Even if you weren't paying attention, you probably remember back in 2010 when GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes spoke up against then-Mayor John Hickenlooper's bicycle programs, which, along with other policies, was "converting Denver into a United Nations community."
"These aren't just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor," Maes was quoted as saying in the Denver Post, which broke the story. "These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to."
"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes said.
This prompted the progressive blog ColoradoPols to comment: "Oh, Dan Maes! We don't know where you came from, and we're still amazed at how you got here, but we can't deny that you are one amusing fellow. Even if you don't mean to be."
We know that one of the places Dan Maes came from was the Colorado Tea Party and its allies on conservative talk radio.
Now, however, the Tea-Party radio show "Grassroots Radio Colorado" has a specific policy to refer to Maes as the "Mr. Irrelevant" or the one "who shall not be named."
Still, it's clear that the themes of Maes' once-energetic campaign still live in Tea Party circles, incuding the U.N. paranoia stuff.
The other day, Rich Bratten with right-leaning Principles of Liberty Colorado gave listeners of KLZ's Grassroots Radio Colorado a legislative update, specifically addressing Senate Bill 130, which would create the Office for Child and Youth Development in the Department of Human Services in Colorado.
The bill, which would simply consolidate various government functions, is the culmination of several years of work, going back to Gov. Bill Ritter's administration.
A Colorado Springs church called this bill a "United Nations conspiracy," which Bratten wouldn't do.
"I don't think this was a U.N. conspiracy... ," he said on the radio March 30.
But the funny part is, he went on, without objection from the radio-show hosts, to say that the Office of Child and Youth Development would lead to a socialist takeover of America, possibly leadin' to a U.N. power grab.
"However," Bratten said, "[the Office of Child and Youth Development] is very consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the UN, if you've done any research on that. You're listeners might be more familiar with the UN Small Arms Treaty....
HOST: Yeah, they're very familiar with that one ....
BRATTEN: Right, which would put constraints upon if we.... You know, of course, Clinton adopted the UN... that treaty, but it hasn't been ratified by the senate. Obama says he would like to get it ratified by the senate. If we were bound to that treaty, we would basically be giving up our second amendment rights. And you guys are very familiar with Agenda 21?
HOST: Very! We spent half the day on it yesterday.
BRATTEN: This Convention on the Rights of the Child is kind of a similar animal. And so, is it a UN conspiracy? No, of course not! However, is it that inex-OR-orable slide that we've been seeing our federal government make towards European Socialist Democracy type of government? And, you know, the answer is yes -- honestly, it is. So, I'm thrilled to see Speaker Mc Nulty assign this quickly to that committee, and I hope that it gets a quick hearing.
Who knew how much of a threat the U.N. is? I've been depressed that it was in decline, but I guess I was wrong.
In any case, no one thought Maes was a lone ranger in Colorado's battle against the United Nations, but his view, or permutations of it, is alive and well on talk radio, even the name Maes has been banished.