By Henry Lamb
Monday, July 16, 2007
When you hold the biggest stick, freedom is whatever you say it is. Freedom is continually being redefined by the person, the group, or the nation that carries the biggest stick. Until the United States was created, people were free to do whatever the king, dictator, war lord, or chief allowed them to do.
In the new United States of America, however, people were free to pursue "...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," subject to only those restrictions in law to which they consented. And those restrictions applied equally to all.
Democrats howled at the President's commutation of Scooter Libby's jail time, demanding "equal justice for all." These are the same Democrats who are first in line to end tax credits for the rich. Where is the "equal justice" in a tax code that forces some people to pay the government more of their income, than others have to pay? This practice is not "equal justice;" it is, in fact, an example of the socialist principle: "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."
The President's power to pardon is granted equally to all presidents, even to Bill Clinton's pardons, which included fugitive felon, Marc Rich, whose wife just happened to be a major contributor to Clinton causes.
In the United States, the big stick passes from Democrat to Republican to Democrat and back again. But a bigger stick influences both Democrats and Republicans. This bigger stick is continually redefining freedom around the world, and particularly in the United States, with little notice and less objection.
The world is moving toward a new, and, as some believe, inevitable system of governance. A system of governance in which freedom is defined by an institution with not just the biggest, but the only enforcement stick. It is a system of global governance, no longer moving in the conspiratorial shadows, but loudly proclaimed as the goal of the United Nations.
Americans are far too busy to notice how the machinery of global governance works. Who, for example, knows that this week, there was a Global Forum on Migration & Development in Brussels? It's purpose, according to U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is "... to harness the power of migration to advance development [and] help usher in the third stage of globalization -- a long-awaited era where more people than ever before begin to share in the world's prosperity."
Or, that in Paris, a working group of the Convention on Biological Diversity is meeting to measure global implementation of this treaty. Or, that the U.N. is conducting literally thousands of meetings around the world every year, all working toward eventual global governance.
Americans, however, do feel the consequences of these meetings, even though they have no idea where these restrictions on their freedoms originate. In the 1980s, farmers were furious when the federal government claimed jurisdiction over nearly 200 million acres of private property simply by redefining private property to be "wetlands." This restriction originated in the RAMSAR Treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971.
Logging in the Northwest, and throughout the nation experienced enormous restrictions, especially when the spotted owl was elevated to the endangered species list, but few realized that these restrictions originated with the CITES Treaty which spawned the Endangered Species Act in 1973.
In recent years, individuals in communities across the country have been outraged by "comprehensive plans" that allow one landowner to develop his land, while prohibiting another landowner from developing his land. Open space, green belts, and other terms make a mockery of the idea of "equal justice." Rarely do the victims, or the propagators of these comprehensive plans realize that these methods of land use control were formalized in a document adopted by the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, in 1976. (Full document, subscription required).
Americans were almost oblivious to the evolution of the European Union over the last generation. Now, instead of more than 20 sovereign nations, there is one European Union, with a parliament that enacts laws over the nations - that have little or no say in who makes those laws. Their freedom is being defined by the institution with the biggest stick. Their national currencies have been replaced by the Euro. Europe is now, for all practical purposes, an administrative unit of the United Nations.
Ultimately, global governance is seen to function as a collection of regional administrative units, such as the European Union, a North American Union, an Asian Union, and so forth. Policy is to be made by international bodies, such as those meeting this week in Brussels, and Paris, then adopted by the United Nations, and then administered through these regional administrative units.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership, working to create a "North American Community," would include an appointed tri-national "Parliamentary" group, evolving into an institution that wields a stick much bigger than any of the participating nations. Both Democrats and Republicans have promoted this evolution. Americans are gathering in Dallas, Texas next week, to learn how to block this evolving institution, from national leaders such as Joseph Farah, Phyllis Schlafly, Duncan Hunter, Tom DeWeese, and nearly two dozen others,
Neither political party seems to care about the principles of "equal justice" or the "consent of the governed" that made America great. Their concerns appears limited only to the control of the big stick, with which they can redefine the freedom Americans once had.
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