US policy over the last 30 years or so has ceded the debate over the International system of Law to the international Left and the anti-American sentiment among many nation. Human rights resolutions at the UN are largely used as an anti-western tool, such as denunciations of Israel. UN practices are too ofen used to shield authoritarian states like Iran and North Korea as their labyrinthine nature cause them to be ineffective.
The UN is a body of largly equal nation-states with each state's adherance to respect for human rights or any limitations upon control over its people largley ignored. The US, because of its lack of interest in International Law, has dangerously ceded all of these legal points to its enemies on the world state. States such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe and a gaggle of other such violators of individual liberty have been shielded by a dome of International Law.
The US has abrogated its responsibilty to its interests to shape international law in a way that will explicitly protect individual rights and thereby implicitly serve US interests.Instead we see a headlong rush to furth "global governance" in an anti-Western direction based upon a nation-state system. The policies of centralized states have been allowed to promulgate on the international stage, shaping international law.
Paradoxically, the only way global government or even "global governance" will ever be acceptable, much less effective, is if it adopts a decentralized structure that is at the heart of the American idea of Federalism. Unforunately, this view of global government is largely antithetical to the ideas of those who advocate it, as it is centralization of power and not diversity of culture or interests that they seek. The victory of this view of centralized international law and government is a consequence of the American reatreat from the debate over the last 30 years.
"One World" may someday be possible and might be desirable. A one-government world, however, will by its nature be authoritarian if not totalitarian and will lead to more division and conflict in the world not less.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Remembering Myself
Every act of creation is a worhipful act toward God. Writing a word on a page is an act of creation. In a sense it is also an act of Revolution but also of Tradition. Let us say writing is the acto of the Traditional Revolutionary. It is the weapon of choice for all true revolutionaries down through the centuries. Writing is an act in which thought and action combine. Often through the action, thought is enhanced.
When one reaches a point where writing becomes tedious and topics seem meaningless the key is to keep writing, the hand movong. Start with a topic in the very present moment. The present moment is that perfect combination of all our senses and mind working together. There is no memory involved. Or is there??
Does not the present moment, any moment, conjure up countless memories?? A word can create a thousand pictures, what of a book, or a song?? Any action one takes is bound to be something that one has done in the past. The present may contain different elements. But some sensation in the present moment opens up an entire past world in which possibilities that seem to have past one by a still open.
It is in this way, perhaps, that our memories give us hope. Hope, as Aristotle wrote, is a waking dream. Hope is an expectation, usually unfullfilled, that the wrong can still be righted, that time in its ubiquity has somehow granted an exception for us, that we may walk again, that our dreams can appear to us in our waking eyes and not only our sleeping thoughts.
Can life then simply be an engineering exercise in which we input thought and effort and heart and a commensurate output is produced? I think not. In our memories lurks the key to our redemption and destruction. This constitutes and forms the unpredictabilities of life. These uncertainties constitute the sum total of the memory of Humankind. Each one of us acts upon the ghosts of our memories, the past creating the future in a wheel where the prevalence of spontanaity and surprise is guaranteed by the individuality of our memories, of our minds.
Memory is an essential and dangerous necessity that continually breaks the stale crust of the desire to control the life of this world.
When one reaches a point where writing becomes tedious and topics seem meaningless the key is to keep writing, the hand movong. Start with a topic in the very present moment. The present moment is that perfect combination of all our senses and mind working together. There is no memory involved. Or is there??
Does not the present moment, any moment, conjure up countless memories?? A word can create a thousand pictures, what of a book, or a song?? Any action one takes is bound to be something that one has done in the past. The present may contain different elements. But some sensation in the present moment opens up an entire past world in which possibilities that seem to have past one by a still open.
It is in this way, perhaps, that our memories give us hope. Hope, as Aristotle wrote, is a waking dream. Hope is an expectation, usually unfullfilled, that the wrong can still be righted, that time in its ubiquity has somehow granted an exception for us, that we may walk again, that our dreams can appear to us in our waking eyes and not only our sleeping thoughts.
Can life then simply be an engineering exercise in which we input thought and effort and heart and a commensurate output is produced? I think not. In our memories lurks the key to our redemption and destruction. This constitutes and forms the unpredictabilities of life. These uncertainties constitute the sum total of the memory of Humankind. Each one of us acts upon the ghosts of our memories, the past creating the future in a wheel where the prevalence of spontanaity and surprise is guaranteed by the individuality of our memories, of our minds.
Memory is an essential and dangerous necessity that continually breaks the stale crust of the desire to control the life of this world.
Remembering My Country (II)
Much of the dispute over taxation was precipitated by Great Britain's growing debt precipatated by the French and Indian War from 1756 to 1763. Her debt had risen by 58 million pounds from a base of 130 million pounds. This caused Parliament to search for new sources of revenue.
Britain won the global war with the French. However, in the course of the war she had to buy mercenaries in order to fight Her land battles in Europe. Therefore, She was in a deep debt crisis that was unprecedented for the time.
In 1761, before the end of the war, Britain made a more vigorous effort to collect customs duties from the Colonies. Courts, prompted by Customs officials , issued writs of assistance. These were orders autrhorizing police force to be used to search for smuggled goods on the private premises of American merchants. The Americans vehemently protested this as a violation of their rights as Englishmen. The brilliant young Bostonian lawyer James Otis made this argument in the courts. Otis argued that the courts had no legal right to issue the writs because Parliament had no legal right to authorize them. This argument by Otis was the intellectual spark that lit the American Rebellion. It was the first American legal argument disputing Parliament's unlimited right to make laws for the Colonies. The Americans were gaining the habit of governing themselves and they were preparing the intellectual and legal arguments to justify that position.
Long before bullets and lead were shot into Redcoat bellies, Americans were forming the philosophical arguments to justify the purpose of an American Nation. That purpose was Self-Government. The idea that you reading these words, whoever you are, have the duty to govern yourself in a lawful manner and that you have the Right to participate in the formation of those laws that you have the duty to obey. This is the relationship between duty and law, between obediance and freedom, between security and Liberty. They are all necessary to one another because they form a whole called Freedom under the Law.
Today, you celebrate your duty and right to govern yourself. Tomorrow, and every other day, you practice and defend that duty and right by thinking, reading, writing, debating, and governing. That is the duty and right of an American. That is the teleological purpose of our American nation. That is why I am still proud when I call myself an American.
Britain won the global war with the French. However, in the course of the war she had to buy mercenaries in order to fight Her land battles in Europe. Therefore, She was in a deep debt crisis that was unprecedented for the time.
In 1761, before the end of the war, Britain made a more vigorous effort to collect customs duties from the Colonies. Courts, prompted by Customs officials , issued writs of assistance. These were orders autrhorizing police force to be used to search for smuggled goods on the private premises of American merchants. The Americans vehemently protested this as a violation of their rights as Englishmen. The brilliant young Bostonian lawyer James Otis made this argument in the courts. Otis argued that the courts had no legal right to issue the writs because Parliament had no legal right to authorize them. This argument by Otis was the intellectual spark that lit the American Rebellion. It was the first American legal argument disputing Parliament's unlimited right to make laws for the Colonies. The Americans were gaining the habit of governing themselves and they were preparing the intellectual and legal arguments to justify that position.
Long before bullets and lead were shot into Redcoat bellies, Americans were forming the philosophical arguments to justify the purpose of an American Nation. That purpose was Self-Government. The idea that you reading these words, whoever you are, have the duty to govern yourself in a lawful manner and that you have the Right to participate in the formation of those laws that you have the duty to obey. This is the relationship between duty and law, between obediance and freedom, between security and Liberty. They are all necessary to one another because they form a whole called Freedom under the Law.
Today, you celebrate your duty and right to govern yourself. Tomorrow, and every other day, you practice and defend that duty and right by thinking, reading, writing, debating, and governing. That is the duty and right of an American. That is the teleological purpose of our American nation. That is why I am still proud when I call myself an American.
Remembering My Country (I)
The principal dispute regarding taxation between the American colonies and Britain was the specific authority to level particular taxes. The colonial Assemblies asserted that Parliament only had authority over external taxes. That is control over trade matters. Their position was that parliament had no authority over taxing internal interactions among the Colonies. The Assemblies had sole authority in those areas and the sole right to tax. This was the crux of the American argument regarding no taxation without representation.
Parliament argued that the Colonies had "virtual representaion" in Parliament because it represented the the interests of the entire empire. Eventually, the Colonists argued that the legality of any tax lay in its intention not its ostensible purpose. Therefore, a tax upon exports that had a hidden purpose of raising revenue and not simply regulating external trade was an unconstitutional tax based on the ancient unwritten English constitution. Great Britain as a sovereign nation had the right to regulate trade. But She did not have the right to levee taxes upon a people that had no say in their implementation.
Many Colonists, including Benjamin Franklin, came to the conclusion that the distinction between external and internal taxation had become indeterminant and therefore Parliament had no authority to pass any laws for the Colonies.
Parliament argued that the Colonies had "virtual representaion" in Parliament because it represented the the interests of the entire empire. Eventually, the Colonists argued that the legality of any tax lay in its intention not its ostensible purpose. Therefore, a tax upon exports that had a hidden purpose of raising revenue and not simply regulating external trade was an unconstitutional tax based on the ancient unwritten English constitution. Great Britain as a sovereign nation had the right to regulate trade. But She did not have the right to levee taxes upon a people that had no say in their implementation.
Many Colonists, including Benjamin Franklin, came to the conclusion that the distinction between external and internal taxation had become indeterminant and therefore Parliament had no authority to pass any laws for the Colonies.
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