a close look at these groups and see what the CCC has stated they wish to become.

A non-governmental organization cannot be a government agency in a republic.  In Canada, this process has proceeded to the point where NGOs are making zoning and other dictatorial decisions without public scrutiny.  Such an arrangement would be unconstitutional in the United States; it is incompatible with republicanism.

To the extent that NGOs have been granted governmental authority in the United States, such arrangements need to be ended because they are unconstitutional.

Wikipedia covers history about Article Four section four.  In the 1840s in Luther v. Borden  and in 1912 in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, the Supreme Court held that Congress, not the courts, must establish guidelines for defining republicanism. The one exception to the Supreme Court's deciding that the definition of republicanism is one for Congress has been the equal protection clause  Most of the debates about republicanism have centered on whether direct democracy and republicanism are equivalent.

Few Americans had contemplated supplanting republican with dictatorial authority until the global environmental movement began to advocate elimination of home rule.  Agenda 21 was signed by a Republican president, George H. W. Bush, but has been most aggressively implemented by Barack H. Obama. 

It is up to Congress to define republicanism, and it would seem that to define it as consistent with NGOs' assumption of political power would be to end republicanism, despite Agenda 21's Orwellian claim that NGOs' sharing power enhances democracy.  

Congress needs to pass a law defining republicanism as inconsistent with the delegation of political power to non-elected and non-publicly appointed officials of NGOs.  Congress needs to end all federal funding to any state and any locality which attacks republicanism by delegating political authority to NGOs.