What a difference a Dem makes By Henry Lamb It makes very little difference which Democrat wins the White House. The next president will push the United States a little further into the web of global governance. Hillary Clinton is on record in support of global governance. John McCain has declared his intention to embrace the Kyoto Protocol. And Barack Obama has introduced the Global Poverty Act (S2433) to bring the U.S. into compliance with the U.N.'s Millennium Declaration. As much as President Bush is hated by Democrats and Republicans alike, he did keep the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol, and he did disengage the U.S. from the International Criminal Court. These actions are sure to be reversed by the next president. When the next president takes office, along with an expanded Democrat majority in Congress, expect speedy ratification of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and a half-dozen other U.N. policy documents that have been immobilized during the Bush years. This reality is no small matter. Obama's Global Poverty Act embraces the U.N.'s Millennium Declaration that calls for nearly tripling U.S. contributions to U.N. aid programs. More important, it is the mechanism through which Congress authorizes the executive branch to implement the global governance policies that the Clinton White House endorsed before leaving office. Among the wide-ranging policies addressed in the Millennium Declaration is Agenda 21, the 40-chapter book which defines "sustainable development." This feel-good term obscures the devastating policies that put government in control of virtually every facet of human existence. Through various federal agencies, the executive branch has already implemented many of the provisions of Agenda 21. Of great concern are the comprehensive planning measures that routinely destroy private property rights – with no thought about the just compensation required by the U.S. Constitution. The inevitable move toward global governance that will result from the next election takes the United States further away from its fundamental purpose: to protect the inalienable rights of its citizens. Global governance does not recognize inalienable rights at all. Global governance defines the rights that citizens have, and assumes the authority to designate those who are responsible for seeing that these rights are extended to those who do not enjoy them. Obama's Global Poverty act affirms this principle: from those according to their ability; to those according to their need – as defined by the United Nations. Global governance is not the overthrow of the U.S. government by an invasion of blue-helmeted troops delivered on black helicopters. Global governance is the gradual expansion of international rules and regulations developed by unelected international bureaucrats and voluntarily accepted by the likes of the Clintons, Obama, and a Democrat-led Congress. Global governance is largely responsible for land use policy in the United States. The Wetland policy arises from the RAMSAR treaty. The Endangered Species Act arises from several U.N. treaties listed in the Act. The comprehensive planning laws arise from U.N. policies first adopted in 1976, and incorporated into Agenda 21. Government control of all land use is established in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Even though this treaty has not yet been ratified, its provisions have been implemented through the Ecosystem Management Policy from the Clinton/Gore era. Government control of energy use arises from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and its Kyoto Protocol. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas not only gives the U.N. taxing authority, but the authority to control drilling and all use of resources under the seas. This is the world the Democrats have pursued in the past, and have announced they will pursue in the future. The Millennium Declaration, which Obama's Global Poverty Act embraces, also calls for all nations to accept the concept of "sovereign equality." This term is substantially different from "equal sovereignty." Equal sovereignty means simply that each nation is sovereign in its own right. Sovereign equality means that limitations on the sovereignty of each nation shall be equal, as defined by the U.N. This concept is discussed at length in "Our Global Neighborhood," the report of the Commission on Global Governance. The United States is on the verge of being inextricably trapped in the web of international treaties and agreements that is, in fact, global governance. When the U.S. submits to the International Criminal Court, allows the U.N. the power to tax, and finally, acquiesces to the demand to eliminate the veto in the U.N. Security Council, global governance will become world government, from which there will be no escape. Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty International.
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