I remember reading that speech. It started out eloquent enough, but quickly devolves into cheap point-scoring and straw-man religion-bashing.
Cronkite tries to make it look like the only people who would disagree with him are selfish politicians and religious Neanderthals. As opposed to more reasoned disputants.
He’s stuck in the mindset of 1946, when all right-thinking, war-weary people, fed up with nationalism, thought the U.N. and an eventual World Government was the natural destiny of mankind. With a religious fervor equal to that of any millenialist.
He remained blissfully oblivious to what the U.N. turned into. Not to mention the more recent scandals, incompetence and misadventures of the unaccountable Eurocrats.
The problem with the World Government model in reality is that the bigger the government gets, the less representative it becomes and the less accountable to individual citizens. Mark Steyn put it best in one of his columns; showing how politicians who don’t have to worry about local and regional constituents inevitably go rotten.
But ol’ Walter seemed to believe in philosopher kings to the last.
I tried to explain your points to the young man who works for me. The fact that our states (Excluding Hawaii and Alaska) are only 3000 miles at the most from the seat of power in Washington, and we have allowed it to become completely unwieldy and non-representative.
Imagine what it would be like for people like the Aussies, the Chileans and the South Africans if the seat of world government was in Europe, the USA or Asia?
Heck, imagine what it would be like for us.
I tried to explain that government by people using a 3000 mile screwdriver already doesn’t work, imagine a 8000 mile one.
Yes, but did he believe in the King of Kings? Doesn't seem like it...