In discussing the Iraq Invasion (yet again!) over at another blog, I asked the question of the war-supporters:
1. Ought laws be followed?
And the follow up:
2. You're now president. What laws would you propose that everyone should follow that we're willing to follow as well?
This led to the response:
Yes, laws should be followed.
The second question is asked from a perspective in which the US should be accountable to international law. I don't believe that. I don't think the US should participate nor adhere to ANY international law, because usually those laws are not favorable for us.
Every free person on this planet is free because of America, we've NEVER been on the side of evil and that has earned us the right not to have our motives questioned.
!
And I followed up with this breakdown of his logic, as I saw it:
So, as I understand it, you think that any nation that has never been on the side of evil has earned the right to not have their motives questioned? Those blameless nations can decide if and when and whom they need to bomb for whatever purposes.
Conversely, those nations that are not blameless/that HAVE been on the side of evil don't get to bomb when and whom they please? Is that a fair assessment?
If so, then who decides which nations are the blameless ones who've never been on the side of evil and which nations aren't?
I paused for a response and none was forthcoming and so I continued.
You see, there are too many logical difficulties with your reasoning. The feeling that we must make our own rules is fairly common in human nature, but it is an immature belief based upon fear, emotions, immorality and inconsistency that is hard to justify if you are concerned about logic, justice and morality.
Once you've said that only blameless nations can choose to bomb others, two immediate problems pop up.
1. There are no blameless nations and it would be naive to think so. I love my country; I think her Constitution and history are something to be proud of. But, God bless us, we have made mistakes.
We have chosen to embrace evil at times when it seemed the best choice in a bad situation.
We have targeted and bombed cities of civilians (Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki).
We have supported terrorists (contras, the Salvadoran gov't) with weapons, money and training.
We have supported corrupt, murderous despots (Saddam, Pinochet, Somoza) and subverted democracy in other sovereign nations.
I fully understand that some who made these decisions did so thinking they were doing the best they could. But we know all about good intentions. A nation which has killed whole cities of children and committed war crimes and supported terrorism CAN NOT claim to be blameless.
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I'll split this essay up here, so folk could deal with each of the parts separately if they wish. Unfortunately, I will be away from my computer much of this coming week, so I may not have a chance to respond right away, but feel free to make comments.
24 comments:
Whenever I hear someone claim that the U.S. shouldn't be subject to international law, I know that they have this mental picture of other nations as a cabal trying to play "gotcha" with the U.S. and subject us to weird laws alien to our traditions and against all reason. They also assume this is how the U.S. has always viewed international law.
To the contrary, our Founders had such respect for international law that they felt constrained to justify the Revolution: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which compel them to the separation." Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776. (When's the last time a U.S. politician cared about the opinions of humanity?"
Moreoever, Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution expressly states that any treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory share with the Constitution equal status as "supreme law of the land." That's international law.
To what do these yahoos believe the U.S. appeals when it appeals to the WTO but international trade law? What about the laws of the sea that protect our commerce from piracy and tell who can fish where?
Then there's that large amount of international law that the U.S. actually WROTE: e.g., the Charter of the United Nations (written by a Republican, Harold Stassen, at the request of a Democratic President, Harry Truman), the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (drafting commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt at the request of Eisenhower), the Nuremberg Charter, etc.
The idea that we should not be subject to international law is actually RACIST--it assumes our superiority to all other peoples. When any other nation violates international law, we hold them to account. If they do this as a matter of policy, we call them "rogue nations."
The failure of the U.S. to give even lipservice to international law under this administration undermines our ability even to keep our people safe. We torture, so why should our citizens be safe from torture? We are thinking of building new generations of "usuable nukes" for conventional wars instead of working to reduce and abolish our weapons--in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty requirements that nuclear nations work at abolition and have no "vertical proliferation." Then we try to hold North Korea subject to that same treaty and prevent Iran from even having non-military nuclear capability--which the treaty allows. Do we wonder that we get so little cooperation?
Michael, you are a wealth of information. Thanks.
Michael, that explanation won't do.
Even the hardest core Libertarian holds that if an individual makes a contract of his own free will, he is duty bound to honor it.
The treaties and trade agreements we've made are specific agreements that we entered into. Of course we should be subject to them, anything less is blatant dishonesty. same as it would be for individuals.
When people say we should not be subject to international law, we mean laws that are passed by majority of participants but the US does not subscribe to or that are contrary to our culture.
As an example, we have the right to individually arm ourselves to collectively resist the government if it becomes too egregious. The consensus of the UN and many other international groups is that individual ownership of weapons should be prohibited. As a country we might (God forbid) someday subscribe to that philosophy. We don't now. Why should we place our ability to govern ourselves in this manner under the approval of other nations?
Foreign treaties trump our laws, even the Constitution itself. That is all the more reason to enter them very cautiously and NEVER let someone else decide what laws can be placed above our own constitution.
eleutheros, you're wrong. We had signed Kyoto Agreement and ratified it, but Bush "unsigned" it--something unprecedented in U.S. history. We had signed, but not yet ratified, the International Criminal Court, and we "unsigned" that because we knew that we'd shortly be producing war criminals.
Further, our invasion of Iraq violated the UN Charter (which we wrote!) and the Nuremberg Charter, specifically the section on "Crimes Against Peace." So that's violations of international law whose consensus we helped to form. When we tried to create a whole new category of prisoner, "detainees" in the so-called "war on terror" that (we said) would not be subject to the Geneva Conventions, we were also trying to evade international law that was part of a consensus we had formed. Our violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty also fall under this category. In fact, EVERY example I used was part of international law that the U.S. LED in creating and which it once CHAMPIONED--but no longer.
(Incidentally, I have no idea whether the Iranians have secret military plans for their nuclear program or not. It may be that U.S. suspicions are fully justified and I don't much like "peaceful" nuclear energy any more than nuclear weapons. But, so far, Iran has complied with the Nonproliferation Treaty and we haven't. This hypocrisy undermines our ability to negotiate a settlement with Iran fairly. We have no moral high ground.)
Now, as to your gun control example. I am among those who believe the 2nd Amendment does NOT guarantee an individual right to bear arms. The "well ordered militia" clause seems to be controlling. If that is the case, then the international consensus is not so far from ours. But it has never been tested in court. The NRA and other gun nuts keep blocking reasonable gun restrictions because they know that the Supreme Court (ANY Supreme Court, no matter how many conservatives or how many liberals) has not struck down ANY gun law restrictions. The NRA and other gun nuts are afraid that a case which got to the Supreme Court would actually put IN WRITING, in legal precedent, the concept that the Constitution does not defend any kind of absolute individual right to gun ownership. So, they continue to intimidate Congress, instead.
To date, international law does NOT forbid nations to have permissive gun laws. There is nothing like what you claim in any body of accepted international law. What there IS is a growing consensus among other nations to pass their own laws that restrict gun ownership for the sake of society. Tyranny can better be faced with nonviolent revolution. Whether or not such an evolving consensus should be consulted ("a decent respect for the opinions of [hu]mankind") when judges or legislators are formulating U.S. laws is debatable.
But that is NOT international law. And that was beside Dan's discussion. Dan asked about whether the U.S. should break laws--and clearly had laws against international aggression ("crimes against peace") in mind. The yahoo who replied that international law should not trump U.S. law also clearly had that in mind since he was trying to claim that U.S. law gave us some kind of right to "preemptive war."
In fact, however, the invasion of Iraq also violated U.S. law since there was no declaration of war. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "declare war." Nowhere does it hint of any ability to pass off this grave responsibility to the Executive branch with an "authorization to use force"--even though that authorization was still phrased as a last resort. So, no matter how you look at it, from a domestic or international legal viewpoint, the invasion was illegal--as well as immoral and unnecessary and it has created more terrorists and made the world more unsafe. We are now the rogue nation.
Michael,
It greatly depends upon what is meant by "we had signed". Our assigned dignitaries 'had signed' the treaty which only meant they would bring it back for congress AND the president to ratify. Which did not happen. All treaties have to be ratified, the Kyoto treaty was never ratified and therefore it was never 'signed' .... meaning we had as a people agreed to be bound by it.
Make no mistake, I don't say the US has any record of abibiding by US international law. It certainly doesn't. But in almost every case, we had no business signing onto those laws to begin with.
As to Geneva Convention, the agreement is NOT unilateral. Nations agree to follow the rules when waging war on each other, to ensure humane treatment for each ohter's soldiers. This is quite germane to Dan's post here. It does not good to have international laws that are binding on only one side. Also the Geneva Convention is a covenant between two nations who both sign onto the rules. In the present case we are not (technically) fighting a nation. Al Qaeda is not a nation and has agreed to no convention.
As recently as 1990 (and several score of times in the past) the Supreme Court has established once again that 'the people' in the 2nd Amendment means individual people and not the state ( United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 110 S. Ct. 1839 (1990)) I am forever surprised that this question isn't laid to rest in the minds of any reasonable and informed citizen. The Bill of Rights all applies to an individual's freedom and guarantees from govenment interference in same. Doesn't it strike you as odd that in a list of individual freedoms of religion, press, speech, assembly, freedom from search and seizure, etc. that one freedom is artlessly injected there as a right of the state but not the individual? No matter how much one might fear guns and hold their breath and wish with all their being that the Constitution doesn't guarantee the right of a citizen to arm themselves, it just isn't so.
None the less, when all is said and one, and the dust is settled, it is our lifestyle that dictates the international actions of our government and not the other way around. It dictates what laws we sign onto and when and to what extent we break them.
So, let's say that the war in Iraq is illegal and unconstitutional for discussion's sake. You are the ultimate instigator of that war. If it is so horrendous, what are you doing here on the homefront to stop it?
It greatly depends upon what is meant by "we had signed". Gee, is that like a certain presidential adulterer's "it all depends on what "is" is?" Kyoto was signed by Clinton and ratified by the senate. The ICC was signed but had just been introduced to the senate when Bush "unsigned" it.
Whether a treaty is one we should sign or not is not up to any blogger. The diplomats who initially sign are under instructions from the president--and presidential signing of treaties is part of the constitutional duties of the president (Article II). If individual citizens don't want the senate to ratify, they can freely petition government as entitled. If the senators vote as they don't want, they can vote them out next time and instruct a next president to seek to renegotiate a treaty--but not simply to break it because we don't like it!
You conclude better than you began, however: "So, let's say that the war in Iraq is illegal and unconstitutional for discussion's sake. You are the ultimate instigator of that war. If it is so horrendous, what are you doing here on the homefront to stop it?" Good question. I'm probably not doing enough, but I did protest the invasion beforehand (as did Dan) and have since. I have also written hundreds of letters to editors, letters to Congress, attempted to get Bush impeached, etc. The efforts are ongoing--and need to be more widespread before the occupation will stop.
Michael, are you certain you are clear on how the US operates with international treaties?
President Clinton signed diplomatic documents which said his administration would present the treaty to the senate for ratification. He did not. At the time Bush withdrew from the Kyoto process in 2001, of the 100 nations that had "signed" the treaty, on one, Romania, has ratified it. The senate that year passed a resolution 95-0 that it would NOT ratify the Kyoto accord as it stood. All that Clinton's "signing" of the treaty promised to do was submit the teaty to our political process, which was done, and it got nowhere.
If you are a fan of obeying international law, then you should applaud this process since the law was followed.
Michael:" I did protest the invasion beforehand (as did Dan) and have since. I have also written hundreds of letters to editors, letters to Congress, attempted to get Bush impeached"
Ah. I see. In other words, nothing.
We are exerting our military advantage in Iraq because in this country people don't make anything any more, don't grow nearly enough food to feed ourselves any more, don't have any source of fuel for our lifestyle any more. So we have to force our political will on the rest of the world to give us their resources and the results fo their labor, since we are as a whole, fat and lazy unwilling any longer to do any real work.
That's what I was asking, what are you doing to remove those underlying causes of the war? Until that's addressed, protesting and writing letters is an exercise in self-delusional foolishness.
Or as the character Dr. Phil is wont to ask, "How's that working for you?"
"It does not good to have international laws that are binding on only one side."
I'd disagree. Even if the enemy is glad to cut the heads off our soldiers, it is vital that we not embrace their methods. Making statements, signing agreements saying that we will not commit atrocities (and then following through) goes a long way towards fighting for peace.
In global polls leading up to the war, people worldwide found Bush to be a greater threat to world peace than Saddam! Why is that? Does it mean that we have a tendency to commit genocide or other atrocities? Clearly we don't.
And yet, because we are morally ambiguous - we stand against killing of innocent people AND YET if we think it acceptable, we will target Hiroshima - then the world sees that ambiguity. And since we have far and away the most massive war machine globally AND since we will commit atrocities if it suits us, then people recognize that and think we are a threat.
And if we are perceived to be a rogue and dangerous empire, then we make ourselves a greater target.
And so I repeat: It is vital that we design and sign and follow through on treaties such as the Geneva Convention EVEN IF the "enemy" doesn't.
"I see. In other words, nothing."
You don't know what Michael and I or anyone else is doing. We do write letters and try to inform public opinion and that IS a legitimate route. We also have lessened our dependency upon oil. We have taken steps to decrease the amount of money that we send to the War Machine (whether you "believe" in money or not, tax dollars ARE being used to purchase and use bombs - it's not imaginary). We have taken steps to influence the US church away from war-making and away from fossil fuel dependency. We grow some of our own food and purchase other parts of it from local farmers.
Shall we get in a "how much gas do YOU use" pissing contest? I suspect you might win, but does that mean that we're doing nothing if we don't measure up to your standards? If so then, almighty E, forgive us poor sinners.
Michael:"I'd disagree. Even if the enemy is glad to cut the heads off our soldiers, it is vital that we not embrace their methods."
Yes, it is vital we not embrace their methods. But that's a far cry from conducting ourselves like the Battle of Fontenoy when the lines were drawn up and the British called to the French "Gentlemen of the French Guard, fire first." When you are driving your car you obey the traffic laws with the expectation that everyone else is going to obey them too. But if there were no traffic laws being enforced, you wouldn't go running down pedestrians, but at the same time you wouldn't go driving around obeying every law meant to coodinate traffic among cooperating drivers. You'd drive much more defensively, suspiciously, and at times aggressively. Or you'd not endure long.
Michael:"Shall we get in a "how much gas do YOU use" pissing contest?"
It would be far more useful than a "how many utterly useless letters did YOU write" pissing contest. And it isn't just gasoline. Our whole lifestyle is built on international and environmental plunder.
The protestor and letter writer, it seems, thinks that it's a simple matter of military action in Iraq or not. If we leave Iraq to its own devices, the only difference would be that our military is brough back stateside and the Iraqi women and children are left alone and it's business as usual.
This is not the case. The war is being prosecuted to secure the US's unique position as the source of the world's reserve currency. Without that position our present economy collapses. When you protest that we should withdraw from Iraq, you are protesting that we should give up everything that is derived from our foreign plunder.
Fine, says I, put some credibility into your protests and give up the plunder first. And you do that by examining the source of your sustinence and wealth and giving up those things that must be wrested from the rest of the world - the real source of the world's resentment against us.
So it isn't an idle 'pissing contest', it is the very heart of the matter.
"Our whole lifestyle is built on international and environmental plunder."
Agreed.
"The protestor and letter writer, it seems, thinks that it's a simple matter of military action in Iraq or not."
Not these protestors.
Just a note: In eleutheros' last post, he is quoting Dan of Paynehollow fame when he thinks he's quoting one Michael the Leveller. Not that this Leveller has much disagreement with what Dan said, but just trying to keep the record straight.
Ilario Pantano wrote:
"One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand.
That's it. That's how much time U.S. Army Spec. Mario Lozano, a Bronx native, had to decide on Baghdad's notoriously dangerous Airport Road in March 2005: Shoot or don't shoot. He chose to shoot a car speeding toward his roadblock late at night with its lights off. Now, if Italian prosecutors have their way, he will face murder charges. Never mind that the American military has cleared him of all wrongdoing. Four lawyers in Rome have signed an extradition request to charge Lozano with the murder of an Italian intelligence officer, alleging the shooting was a "political crime" against their country's interests.
The real political crime is happening now in Italy, not last year in Iraq. And the true victims are our troops."
This is why Americans will NEVER, EVER accept international courts, Dan.
We don't trust their forms of justice. We trust our own!
Mistakes, or no mistakes--doesn't matter!
This account contradicts that of independent witnesses to the event. Of course the indep. witnesses MUST be lying because there have NEVER been U.S. military cover ups for crimes and atrocities, right? Give me a break.
I don't know who's right about this one, but I do know that the Italians (our ALLIES in the "coalition of the willing") are right to be pissed since the U.S. military investigation took all of about 30 seconds and didn't interview ANY of the independent witnesses. No wonder they want to extradite him.
eleutheros: "Foreign treaties trump our laws, even the Constitution itself."
As far as I can tell, in the event of a conflict between a treaty and the Constitution, the Constitution prevails. This seems to be the established precedent, and it makes logical sense. Since treaties derive their authority from the Constitution, it wouldn't make much sense to allow them to supersede the same.
I've posted some tangential thoughts about the issues in this thread here, if anybody cares to come take a look.
Catastrophile:"As far as I can tell, in the event of a conflict between a treaty and the Constitution, the Constitution prevails."
I couldn't get your blog to come up, I will try to read your piece later.
But as to the above, I'm afraid you'd be mistaken, and more's the pity. Some Supreme Court decisions and some acts of Congress have upheld the above view, that treaties are subordinate to the Constitution.
But not all, not even the majority. The sore point is Article IV:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
As you see, treaties and the Constitution seem to be given equal authority. But very often in our past, the bodies politique have asserted that treaties must be followed as if they ammended the Constitution. For example John Dulles, secretariy of state under Einsenhour, said: " "Treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties, for example … can cut across the rights given the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights."
Overlooking for the moment that the poor fool didn't understand that the Constitution doesn't give rights but rather guarantees them, his view has been held by many presidents, congresses, and supreme courts in our past.
In the present environment of globalism, we are solidly in the camp that views treaties as binding over the Constitution.
That is why interantional law is such a horrendously bad idea.
Gads.
Make that: Article VI. Gotta learn to type one of these days.
This is my usual go-to source for Constitutional precedent. It says, basically, that while a treaty never seems to have actually been held unConstitutional, the SC has stated in various rulings (excerpted there) that treaties are certainly not excepted from the limitations on the federal government codified in the Constitution.
I'd be glad to look at a contradictory source for statements by the court. Executive branch figures, of course, are always asserting that our rights don't go as far as we think they do, but fortunately it's not their decision to make. ;)
Catastrophile, the FindLaw blurb to which you refer isn't quite so simplistic as that and includes references to satements to the contrary opinion.
More important is to understand that there are two types of treaties: self-executing and non-self-executing. The latter is simply an agreement to present the provisions of a treaty to the usual legislative process and see if it is approved. The Kyoto Treaty is of this type. Signing the protocol was only an agreement to submit the treaty for ratification. It was never ratified. Almost (but not quite all) the blather about and references to treaties being under Constitutional constraint are of this type. Congress may not ratify a treaty not fund it if it is in conflict with the Constitution.
The former type is a teaty that the executive branch enters into and it instantly becomes the law of the land and is fully enforceable in the courts. Like any other law, it could be challanged, but while it is in force, it is enforceable. An example of this type of treaty is the Vienna Convention which empowered the International Court of Justice. The facts and even SC decision has clarly identified the US's participation in the ICJ as a self-executing treaty.
So then comes the case of Medellin vs. Dretke in which Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen, had exhausted all his Constitutional appeals of his Texas death sentence. He appealed to the ICJ and said court ordered Texas to review the case. Texas said "go to Hell." The case was headed for the Supreme Court (April of 2005) but the court very much did not want to hear the case. It was unprecendented, the law is all on the side of Mr. Medellin, and if they heard it, it would set a precedent for foreign courts to make judgements over US state courts. Bush (being a globalist) wanted the ICJ's ruling to stand and began pressuring the Texas justice system for a review. Finally Texas reviewed the case (and 51 others) and so the Supreme Court heaved a sigh of relief and said "Phew, OK, since he got his review after all, there's no case to decide."
Did you know that the treat of foreign law trumping our own was so much a concern in the 1950's that there was a Constitutional ammendemnt proposed to state that treaties did not trump the Constitution? Why would that have been a concern tot he point of ammending hte Constitution if it was so clear that they didn't?
We are just that close to having foreign courts decide Constitutional matter in the US. The disarment nuts know that passage of unconstitutional disarming of citizens will never pass, so they have repeatedly appealed to foreign courts and our treaties with them to make a case that gun ownership should be outlawed in direct conflict with the Constitution.
Foreign treaties are a serious matter. Foreign international courts doubly so.
Amazing. What you see as a threat, I see as hope that one day the USA will no longer be a rogue nation and, instead of trying to rule the world, will join the world. It has always been difficult to enforce international law and this problem doesn't look to go away in the near future, but I think we are creating enforcement mechanisms and these hold real promise to eventually curb the American empire's status as global bully. We may even remember to be a democratic republic if we get tired of being a global pariah.
Bush a globalist? Only in the sense of wanting the U.S. to rule the world--especially U.S. based transnational corporations backed up by the U.S. military and its empire of bases.
Michael,
There are two things on which I will agree with you (and a good many others I will disagree when I get the time to address them, this is a busy time for us subsistence folk).
1. The US is acting as World Bully
2. Bush (and Regan, Bush 1, and Clinton)'s view of globalism has a lot more to do with exploitation than cooperation or mutual benefit.
Where we disagree, correct me if I'm mistook, is that I see the solution to our bullying as living a "right livelihood" so that we are not trying to extort the other man's goods, labor, or resources. Those are for him. Each nation's, then each state's, then each community's, and finally each family's efforts to provide for their own ought to be protected first and foremost by not interfering with them and leaving them alone. The cherished paradigm should be self-sufficiency.
Your view, if I've read it aright, is that the world's goods and resources ought to be considered a commonwealth and managed and distributed to ensure world equity.
What I would submit is that the world and history is full of bullies. We've examples aplenty of the US's (and Bush's) sort of globalism. Where's the example of the type you propose?
I know of none. What I see when I view the gestalt of history is that there are those who revere and esteem staunch self-reliance in themselves and others, and there are the bullies. No other paradigm presents itself as having endured more than the pipe dream stage.
Yes, we agree with the 2 points. I don't disagree with self-sufficiency and its corollary, local community sufficiency, whenever this is possible. However, some things have to be distributed more than locally.
I believe that we are all connected, so just working on self-sufficiency is not adequate. It may keep you from exploiting others, but does nothing to help others.
I do think there have been commonwealth models, though not on a world scale. Why should that stop us from building a new model? There was never a model of global capitalist exploitation in any systematic fashion until Bush I, after all. The models I work with are similar on the economic realm to those coming out of venues like the World Social Forum. The models I work with on global political scale, have been evolving since the late 19th C.
I do think there are alternatives to either empire or each person (family, community, nation) as an island that ignores the rest. I also think that SOME kind of globalization is inevitable. That ship has sailed. We can no more return to your Walden ideal, eleutheros, than we can try to think ourselves into a pre-Columbian view of earth's geography! And, since the forces of empire and exploitation stole a jump on progressive/cooperative forces on globalization, then those of us who believe in global justice must quickly abandon fantasies of everyone being able to return to Walden-like bucolic bliss, and roll up our sleeves and work for bottom-up, fair-trade, ecologically sustainable, socially just, and human rights protecting forms of federal globalism.
We need more alternatives than McWorld or Jihad or Walden-like isolationism.
Michael:"I do think there are alternatives to either empire or each person (family, community, nation) as an island that ignores the rest."
There used to be, perhaps. But we are on the brink of something (in one of Dan's previous posts) that calls off all bets. Our modern world is afloat on a sea of oil. None of us alive has experienced a world without cheap oil (although I witnessed the lifestyle in my grandparents in very rural SW Virginia).
Soon, says I, the ability of the world to interact on anything but a fraction of the scale it does today will be forever gone, and around the world a Walden-like existence will be the norm.
But that not withstanding, I say that a policy of non-interference comes before any meaningful global federalism, if 'meaningful' and 'global federalism' can be used in the same sentence with a straight face!
"We need more alternatives than McWorld or Jihad or Walden-like isolationism." The Leveller
Yeah, like responsibility towards others.
Wow. I've been on vacation this week but y'all've been managing just fine without me. What a complex, intriguing and useful discussion.
Thanks everyone for the input, I'll be back tonight and maybe I can think of a halfway intelligent or helpful remark to throw in here. Great stuff, all.
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