Posted on 03/31/2009 1:04:06 PM PDT by Scanian
As London locks down in feverish anticipation of the arrival of The One,Commentary publishes an important essay by John Bolton on an academic paper articulating what he correctly perceives to be the underlying rationale for Obama’s foreign policy – nothing less than the ending of American sovereignty.
The progressive classes in Britain and Europe have signed up to this idea for years. Dubbed ‘transnational progressivism’, it is based on the belief that the nation state is in and of itself the cause of all the ills of the world, from prejudice to war. Nations cause nationalism; nationalism causes conflict; abolish nations and you abolish conflict and usher in the brotherhood of man. War is replaced by diplomacy, and transnational institutions and values trump national ones. It’s the rationale behind the European Union; it accounts for the near religious veneration of the UN as the supreme global arbiter of international legitimacy and ethics; it explains the enthusiasm for supra-national institutions such as the International Criminal Court, the obeisance to ‘international law’ and the supremacy of ‘universal’ human rights law.
Unfortunately, this latest formula for Utopia is wholly inimical to democracy, actively undermines or prevents countries from acting in their own national self-interest to defend their own citizens, institutionalises deliberately mediated injustice and even terror through appeasement policies instead of ‘just wars’ against tyranny and aggression, and is a recipe for more conflict rather than less as the people progressively rise up against this erosion of their powers of representative self-government.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.co.uk ...
All hail King George - ahem - George Soros!
If we let him get away with this, we will deserve everything that follows.
"It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He’s a fan of ‘transnational legal process,’ arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish."
And yet, the majority of Americans think we're in good hands.
We have no mechanism in place to stop this...
“Progressives” (Commies) promoting more Dinosaur Notions.
Throw-back to Woodrow Wilson. Absolutely unbelievable.
Utter nonsense!
This is not America, this will not stand. I will not live in that state of Subjection.
NO NO NO, NO MORE!
A crock of manure. As long as someone, somewhere has the formula for gunpower diplomacy will always follow war.
It’s the paradox at the heart of the European Union. A “benevolent bureaucracy” that tells the rabble what’s good for them, and allows them no vote in response.
Very nice for those who consider themselves to be the Vanguard of the Proletariat—the Marxist term for those who are more progressive than the rest of the crowd but also RULE in their name.
Vanguard of the Proletariat, Nomenklatura, take your pick. They are the guys who tell everyone else what to do, and are richly rewarded for it.
I note, however, that separate countries still exist in Europe...
Is this a surprise to anybody here? We ALL knew this, didn’t we?
I think “power-grabbing control freaks” fits pretty well.
“War is replaced by diplomacy”
I have some lovely mountain property in Miami Beach that I’d love to sell to the folks who believe that.
Obama is not the first on the scene in American politics to share this “no national boundaries” philosophy. The Clintons, and probably further back than them, shared this idea. They and their associates considered themselves academic elite and their theory was that no matter how sovereign a nation was that it would one day be defeated and others would move in and take over; so it seemed that what they did was motivated by the lust for immediate satisfaction for themselves and “sovereign nation” be damned. Remember that Hillary and Bill are also Saul Alinsky enthusiasts, and during their administration, every day was devoted to advancing their “causes” and ambitions using his handbook in tandem with the polls. Obama is pure in his Alinsky devotion and methods. They all seem to think that they’re doing the Lord’s work, and that’s why they get so stinking rich selling America down the road.
The destruction of US sovereignty and legal and cultural integrity at home and the appeasement of tyrants abroad by a President who holds his own nation in such contempt that he wants to emasculate its powers of self-government and grovel to its mortal enemies – it’s certainly change, all right, but whether such a national suicide programme is one that Americans can actually believe in is quite another matter.
Only with such dis-arming mush-headedness can such a global horror become a possible.
I fear that by the time Americans wake up, it will be much too late. The voters have given a socialist, anti-American president and a like-minded, liberal congress, immense power and they are using it - quickly and efficiently - to undermine and ultimately destroy the underpinnings of this nation in ways that I seriously doubt can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.
I know full well 'elections have consequences' (I voted Republican) but I'm afraid that this time, the consequences are going to be fatal to the America we know and love and ranting about Obama on the internet won't change that. I wish it could.
2 days in a row now, I’ve heard Dick Morris say that the crazy conspiracy theorists are beginning to have a case.
It’s funny how Morris has started leaning rather sharply to the right in recent months. Could it be that he married a conservative and it’s rubbed off? Or maybe things have just come into focus for Dickie in his later years.
My favorite EU regulation was the one where they said that pig farmers MUST supply their pigs with play toys, to discourage them from chewing on one another’s tails.
Why is it that all things the left wants most are things you could never get them to admit to? “No, we love America and would never try to socialize it or degrade it’s sovereignty. Why would we possible want to do that?”.
” I seriously doubt can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.”
You’re being hyperbolic, right? A conservative house can vote to rescind every obuma dictate and law in the morning, send it to a conservative senate for approval by 4pm and give it to a conservative president to sign after dinner and be law by 12:01am.
Because they know that rubes like us will see them as traitors. They have to masquerade as patriots since we simply lack the sophistication understand how their treason would actually be to our benefit.
I note as well, that the Soviet Union suppressed the identities of its member states for over 70 years, but when it fell apart those member states were right back at each other’s throats as if those 70 years never happened.
Dick is a Republican, but rather of the RINO variety. He was a token pub among the toon’s advisors. He’s like a truism — he’s right when he’s right and wrong when he’s wrong. I have found his analyses to be brilliant, but his conclusions often downright silly.
It won’t happen though. If, God willing, we can turn the tide on this monster, this anti-president, in the end we will wind up further to the left than we already were. Another lurch of the ratchet.
Nothing but complete collapse, including collapse of the international transportation systems is going to get us back to some form of self-government.
Agreed, but don’t leave out GW and many other “Republicans”. You know the ones who believe in and were proponents of open borders.
That's a bit naive. We're discussing Washington politicians. Even a solid Republican congress (and president) couldn't work that fast and there will always be RINOs in the congress, like John McCain, dragging their feet and elongating their arms, 'reaching across the aisle'.
Assuming a solid conservative congress and president is fun but unrealistic. True conservative President Reagan had a Democrat-majority congress to deal with and the 1993-2007 Republican-majority congress had the liberal president Bill Clinton, 'moderate' George H.W. Bush and Big-Government-friendly George W. Bush to deal with - and reacted by morphing into Democrat-Lite politicians.
Obama's fake 'stimulus' package with it's manifold leftist-inspired rules and regulations undermining private business and individual freedoms will have almost 4 years to do it's damage to our economy, which is already weakened, thanks to Obama. That kind of mess won't be undone in a day and to assume that it will, is simply wishful thinking.
Oh, for Chrisakes. You write drivel like this:
” The voters have given a socialist, anti-American president and a like-minded, liberal congress, immense power and they are using it - quickly and efficiently - to undermine and ultimately destroy the underpinnings of this nation in ways that I seriously doubt can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.”
You write that the leftists are all powerful and can push through their agenda and it can never be reversed.
Then you say that an elected conservative congress and president can’t do squat to reverse it. Quoting you: “ I seriously doubt (this) can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.”
You want to surrender, fine. Get on your knees and be fitted for chains.
”The voters have given a socialist, anti-American president and a like-minded, liberal congress, immense power and they are using it - quickly and efficiently - to undermine and ultimately destroy the underpinnings of this nation in ways that I seriously doubt can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.”
You write that the leftists are all powerful and can push through their agenda and it can never be reversed.
Then you say that an elected conservative congress and president can’t do squat to reverse it. Quoting you: “I seriously doubt (this) can be reversed simply by electing a Republican majority in congress next year or even a conservative Republican president in 2012.”
You want to surrender, fine. Get on your knees and be fitted for chains.
Get a grip. Learn how to accept disagreement and entertain the fact that you might be mistaken about this instead of going ballistic on a fellow conservative. You're proposing that we'll elect a congress - House and Senate - with a hefty Republican majority - no RINOs whatsoever, all Reagan Republicans - and they'll all immediately vote to overturn every law Obama and the Democrats have just put in place. That's unrealistic, except in fantasy-land, where you seem to reside.
You overlook the fact that monstrosities such as nationalized health care will drive private insurers out of the market and get Americans used to 'free' health care, shabby as it will be. That cannot be righted just by a Republican president signing a bill that cancels nationalized health care. Where will Americans get medical insurance, then? The private insurance industry would likely be very wary of getting back into the business, knowing the next election, or the one in 8 years or 12 or even 16 years could upset the apple cart all over again.
How do you re-build our military that Obama will assuredly decimate? Sure, the money can be re-allocated but training takes time and weapons acquisition takes years to build and get to the military. Signing a hefty defense appropriations bill won't change anything for some time. Meanwhile, the nation is highly vulnerable to attack, especially immediately after a transition of power.
With the Obama gang probably doing some permanent damage to our financial system and running us into catastrophic debt, a Republican president signing a few bills overturning many of Obama's anti-capitalist laws and regulations will get us started on the right road but it could take many months - or longer - to see concrete success.
Then we have the federal judiciary, which will be loaded with leftist judges by the end of Obama's one term and that cannot be changed by passing a law. The U.S. Supreme Court could end up tilted left, again. Fix that with a bill? I don't think so.
My point, that you irrationally term 'drivel', is that Obama and his leftist administration are dedicated to making drastic changes - all for the worse - that will alter many very important parts of our nation's structure. This is serious stuff. I think it will all blow up in their face and in a year from now, Barack Obama will have job approval numbers lower than George W. Bush and Republicans will re-take the congress. However, they won't all be Reagan conservatives and they won't simply be able to flip everything the Democrats have done and 'fix' it, overnight. Some won't even want to try.
In 2012, I believe a Republican president will be elected. However, as much as I look forward to that, they may not be 'another Reagan'. Obama and his people are not stupid, at least in some ways. They know that, like Roosevelt, if they can make some drastic, fundamental changes in American business and other aspects of our national structure, those changes won't be easily undone, and many Americans may not want them to be 'fixed', making it even harder for this hypothetical conservative president and congress you envision.
I"m not in any way bowing to some inevitability' of Obama's plans, just stating that pretending it doesn't matter and just throwing out the Democrats will 'fix' everything is naive. If that makes you angry, you need to get over it. We're on the same team.
I’m attacking your defeatist attitude that what these fascist democrats do can never be reversed.
You’re proposing that obama will cement policies that can never be changed. That’s a fictional proposition.
So I’ve presented an equally fictional government composed of a conservative congress and president that can overturn everything that obuma and his fascist thug congress has passed into law.
You’re arguing a fiction that what will be will be, as dictated by the leftists in DC. I’m arguing, with equal fictional suppositions, that what obuma and his fascist congress has done, can be tossed out the window.
Let’s take one example you’ve held up as an impossibility to change.
You wrote: “Then we have the federal judiciary, which will be loaded with leftist judges by the end of Obama’s one term and that cannot be changed by passing a law.”
Fine. How about we use impeachment via congress and charge the leftist judges with sedition and remove them? If we have a majority conservative congress we can do that. We can impeach every leftist judge and remove them. Don’t care what the leftist press thinks about that. If we have the majority of citizens voting for freedom, it doesn’t matter what the press or fat welfare mommas think.
What I object to is your attitude that leftist policy can never be reversed. That leftists stand almighty before all of American history and creation and will never be defeated. I object to your wholly unnecessary negativism.
Other than that, as you said, we’re on the same team.
I'm concerned that when a leftist president like Obama and a compliant and willing Democrat-run congress set up agencies and programs extremely difficult to dismantle, that electing a Republican congressional majority and a Republican president won't act like a magic wand and quickly overturn and repair the leftist damage to our nation.
I recall President Reagan vowing to get rid of the useless Department of Education, Jimmy Carter's sop to the teachers unions. A Democrat congress stopped that from happening and Bush and the Republican congress stopped trying to get rid of it. The DE will celebrate it's 30th anniversary next year and has a near-60 billion-dollar budget, even though it does little to nothing to educate anyone. The GOP has railed against this useless agency for decades, to no avail. Jimmy Carter is mercifully long gone from the White House and the members of congress that established the DE are mostly gone, too, but the U.S. Department of Education lives on. This is how leftists plant seeds that can grow into redwoods that no Republican ax can easily fell.
I could also mention Lyndon Johnson's Medicare (1965) which is still with us, some 44 years later, and likely to be around until it finally goes bankrupt. You get the point, I'm sure.
I don't wish to continue online bickering with another conservative that is repelled by Obama and the leftist congress supporting his Marxist schemes, as much as I am. I don't think Obama or the Democrats are invincible and I intend to oppose them any way that I can. I just think that imagining this country will soon elect a conservative, Reaganesque president and a congress that is heavily populated by a veto-proof conservative bloc that will rapidly overturn all the Obama monstrosities is a bit unrealistic. Things will change for the better, yes, but not in the drastic, sweeping manner you seem to assume. Not agreeing with that rosy scenario hardly qualifies as 'defeatist'.
However, I believe that Obama's idiotic policies and Democrat overreaching will soon wake up many Americans who will turn on Obama and throw out the Democrats - and I intend to help make that happen any way that I can, as I'm sure you will, too. On that, we can agree...and I'm happy to leave it at that.
Touché, sir.
It exercises certain aspects of our sovereignty, which we delegated to it and which we can revoke.
We CERTAINLY did NOT delgate the power to surrender our sovereignty, or give it away.
Any such pretended actions are without effect and void from the start.
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