> I'm for the U.S. Constitution, its founding principles and the republican
> form of government it promotes.
>
> While we seldom live up to those principles in practice anymore, they are
> the ideals to which we should aspire.
Agreed.
> The U.N.'s principles are primarily socialistic, and not compatible with
> those of our founding.
Some would say the US is too socialistic, and have a case for it. We certainly don't have pure capitalism, and we don't have a democratic republic either - as I'm reminded every single time I'm forced to choose the lesser of the evils and then vote for someone who I know will not represent my wishes.
In fact, I shudder to think of what we really have - and I've no doubt the people who launched this country would turn in their graves over the status quo. I think before we continue preaching our values to others, we need to do some serious internal housekeeping.
It may well be that countries actively participating with the UN are most socialistic than we like, but that should call us to task to make the necessary changes, not to shrink away or be a fair weather friend.
> If we are to have a world system, I want one based on the U.S. Consitution.
> That's all.
100% agreement, but it's a long road, and will take a lot of dedicated work.
> The U.N. is the very definition of B.S. politics. It was created merely to
> counter balance the two superpowers and their various satellites. Like NATO,
> its usefulness has passed. Unfortunately, entrenched bureaucracies never
> die, they just hire new marketing firms, and find new reasons for their
> existence.
Whether it's called the UN or something else, the basic idea is that we have local gov't for local things, and national gov't for nation things. The missing piece is a world gov't for things on that order. Without that level, we have countries going to war with each other, and we live in a time when that approach must be ended.
A critically important piece of coming to terms with this concept would entail fixing something that's gone very wrong with our own gov't: it's gotten way too big for it's britches. The US Gov't was originally instituted for very specific reasons, but over time has grown in leaps and bounds to become way too encompassing, and is now doing all kinds of things beyond it's mission. Who gave the gov't the right to collect extensive dosiers on each of us? It just grew is what happened. In order for gov't to be successful, it has to have specific, limited, defined responsibilities and continuously be held accountable to the citizens that allowed it to exist in the first place. From this standpoint, a form of world gov't is a lot more palatible.
> I'm surprised you aren't more vocally outraged about the oil-for-food
> program. I would have thought an idealistic guy like you would be all over
> Kofi & Son for that charade, which - you must confess - gives guys like me a
> lot of ammunition for our position.
Believe me, I was just as upset over that as they next person, but I see that happening because the institution has been neglected, not watered. If we got real involved and took it seriously, we would be working to minimize this kind of behaviour.
Bill
>
> - Bob
>
--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
text/plain (text body -- kept)
text/html
---
©2004 Bill Arnold |
