Was I hearing correctly the other day when Barack Obama explained his concerns about Russia’s incursion into Ukraine?
Did I hear him explain it was a “violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty”?
Sovereignty? I didn’t know this was a word in Obama’s vocabulary.
It certainly isn’t when it involves U.S. sovereignty. So why is Obama so concerned about Ukrainian sovereignty that he has brought us to the brink of war?
What is sovereignty? When applied to nation-states, sovereignty connotes power or authority over one’s own affairs.
It’s a great principle. I believe in sovereignty for legitimate nation-states – including Ukraine. I think the people of Ukraine should have self-determination over their own future.
But more important to me is that the United States of America’s sovereignty should be guarded at all costs. And what is so tragically ironic about Obama’s plea for Ukrainian sovereignty is that he does not feel the same way about the USA.
In fact, he seems to be doing everything within his power to attack U.S. sovereignty. Let me give you just a few examples:
- No one is a bigger champion of open immigration into the U.S. He has no respect for our borders, language, culture or the laws that protect them. He won’t enforce them. He won’t respond to the will of the people as it pertains to protecting them. That represents perhaps the most blatant frontal assault on U.S. sovereignty – when the chief law enforcement official in the land refuses to enforce immigration laws designed to guard our independence and the self-determination of our citizens.
- Obama is pushing two secretive international deals that impact major aspects of the economy, privacy and sovereignty. Last week he defended a proposed mega-free-trade zone between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and the European Union. It comes in the form of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. One section of TTIP stipulates foreign corporations can sue the government utilizing a special international tribunal instead of the country’s own domestic system that uses U.S. law – meaning the tribunals are not accountable to any national public authority of elected body. The agreement would create new guidelines for everything from food safety to fracking, financial markets, medical prices, copyright rules and Internet freedom.
- Speaking of Internet freedom, Obama is also determined to cede authority over the Internet to an as-yet-undetermined international body at the end of 2015. Since its inception, the Internet has worked remarkably well under the jurisdiction of a U.S. nonprofit corporation. No foreign entities are even clamoring for a change. Obama wants to do it unilaterally, without even considering the dire consequences of placing arguably the most important institution in the world under the control of an unknown foreign entity completely unaccountable to the American people, not to mention out of reach of the traditional American commitment to liberty.
I could go on and on.
Sovereignty is an important concept for free people. The sovereign of the universe is God. Under God, free nations are sovereign – meaning they determine their own destiny. In free societies like the U.S., we have sovereign states – or once did before they were increasingly, aggressively and unconstitutionally eclipsed by Washington. In theory, we also have sovereign individual citizens.
Obama has never – not once in his experience in public life – stood up for American sovereignty – a principle near and dear to the hearts of those who founded the country and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution shrewd and thorough protections of it. Nor has be been a champion of the sovereignty of states and citizens.
But suddenly Obama plays the “sovereignty card” when it comes to justifying U.S. meddling in another country halfway around the world.
Americans should be more concerned about Obama’s attacks on U.S. sovereignty than his pleas for defending Ukraine’s. If ever there were an argument that runs hollow and disingenuous, this is it. Obama has no credibility on the matter of national sovereignty – here or elsewhere.
If we’re going to take a national stand in favor of sovereignty, especially at the risk of war, let it be here in the U.S. Anyone who attacks the principle here has no legitimacy citing it elsewhere.
Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact [email protected].
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