Goring national sovereignty

You probably heard the pundits declare after the first debate that
there is not a nickel’s worth of difference between Global Al and Dubya.
Wonder where the pundits were when the vice president and the governor
responded to the question of how they would go about, as president,
deciding when it was “in the national interest” to use U.S. force.

Here is Gov. Bush’s answer to that question:

Well, if it’s in our vital national interests, and that
means whether or not our territory… is threatened, our people could be
harmed, whether or not our alliances — our defense alliances — are
threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are
threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of
force.

Well, you probably agree with Dubya’s definition of “national
interest.” The president swears an oath to defend the Constitution of
the United States. That means he swears an oath to defend the United
States — its territory, its people, and its form of government — from
any outside interference, whatsoever.

The president is empowered to enter into alliances — with the advice
and consent of Congress — with other sovereign nation-states when it is
in our National Interest to do so. Some alliances, like NATO, may
require us to come to the aid — militarily — of an allied nation-state
if it is attacked.

But NATO is a defensive alliance. We are not required to participate
in any NATO aggression. We are not required by the NATO charter to bomb
— utterly without provocation — a non-NATO sovereign state. We are
only required to defend NATO member states from aggression.

Membership in the United Nations does not require us to come to
anyone’s aid — militarily or otherwise — for any reason. The only
requirement of U.N. membership is to pay the annual dues which,
recently, Jesse Helms has been reluctant to do.

The president is commander in chief of the armed forces of the United
States “in time of war” which, in days of yore, meant only when Congress
had actually declared war or our armed forces had actually been
attacked. Nowadays, with a large standing army and navy, whose
principal function is to deter any other nation from going to war with
us, the commander in chief may commit U.S. forces to combat — unless
attacked — only if Congress actually agrees to it. Like Congress did
in the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. And in the Gulf War Resolution.

It is clear that Gov. Bush understands what national interest means,
what the proper role of the commander in chief is and what the proper
role of U.S. armed forces is. It is equally clear that neither
President Clinton nor Vice President Gore understand any of that.

Not a nickel’s worth of difference between Gore and Bush?

Read Vice President Gore’s answer to the question about when it is
appropriate to use U.S. armed forces:

I disagree with … the proposal that maybe only when oil
supplies are at stake that our national security is at risk. I think
that there are situations, like in Bosnia or Kosovo where there’s a
genocide, where our national security is at stake there.

What’s Global Al talking about? You can chalk up his claim of
“genocide” in Kosovo to his childlike predilection to tell whoppers to
the grownups. Even “ethnic cleansing” is probably still too harsh a
term for what has been going on in Yugoslavia. Does Gore really believe
that our national security is at stake when Serbs run Croats out of town
on a rail or Bosnians run Serbs out of town on a rail or when any other
local majority treats harshly any other local minority — all of this
occurring within the sovereign nation-state kluge we call Yugoslavia?
Does Gore really believe that we ought to send in the Marines whenever
anywhere in the world one ethnic group “disrespects” another?
Apparently that is exactly what he does believe. And worse, President
Clinton has been acting for eight years as if he believes that, too. It
can only get worse under Gore.

Whence came this goofy idea of Global Al’s?

Well, here is what U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had to say in
the

Economist about sovereignty — essentially dismissing the quaint idea about national interest held by Dubya and most of you:

State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined — not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa. At the same time individual sovereignty — by which I mean the fundamental freedom of each individual, enshrined in the charter of the U.N. and subsequent international treaties — has been enhanced by a renewed and spreading consciousness of individual rights. When we read the (U.N.) charter today, we are more than ever conscious that its aim is to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them.

Aha! All is revealed. Global Al has also redefined “state sovereignty” to mean “individual sovereignty.” He and Kofi Annan are singing from the same page in the same hymnal. For Global Al, the nation-state is an anachronism. The globalists have no truck with organizations wherein individuals freely relinquish certain rights in order to promote the common good. No truck whatever for majority rule.

Until Bill Clinton came along, the champion American demagogue of all time was Huey Long, who had a rallying cry, “Every man a king!” Now comes Al Gore, “Every man a sovereign!” And if the duly constituted government of any nation-state does not provide each and every one of its citizens the individual sovereignty Al and Kofi think they ought to, then send in the blue berets.

In other words, the U.N. would ask President Gore — and he would be all too willing — to use our armed forces to “protect” individuals — anywhere on the planet — from the actions of other minorities, or the majority or even from their own government.

For the globalists, the nation-state exists primarily to protect the rights of individuals. If, in their opinion, the state fails to do that, the state has no legitimacy and the globalists are justified in interfering — militarily or otherwise — in the internal affairs of that state, even overthrowing the government if “necessary.”

Now, it is true that the United States was founded on the principle that government existed — or ought to exist — to protect the God-given rights of the governed. But, as the Declaration of Independence goes on to say, if the governed feel that the existing government fails to protect those God-given rights, then it is the right of the governed to overthrow or replace the existing government. Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence allows the secretary-general of the United Nations to send in the blue berets upon a finding that the federal government is not adequately protecting the rights — enshrined in the U.N. charter — of women seeking abortions.

As to the rights enshrined in the U.N. charter, our founding fathers believed centuries before the U.N. charter was ever written that we have certain inalienable rights — and they believed they were endowed by our Creator. Where did the rights come from that Annan, Gore and Clinton want to use the U.S. Marines and assorted other blue berets to protect? And who enshrined them? (If memory serves, Alger Hiss had a lot to do with drafting the U.N. charter.)

So, here we are, stuck with all these inalienable rights and an add-on bunch of very alienable rights. What to do? Do you suppose that if we just quit paying our U.N. dues that all those U.N. rights would go away? Why don’t we give it a try?