Difference between revisions of "Conservatives supporting world government"

Revision as of 12:52, 19 August 2014

This post is in response to a friend questioning whether the right would ever agree to a world government. I believe the answer is yes.

As far as our at least more moderate right wing brethren, I think many of them might actually be the first on board as far as certain of the reforms needed to the U.N. system--e.g., booting out countries from the U.N. if their human rights were too abysmal, and making the U.N. General Assembly more proportional to population (we are the third most populous country in the world after all).

Admittedly, those reforms could probably only be achieved if the veto power we currently hold were eliminated or at least curbed, but then again, no doubt many on the right might even welcome that as well, if they understood it meant that certain other countries who shared that veto power (and have exercised it toward their own ends in the past) would no longer retain it either.

And I think those on the right who think the current U.N. is a waste of money and/or that the U.S. should not be acting as the sole world police, would rejoice if the above-mentioned reforms could actually lead to nations being willing to submit to the will of the reformed U.N. and making its decisions actually binding, since it would reduce the burden on the U.S., including reducing our serving as a primary target for accusations of neo-colonialism (whether unjustified or justified). Conservatives supported the first Gulf War, and that was an operation approved by the U.N. of the time. An effective U.N. ought to even take up the ostensible notion behind the Second Gulf War: preemptive strikes on confirmed arms treaty violators, though assuming international approval and responding as a matter of law to any such violations, not purely when nations deem it in their limited interest. (I mean to imply no political criticism (or endorsements) here--only to suggest pre-emptive strikes can have their place, just as they do when individual citizens or groups store up an undue amount of arms, alarming neighbors, and jeopardizing public safety and order--though intervention by a neighbor, however well-meaning, may lead to chaos, intervention by a representatively-accountable police force is rightly accepted by society.)

The philosopher Schopenhauer stated that a truth goes through stages of being ridiculed, opposed, and then becoming self-evident. While some will be inflexible in their opposition to the idea of an adequately strong but representative, federated world government, as long as the rest of us limit our loyalties to our own nation, the idea will no doubt remain in the ridicule stage and at best relegated to fiction (and that usually only in dystopian form, Star Trek being one fortunate exception). (Note I'm not criticizing a rational loyalty to country, any more than I would criticize a rational loyalty to one's city.)

But if people say start waving the U.N. flag along with the U.S. flag showing solidarity with their fellow law-abiding world citizens, at least supporting it in principle despite its current limitations and even unjust attributes (such as the veto power of the "more equal" permanent members of the Security Council), if we start having a rationally-based faith that the unity which our forbears successfully built up from tribal loyalties to city-states and states, and then from divided states into a united republic, is still achievable today as long as we work, as did our earlier counterparts who welded our states together, for the welding of today's nations together.

Remember the Articles of Confederation? Our first Constitution, like our first (and current) U.N. charter, which granted too much autonomy to individual states, leading it unable to cope with the threats of the time? We overcame that, both due to crisis but also choice. The soldiers in the different states of the time were known to cry "One hoop to the barrel", meaning they wanted to be under one command, despite coming from different states. Benjamin Franklin helped spread in the budding educational system the notion of national identity--a notion which hadn't been formally promoted before then, just as today we need educators and our system to spread the idea of world citizenship. George Washington--certainly no extreme leftist--lead the way as an early proponent of an adequately strong federal government, welding together disparate states : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation#Function , just as we need a strong, though of course not overly-centralized, world government.

No doubt, such outward expressions of love and loyalty for the whole world order will be seen as a threat to those who harbor no wish for the U.N. to succeed--whether out of racism, nationalism, religious or ideological fanaticism, or those who simply do not understand that the idea need not be threatening if properly constituted. But the idea entering our public consciousness in a more serious way by more Americans owning the issue ought not only bring out hostility and fear-mongering, but also a genuinely healthy debate which Americans (and other world-citizens) of different political inclinations can contribute to for the benefit of a new international order.

Americans were positive about the United Nations when it first formed; I do not believe there is any inherent bigotry or opposition among the majority of the American people toward greater international sovereignty, as long as it is done democratically and justly. As a nation founded on principles, hopefully we can ensure these same principles are applied to a strengthened, most just world order.