National Sovereignty and the Universal Good

[Vouthon]

I’ve seen many threads recently on the internet advocating the need for a new world order and global govt.

While greater cooperation among countries is were we are heading, and it’s good, a centralized global govt holds no appeal. Competition among countries and states is what is driving innovation, plus the UN have shown themselves to be highly ineffective and corrupt.

I would say that the government envisioned, or rather ‘authority’ to use the technical language, is not centralized. It will be limited and strictly circumscribed in the scope of its activities. Moreover it will cooperate with regional and national governments.

So a multi-layer global order is foreseen, not a centralized one.

 

[Landon_Caeli]

I would say that the government envisioned, or rather ‘authority’ to use the technical language, is not centralized. It will be limited and strictly circumscribed in the scope of its activities. Moreover it will cooperate with regional and national governments.

So a multi-layer global order is foreseen, not a centralized one.

I would also say that the government or authority envisioned will also be constructed in secrecy.

It will be applied without the whole scope being defined at once, but rather piece by piece. Limited details will be buried in heavily worded documents with so many pages it will be nearly impossible for a single person to comprehend.

Deceit.

 

[Landon_Caeli]

…But what the masses don’t know won’t hurt them, and the end justifies the means.

 

[Vouthon]

…But what the masses don’t know won’t hurt them, and the end justifies the means.

So you think that the Church is involved in a big secretive conspiracy to deceive the general public?

OK…

 

[Landon_Caeli]

So you think that the Church is involved in a big secretive conspiracy to deceive the general public?

OK…

I never said anything like that. What is it you’re talking about specifically?

All I said was that any such implementation would be done in steps, probably through some collaberation of think tanks, and that it would be drawn up behind closed doors and kept secret, which it surely would.

…Do you think there is some conspiracy involved in keeping things hidden from the public? Or do you believe think tanks don’t advise the governments, or that they don’t exist?

 

[SWolf]

I never said anything like that. What is it you’re talking about specifically?

All I said was that any such implementation would be done in steps, probably through some collaberation of think tanks, and that it would be drawn up behind closed doors and kept secret, which it surely would.

…Do you think there is some conspiracy involved in keeping things hidden from the public? Or do you believe think tanks don’t advise the governments, or that they don’t exist?

The big ones that come to mind in the U.S.:

Federal Reserve: Written by banks behind closed doors
Common Core: Written by think tanks behind closed doors
Trans Pacific Trade Treaty: Written by lobbyists behind closed doors
ACA: Written by lobbyists behind closed doors

There’s a disconnect between what would IDEALLY happen, and what would ACTUALLY happen.

IDEALLY a world government would end all wars, impartially mediate disputes, bring about global justice, and unicorns would barf skittles.

The REALITY, as can be seen from how widespread corruption is even lower at levels of government, and how corruption increases exponentially the larger it gets, gives us a glimpse into the reality of a world government.

 

[Landon_Caeli]

Here’s a list of some of the biggest liberal think tanks. I think their sole purpose may be to influence US policy.

think-tanks.insidegov.com/d/t/Liberal

.

 

[Landon_Caeli]

The big ones that come to mind in the U.S.:

Federal Reserve: Written by banks behind closed doors
Common Core: Written by think tanks behind closed doors
Trans Pacific Trade Treaty: Written by lobbyists behind closed doors
ACA: Written by lobbyists behind closed doors

There’s a disconnect between what would IDEALLY happen, and what would ACTUALLY happen.

IDEALLY a world government would end all wars, impartially mediate disputes, bring about global justice, and unicorns would barf skittles.

The REALITY, as can be seen from how widespread corruption is even lower at levels of government, and how corruption increases exponentially the larger it gets, gives us a glimpse into the reality of a world government.

Absolutely. As long as there are no checks or balances on these private think tanks, lobbyists, et., then how could there ever be any transparency in regards to corruption that could occur when these think tanks begin guiding global governance… IOW, a really big global government would require really big think tanks, so transparency will be an ever bigger problem.

 

[Tim_D]

The REALITY, as can be seen from how widespread corruption is even lower at levels of government, and how corruption increases exponentially the larger it gets, gives us a glimpse into the reality of a world government.

Bingo.

This sums up this entire thread.

Good intentions don’t buy anything and the bill will eventually have to be paid. (Though I must say that unicorns barfing skittles sounds like a positive to me!)

 

[Landon_Caeli]

Think Tanks: A Social Good for the Global Community
brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/04/06-think-tanks-public-good-shaikh

Compare Social Policy Think Tanks:
think-tanks.insidegov.com/d/a/Social-Policy

 

[Landon_Caeli]

Think Tanks: A Social Good for the Global Community
brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/04/06-think-tanks-public-good-shaikh

Compare Social Policy Think Tanks:
think-tanks.insidegov.com/d/a/Social-Policy

…I wonder which think tanks advise our politicians to legalize homosexual marriage, or which ones promote universal abortion rights as a social norm.

 

[Theo520]

I would say that the government envisioned, or rather ‘authority’ to use the technical language, is not centralized. It will be limited and strictly circumscribed in the scope of its activities. Moreover it will cooperate with regional and national governments.

So a multi-layer global order is foreseen, not a centralized one.

No offense but you were very vague. Perhaps you can provide a specific example to clarify what you are saying. My observation is Govt in all it’s forms suffers from constant creep in their desired oversight.

 

[Landon_Caeli]

“Foreign governments and state-controlled or state-financed entities have paid tens of millions of dollars to dozens of American think tanks in recent years, according to a New York Times investigation. While the think tanks argue that the relationships do not compromise the integrity of their research, foreign officials say the contributions are pivotal in furthering their policy priorities, as many groups produce papers and host forums or briefings that are typically consistent with foreign government interests.”

nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-government-contributions-to-nine-think-tanks.html?_r=0

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

…So it’s already begun, and this looks like how a global governance will be -a conglomeration of think tanks to influence policy on a global scale. Is it good or bad? That’s for us to decide…

 

[Vouthon]

My observation is Govt in all it’s forms suffers from constant creep in their desired oversight.

IMHO American culture is paranoid when it comes to governmental authority. Fear of governmental power is deeply embedded in the US psyche and its very Anglo-Saxon Protestant in origin.

Sure, every government has to be limited in scope and abide by subsidiarity but it also needs to have the means to be an effective authority.

The problem with many Americans is that you are simply obsessed with accountability, to the point that in the 19th century your country had built a system of checks and balances so rigorous that it paralyzed governance, making a strong and effective federal government impossible at a time when European states were ever more coordinated.

The fact is, the political order needs governance that is accountable but also fit for purpose. I cannot understand why Catholics in the US have become so imbued with a liberal capitalistic ethos derived from the enlightenment that they seem to favour a government so limited in power that it if properly enacted the social order would be anarchical, left to the vagaries of competition between individuals in the private sector.

The Catholic Church does not believe such a system to be ordained towards the common good:

“…The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. To these are to be added the grave evils that have resulted from an intermingling and shameful confusion of the functions and duties of public authority with those of the economic sphere - such as, one of the worst, the virtual degradation of the majesty of the State, which although it ought to sit on high like a queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent upon the one common good and justice, is become a slave, surrendered and delivered to the passions and greed of men. And as to international relations, two different streams have issued from the one fountain-head: On the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic imperialism; on the other, a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance or international imperialism whose country is where profit is…”

- Pope Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), 1931

This is the Catholic conception of the state, circumscribed in its powers but also “on high like a Queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent on the one common good”.

 

[Vouthon]

By contrast, read:

washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary_2015/on_political_books/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_us_go053474.php?page=all

January/February 2015

**The Rise and Fall of the U.S. Government

While other conservatives say that the American state has become too powerful, Francis Fukuyama argues that it has grown too weak

By John J. Dilulio Jr.**

…

“While the American economy remains a source of miraculous innovation, American government is hardly a source of inspiration around the world at the present moment.”

Despite the Kennedys, Bushes, and Clintons, America is safely past overt nepotism and other neopatrimonial practices. Instead, over the last half century, America’s political decay has been fueled by what Fukuyama characterizes as a new “tribalism” that authorizes influence peddling at the highest levels of modern politics. American government, Fukuyama declares, is now dominated by “interest groups that are able to effectively buy politicians with campaign contributions and lobbying.” This perfectly legal vote buying is an insidious form of “clientelism” practiced with huge sums of money and at a much larger scale than ever before. Congress is now controlled by politicians who raise money and win reelection by granting political favors to their supporters…

Afflicted by deep polarization among elites and mass mistrust of government, America’s repatrimonialized republic has descended into what Fukuyama terms a “vetocracy,” a paralytic liberal democratic regime in which not even clear and present fiscal, foreign, or other dangers elicit sound and timely policy decisions.

That the federal government has become paralyzed, dysfunctional, and captured by moneyed elites is, of course, not news. Fukuyama’s contribution is to situate this condition within a grand historical analysis of how nations and political systems advance and decline. It is also noteworthy that his analysis runs counter to the views of most contemporary conservative thinkers, among whom Fukuyama is usually grouped. America’s dilemma is not that its central government is too powerful, says Fukuyama, but that it has grown too weak…

In America, respect for the rule of law was present at the nation’s creation. The country also democratized early, opening the vote to all white males in the 1820s, decades before any country in Europe. But it was relatively slow to create autonomous, impartial state bureaucracies thanks to a national temperament that militated against central governmental authority.

Instead, starting in the Jacksonian period, the Founders’ patrimonial “elite patronage system” was converted into “a mass clientelistic one” characterized by the “trading of votes and political support for individual benefits rather than programmatic policies.” Think of urban political bosses passing out Christmas turkeys, or the scenes in the recent movie Lincoln in which Honest Abe’s shadowy henchmen secure the support of lame-duck Democrat congressmen for the Thirteenth Amendment with offers of jobs as federal postmasters, and you get the idea. Clientism, Fukuyama observes, occurs “when democracy arrives before a modern state has had time to consolidate into an autonomous institution with its own supporting political coalition.” It is thus best understood as “an early form of democracy.”

Though some state building occurred through Lincoln’s prosecution of the Civil War, for decades America retained a clientelistic government by “courts and parties,” not a “centralized, bureaucratic, and autonomous state of the sort that had been created in Prussia, France, and Britain.” Only toward the end of the nineteenth century did the United States begin the decades-long process of central state building. But whereas in Europe as well as China, strong professionalized bureaucracies evolved as defenses against military threats, in America they arose from internal political struggle, specifically the Progressive Movement. Fukuyama credits Progressive reformers, allied intellectual elites, and their middle-class minions with sending America’s patrimonialism and clientelism packing, at least for a half century or so…

The Progressives succeeded through measures that included the Pendleton Act of 1883, the expansion of the federal civil service system, and the dawn of professionalized state and local government agencies. Progressive reformers, and later those of the New Deal, “tried to construct a European-style administrative state.” But they did so against an ingrained national suspicion of “Big Government.”

Still, despite Progressive reform efforts that were backed by forceful leaders including Teddy Roosevelt, the “end of the patronage system at the federal level did not arrive until the middle of the twentieth century.” Even then, most Americans and their leaders mistrusted government and refused to “delegate to the government authority to make decisions in the manner of other democratic societies.”…He blames the ICC’s sorry record on “the design of the American state, with its complex system of checks and balances.”

 

[Vouthon]

Also, a global political authority can take the form of the WTO, NATO, etc. These organizations do their jobs effectively while never usurping national sovereignty.

Au contraire, Pope Francis today stated:

catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=26428&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatholicWorldNewsFeatureStories+%28Catholic+World+News+%28on+CatholicCulture.org%29%29

“The Christian is inclined to realism, not to catastrophism,” he added. “However, precisely for this reason, we are not about to hide the obvious: the current global system is unsustainable.”

 

[GEddie]

Because with an eye over their shoulders at the European states their fathers left, the founding Americans saw a world of nations with ruling families riding everybody’s shoulders; and were determined not to recreate that.

A deliberately weakened and dispersed (hence federalism) government was the way to avoid it. But we know what is paved with good intentions.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Vouthon]

Because with an eye over their shoulders at the European states their fathers left, the founding Americans saw a world of nations with ruling families riding everybody’s shoulders; and were determined not to recreate that.

A deliberately weakened and dispersed (hence federalism) government was the way to avoid it. But we know what is paved with good intentions.

ICXC NIKA

Thanks, you have explained the rationale very well and the pure, indeed laudable, intention behind it

 

[SWolf]

I
The problem with many Americans is that you are simply obsessed with accountability, to the point that in the 19th century your country had built a system of checks and balances so rigorous that it paralyzed governance, making a strong and effective federal government impossible at a time when European states were ever more coordinated.

The fact is, the political order needs governance that is accountable but also fit for purpose. I cannot understand why Catholics in the US have become so imbued with a liberal capitalistic ethos derived from the enlightenment that they seem to favour a government so limited in power that it if properly enacted the social order would be anarchical, left to the vagaries of competition between individuals in the private sector.

The Catholic Church does not believe such a system to be ordained towards the common good:

This is the Catholic conception of the state, circumscribed in its powers but also “on high like a Queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent on the one common good”.

Explain how a government will be stopped from ever increasing scope creep in it’s powers, when history shows this is exactly what happens.

Explain how a government can be impartial, when history consistently shows it is not.

Show how more government involvement will work better than the private sector among freely associating people, when history shows the private sector to be far superior.

Explain why a voluntary international organization, like the WTO, has been so successful outside of coercion and wrecking national sovereignty.

Explain why we should support larger governments when they are consistently the ones undermining Church teaching with regards to contraceptives, abortion, and euthanasia. We co not even need to get into The French and Soviet revolutions, whose large government actively tried to destroy Christianity.

A government exclusively dealing with issues of life, liberty, and property is all it is capable of being delegated with.

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Read Hayek, Bastiat, Friedman, Rothbard, etc. Base political and economic decisions on reality, not ideals.

 

[Theo520]

It’s a gross error to compare any individual EU countries with the USA. Only the EU as a whole is a valid comparison to the aggregate USA.

In that light, we also see many EU countries expressing concern and frustration with the EU as an effective governing body.

IMHO American culture is paranoid when it comes to governmental authority. Fear of governmental power is deeply embedded in the US psyche and its very Anglo-Saxon Protestant in origin.

Sure, every government has to be limited in scope and abide by subsidiarity but it also needs to have the means to be an effective authority.

The problem with many Americans is that you are simply obsessed with accountability, to the point that in the 19th century your country had built a system of checks and balances so rigorous that it paralyzed governance, making a strong and effective federal government impossible at a time when European states were ever more coordinated.

The fact is, the political order needs governance that is accountable but also fit for purpose. I cannot understand why Catholics in the US have become so imbued with a liberal capitalistic ethos derived from the enlightenment that they seem to favour a government so limited in power that it if properly enacted the social order would be anarchical, left to the vagaries of competition between individuals in the private sector.

The Catholic Church does not believe such a system to be ordained towards the common good:

This is the Catholic conception of the state, circumscribed in its powers but also “on high like a Queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent on the one common good”.