Monday, April 18, 2005
The sense of a community of nations:
Peter E. Pflaum & Mary Anne Watkins
225 Robinson Road
New Smyrna Beach, 32169
386 428 9609
pflaump@ucnsb.net
Sunday, April 17, 2005
By fax to: (212) 556-4100 The Op-Ed Page229 West 43rd StreetNew York, NY 10036
Dear Sirs:
The natural tensions between the “collective” vs. “individual” is being played out in some new and important ways. “Loudly, With a Big Stick” By DAVID BROOKS in the NY Times supports John Bolton’s appointment to the UN with a critical analysis of world federalism vs. a more tightly defined national interest. The magazine “The Unregulated Offensive” By JEFFREY ROSEN Published: April 17, 2005 reviews a libertarian constitutional theory with roots in John Locke and Ayn Rand. One is reminded of Lady Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society”. The other side is Clinton’s and Blaire’s idea of expanding role for community from tribe and clan to nation and from nations to wider organizations such as the European Union.
The libertarian base of the new Bush administration showed when it withdraw first thing from most international initiatives such as Global Warming, Criminal Justice, small arms, land mines, chemical and biological weapons, et al. They do not believe in internationalizing more issues, as Mr. Brooks has said “We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.
Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.”
This argument sounds reasonable but is pure sophism. This old idea has always been the argument against world government. Since there is no world community of interest and citizenship only raw power can create any authority to impose order on fractionized populations of the world then the same is true in much of Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Balkans or Iraq where we hope to do nation building, why then no “community of nations” building?
The growth of globalization has made this argument less and less true. It is not either “world government” or the “law of the jungle” but complex networks of relationship and growing international associations such as the EU, The Vatican, The Red Cross, NGOs, Postal and communications agreements, bond trading, WTO, IMF, World Bank, NATO, thousands of international professional associations, hundreds of international standards for the internet, accounting, equipment, and dozens of UN agencies. The creeping internationalization can not be stopped or reversed but can be honestly questioned. The multilateral technocracy grows everyday and the issues are really about how well it works. The problems at the UN stem in great part from micro-management and patronage coming from the members. It needs a modern civil service free of politics, more not less modern and managerial and protected in order to do its job.
The extreme forms of collectivism both left and right have stained our history with mass murder and world wars. (Stalin and Hitler for example) Extreme individualism has protected racism, social injustice, environmental destruction, and international and community conflicts to protect commercial and military interests. (Tom Delay and John Bolton for example as tools of the military industrial complex) A new world order would not be good for some military and business interest that need new enemies and small wars since the fall of communism. If you want to know peoples values see where the money goes.
Peter E. Pflaum & Mary Anne Watkins
225 Robinson Road
New Smyrna Beach, 32169
386 428 9609
pflaump@ucnsb.net
Sunday, April 17, 2005
By fax to: (212) 556-4100 The Op-Ed Page229 West 43rd StreetNew York, NY 10036
Dear Sirs:
The natural tensions between the “collective” vs. “individual” is being played out in some new and important ways. “Loudly, With a Big Stick” By DAVID BROOKS in the NY Times supports John Bolton’s appointment to the UN with a critical analysis of world federalism vs. a more tightly defined national interest. The magazine “The Unregulated Offensive” By JEFFREY ROSEN Published: April 17, 2005 reviews a libertarian constitutional theory with roots in John Locke and Ayn Rand. One is reminded of Lady Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society”. The other side is Clinton’s and Blaire’s idea of expanding role for community from tribe and clan to nation and from nations to wider organizations such as the European Union.
The libertarian base of the new Bush administration showed when it withdraw first thing from most international initiatives such as Global Warming, Criminal Justice, small arms, land mines, chemical and biological weapons, et al. They do not believe in internationalizing more issues, as Mr. Brooks has said “We'll never accept it, first, because it is undemocratic. It is impossible to set up legitimate global authorities because there is no global democracy, no sense of common peoplehood and trust. So multilateral organizations can never look like legislatures, with open debate, up or down votes and the losers accepting majority decisions.
Instead, they look like meetings of unelected elites, of technocrats who make decisions in secret and who rely upon intentionally impenetrable language, who settle differences through arcane fudges. Americans, like most peoples, will never surrender even a bit of their national democracy for the sake of multilateral technocracy.”
This argument sounds reasonable but is pure sophism. This old idea has always been the argument against world government. Since there is no world community of interest and citizenship only raw power can create any authority to impose order on fractionized populations of the world then the same is true in much of Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Balkans or Iraq where we hope to do nation building, why then no “community of nations” building?
The growth of globalization has made this argument less and less true. It is not either “world government” or the “law of the jungle” but complex networks of relationship and growing international associations such as the EU, The Vatican, The Red Cross, NGOs, Postal and communications agreements, bond trading, WTO, IMF, World Bank, NATO, thousands of international professional associations, hundreds of international standards for the internet, accounting, equipment, and dozens of UN agencies. The creeping internationalization can not be stopped or reversed but can be honestly questioned. The multilateral technocracy grows everyday and the issues are really about how well it works. The problems at the UN stem in great part from micro-management and patronage coming from the members. It needs a modern civil service free of politics, more not less modern and managerial and protected in order to do its job.
The extreme forms of collectivism both left and right have stained our history with mass murder and world wars. (Stalin and Hitler for example) Extreme individualism has protected racism, social injustice, environmental destruction, and international and community conflicts to protect commercial and military interests. (Tom Delay and John Bolton for example as tools of the military industrial complex) A new world order would not be good for some military and business interest that need new enemies and small wars since the fall of communism. If you want to know peoples values see where the money goes.
