World
federalism is an idea that will not die. More and more people are coming
to realize that peace must be more than an interlude if we are to survive;
that peace is a product of law and order; that law is essential if the force
of arms is not to rule the world. –U.S. Supreme Court Justice William
O. Douglas
We shall live together as brothers or die together as fools –Martin
Luther King Jr.
I think the UN is a good example of how the left/right polarization manages
to miss the middle. The simple fact is that the world needs, and has out
of necessity to some extent already evolved, some measure of global government,
and this trend will certainly continue as technology shrinks the globe.
But it is equally true that centralization of power is perhaps the most
destructive dynamic of history, particularly as it concerns individual freedom,
and the potential oppressiveness of a single world government is a thing
rightly to be feared. I think it's possible to write a reasonable and sound
global constitution, but the problem is how to get those in power to stick
to it, particular as we've never been particularly successful at this with
smaller governments. This is really the central question concerning whatever
entity evolves from the UN. I don't recall ever hearing a politician discuss
it.
The UN is essentially a joke, the worst of both worlds. A fairly docile provider of fig leafs, it serves only a faint shadow of its original purpose, yet still presents enough of a potential specter to serve opposing purposes. I think the UN was essentially stillborn, doomed at birth by a fatally flawed charter- disjoint, disorganized, illogical, in general the opposite of the US Constitution. Perhaps it will require a global cataclysm worse than World War II to produce the kind of charter the UN needs. Hopefully not.
