The American experiment started out as a re-distribution of wealth scheme of socialist Utopians? Well, actually the Pilgrims did try socialism for the first year and they almost starved themselves out of existence before they came to their senses. But the American experiment is essentially self-government, and for self government under God we don't need global dictators to govern us. As William Penn put it, "if men will not be governed by God, they will be ruled by tyrants." We believe in self government under God, not under godless socialist dictators with global reach.
So, re-reading the paragraph you cited in this light, to me, it seems that the Pope is saying that the UN needs to be reformed, reformed to abide by its original intent (or charter)
The original intent of the UN Charter was the brainchild of Communists.
Why object to it? Let me make my hypothetical scenario clear: What if the UN (or some other world body by some other name) were modified/created and it behaved exactly as the US Federal government was supposed to behave?
Why object to a world government? You answered your own question by saying "the way the US Federal government is supposed to behave." Do you suppose the Federal government stays within its Constitutional prescribed limits? What makes you suppose that Godless tyrants with global reach would even think of restraining themselves by quaint ideas of subsidiarity and limited government? You might as well expect liberal Supreme Court justices to limit their interpretations of law to the original intent of the Framers. What human experience can you point to that governments ever restrains itself?
Cordially,
The lesser groups should be assisted to achieve their legitimate objectives in their own fashion, rather than have one single straitjacket imposed on all. This presumption in favour of non-intervention is based upon a fundamental respect for the dignity or the worth of each individual citizen, very much along the lines of human rights theory. But it is easily recognized that an individual acting alone can in most cases do little: in the realms of health, education, transport infrastructure, etc., substantial achievements are only possible when individuals band together. In this process of banding together, there are inevitable compromises between the wishes of individuals and what become the collective wishes or aspirations of groups.
The wishes of some groups, and the impact of acting on those wishes, will be purely local. Some group decisions will impact upon many others who are not local. In thinking about the application of the principle of subsidiarity in this way, it can be used to determine which decisions are most fruitfully to be made by the mechanisms of local democracy and which are rather to be made by a more widely based collective (be it a state or a trans-national body). In the United States, for example, there is a strong tradition of very local democracy. The citizens of a township will typically vote on whether they wish to raise a specific local tax for the precise purpose of repairing the potholes in a local road. They sometimes vote not to. If the state of those local roads has little or no impact on others living outside the locality, this seems an appropriate level of decision-making: as close as possible to the citizens affected by the decision. Such a very local approach makes much less sense when the roads in question are used by a lot of travellers just passing through. And for this reason, interstate freeways, designed to facilitate travel through many localities and across great distances, are federally planned and financed out of federal taxes.
Note the portion in bold for a good example of how subsidiarity exists in the United States even now. The underlined portion is the key concept here. That is, no one (who's not an anarchist) could argue there's no role for some kind of higher form of government in some situations. Thus, proposing this on a global level hardly seems like an imposition onto our basic God given rights as human beings, or else one would be forced to conclude the citizens of the United States should be revolting against our local governments (much less state and Federal) right now.
IOW, to outright reject the concept Pope Benedict XVIth proposes in this latest Encyclical on a concern that his proposal would violate our national sovereignty is to reduce to the absurd notion that any government, no matter how local, that infringes on the free wishes of the individual is tyrannical. At least this is how I see it now.
I suppose one could argue, "Why go for even more levels of government? It only makes it easier for tyrannies to prosper!". In a sense this is a reasonable counter-argument, however the opposite of this is also true (as I implied above). After all, if the proposal of Benedict XVIth is intolerable due to its potential for abuse, then it stands to reason that our own Federal government is equally intolerable, as it is equally subject to abuse. Thus we would be forced to conclude we should revolt against the Federal government now. Then state governments. Then local governments. In other words this concern for "tyranny" reduces to absurdity, that is, reduces to an advocation of anarchy, IMHO.
Your inputs are greatly appreciated.