October 13, 2003
For sports fans, October is a feast: Football season is well underway; basketball season is just getting started; and the World Series is only days away--with the Cubbies still in the hunt.
But the real world series is a year away. The teams are known, but ill-defined. The first elimination round begins in January 2004, in Washington D.C., Iowa and New Hampshire. Champagne will flow for some teams; defeat will agonize others. The last contest in the real World Series will take place Nov. 2, 2004, in every village, town, city and state across the nation.
There is no trophy for the winner, only trouble. A world of trouble. The winner of the presidential election in 2004 will have the weight of the world for his reward. Like it or not, the United States of America leads the world. The President of the United States charts the course the rest of the world will follow.
The course President Bush has charted is different from his predecessor's. Whether or not he is able to continue on this new course will be decided by the real world series on Nov. 2, 2004. Ultimately, the American people, by the votes they cast, will decide which direction the world pursues in the future.
Sadly, the hoopla surrounding the real world series rarely discusses the goals or the relative benefits of the alternative courses available to the world. Instead, voters are fed a steady diet of petty, personal attacks. Voters need to be hearing and evaluating what really is at stake in the real world series.
What is at stake is the system of self-governance guided by the principles of freedom set forth in our founding documents. Never before have these principles been so clearly defined, or so effectively proven, than through the experiment launched by the United States Constitution.
These principles of freedom--individual freedom, free markets, private property rights and government limited by the consent of the governed--are under attack by a community of European nations that champion the principles of socialism--limited freedom, managed markets, state control of the sources and means of production, and absolute government power.
The European Union, in particular, and most of the rest of the world want the United Nations to be that absolute government power which defines, imposes and enforces the principles of socialism on the world--including the United States of America.
President Bush's predecessor embraced this world view by promoting the UN's Kyoto Protocol, by implementing the unratified UN Convention on Biological Diversity and by embracing and implementing the UN's Agenda 21.
President Bush said no to the Kyoto Protocol and has slowly begun to undo some of the damage done by the unratified UN treaty, and by Agenda 21.
When President Bush accepted his responsibility to go to war against terrorism, he invited the world to join the battle. Most of the world — and Bush opponents — want the war to be waged by the United Nations, not by the United States.
This desire to put the UN in control has nothing to do with winning the war on terrorism. It has everything to do with establishing the UN as the world's absolute governing authority--including authority over the United States.
The winner of the real world series in 2004 will either continue to resist this pressure to make the UN a global governing authority, or again embrace the vision of a system of global socialism under UN direction.
Voters have a year to choose which team they will support in the real world series. Campaigners will not likely carry signs that read "Support world government" or "Socialism for the whole world." But when candidates say, "We must get the support of the UN." or bash President Bush for not yielding to the UN, they are saying the same thing.
The United States leads the world only because the principles of freedom on which it is founded are valid principles for self-governance. The United States should not try to impose these principles on any other nation unless, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States is forced to eliminate a government that is a threat to the US. In such cases, it would be ludicrous to use U.S. military and economic resources and then allow the UN to install its system of UN-compliant national governance.
Whoever wins the real world series will lead the world toward freedom, or socialism. American voters will decide.