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By Henry Lamb In less than a year, the United Nations will convene a special Millennium Assembly as a global summit on the future of the world. This event will crown a decade of preparation to launch the new millennium based on a new system of global governance. The blueprint was published by the United Nations Commission on Global Governance in 1995. Now, a Charter to achieve global governance has been developed for presentation at the Millennium Assembly in September 2000. It will be published publicly on UN day, October 24th. It is called The Charter for Global Democracy. It has already been signed by influential leaders in 56 nations, and has the support of civil society non-government organizations around the world. The document is, in reality, a Charter for the abolition of individual freedom. The first of 12 principles calls for the consolidation of all international agencies under the direct authority of the United Nations. The second principle calls for regulation by the UN of all transnational corporations and financial institutions, requiring an "international code of conduct" concerning the environment and labor standards. Principle number 3 demands an independent source of revenue for the UN, such as the "Tobin tax" and taxes on aircraft and shipping fuels, and licensing the use of the global commons. The "global commons" is defined to be "outer space, the atmosphere, non-territorial seas, and the related environment that supports human life." Number 4 would eliminate the veto power and permanent member status on the Security Council. Number 5 would authorize a standing UN army. Number 6 would require UN registration of all arms and the reduction of all national armies "as part of a multilateral global security system" under the authority of the United Nations. Number 7 would require individual and national compliance with all UN "Human Rights" treaties and declarations. Number 8 would activate the International Criminal Court make the International Court of Justice compulsory for all nations, and give individuals the right to petition the courts to remedy social injustice. Principle 9 calls for a new institution to establish economic and environmental security by insuring "sustainable development." Number 10 calls for the establishment of an International Environmental Court. Number 11 calls for a declaration that climate change is an essential global security interest that requires the creation of a "high-level action team" to allocate carbon emission based on equal per-capita rights. Principle number 12 calls for the cancellation of all debt owed by the poorest nations, global poverty reductions, and for "equitable sharing of global resources," as allocated by the United Nations. As preposterous as these ideas may sound to freedom-loving Americans, most of the world considers them to be an improvement over their current circumstance. The fuel that fires the global governance movement, however, is not the desires of oppressed people, it is the money supplied by the well-to-do elite who feel the need to "do something" to help the less fortunate people of the world. The strategy for advancing the movement is supplied by those who expect to control the machinery of global governance. It is no coincidence that financial contributions in support of the Charter for Global Democracy are to be made to the London office of United Nations Association. Dozens of documents, all promoting some form of world government, have been circulating for most of this decade. All contain these same principles. The Millennium Assembly will receive these documents and meld them into the legal instruments required to modify the existing UN Charter. It will take a year or two for the legal documents to be prepared and adopted, and another year or two for ratification. The world is truly standing at the threshold of world government. Woodrow Wilson brought the world to the same threshold nearly 80 years ago; the United States decided not to enter, and the League of Nations collapsed. Once again, it is up to the United States to determine the future of the world. If the United States embraces this Charter for Global Democracy, the world will be subjected to global dominance by the United Nations. If the United States opts out, the world may be spared centuries of inevitable oppression. There is no issue of greater importance in next year's election than where each candidate stands on global governance and national sovereignty. So far, this issue has not emerged in any national campaign. The United States must prevent this catastrophe-in-the-making. Global governance, as envisioned by the Commission on Global Governance and the Charter for Global Democracy cannot succeed without the support of the United States. The United States must walk away. For all practical purposes, the next President, and the next Senate will make that decision. By walking away from the UN's vision of global governance, we are not turning our backs to the rest of the world. Our next President and Congress should say no to global governance, and offer a better idea. There is no better idea, nor higher aspiration, than individual freedom. America pioneered that technology 200 years ago, and it is still the most valuable asset we possess. Freedom or democracy? Freedom and democracy and not synonymous. In most of the world, the term democracy means the right for citizens to participate in the process of government. It is a right granted by the government, and controlled by the government, and if exercised improperly, it is denied by the government. Freedom, on the other hand, is the God-given right to govern one's self. Freedom is the power to enter into voluntary agreements with other people who have precisely the same freedom, to achieve objectives of mutual benefit, as determined only by the parties to the agreement. Freedom is the power to make the rules that govern those agreements. Freedom is the power to create and control a system of general governance designed to serve its creators. Freedom is the power to cheat, lie, and steal, and learn the consequences of those actions. Freedom is the power to experiment, to invent, to help others, and learn the consequences of those actions. Freedom is the ultimate objective of human kind. A system of global democracy, administered by the United Nations, would turn the world away from its primary quest; individual freedom. Poverty cannot be eliminated by taking wealth from some and giving it to others. The inevitable consequence of such action is the expansion of poverty, by taking not only wealth, but the incentive to produce wealth as well. The environment--the global commons--cannot be protected for long by regulated preservation. It must be protected by those who use it to meet their daily needs. Government ownership or control of the environment is the most certain way to insure its degradation through stagnation. People, like virtually every other species on earth, should be free to use that portion of the environment they can control in whatever way they choose. If they abuse that environment, the environment will not sustain them. If they cultivate and care for that environment, it will sustain them. This is a fundamental law of nature that cannot be repealed by any institution of government. In the long term, government attempts to manage the environment become, in retrospect, examples of gross mismanagement. It is individuals, managing that portion of the planet they are able to control, is the surest way to achieve a healthy, vibrant environment for all. Freedom is the power to gain control over a portion of the environment, land ownership. Freedom is the power to defend that land, by whatever means necessary, from those who have not learned the consequences of cheating, lying, or stealing. Freedom is the power to use the resources the land provides to create products and services others are willing to buy. Freedom is the power to buy products and services others have produced. These are the ideas for which the world hungers. These are the better ideas America should offer the world. Because these ideas have produced prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of the rest of the world, we should happily share our freedom technology with the world. Democracy can be imposed upon people by government; freedom cannot be imposed. Freedom must be learned through experience. Sometimes the experience is bloody, as it was in America, and always, it is painful, as is the current learning experience in Russia. It is the price we must pay for the benefits freedom bestows. America should stop pouring its prosperity down the United Nations' drain. Instead, it should help directly, any nation that wants its people to be free. If given the choice, the people of every nation would choose individual freedom over a system of UN handouts The governments of those nations, however, are not likely to embrace the possibility of relinquishing power. Governments of every stripe around the world are the obstacles preventing individual freedom. The people of the United States should first ensure their continued freedom by limiting the power of the government through the people elected to represent us. We should insist that America never relinquish one more ounce of its national sovereignty, and begin to reclaim our national sovereignty by disengaging from the labyrinth of UN treaties we have embraced in recent years. We should insist that our national defense is second to none, and never subject it to the command of any authority but our own. We should never relinquish our right for individuals to own and use land, nor should we allow our government to use our tax dollars to buy the land which is our posterity's birthright. We should direct our government to reestablish as its highest priority, the protection of individual freedom for every American. These ideas are repugnant to the promoters of global democracy under the authority of the United Nations. These ideas are labeled as "jingoism." These ideas are described as "extreme nationalism bordering on hatred of non-nationals." The opposite is true. These ideas are offered to the rest of the world because America demonstrates that these ideas can bring the same kind of benefits to all nations that embrace them. This is the message the United States should deliver to the United Nations. The next President and the next Senate will deliver whatever message we, the voters, send. If we, the United States, embrace the Charter for Global Democracy and the world government it establishes, America will be reduced to the lowest common denominator forced equity demands. The power of individual freedom will be caged in history books for generations. It could easily take centuries of gradual decline and rising oppression before a new generation of founders cast off the scourge of the UN-King and rediscover the truths upon which America's founders built our great nation. We, the people, literally hold the future of the world in our hands. The people we send to Washington as the result of our next election will either embrace world government, or reject it. It is up to us. Note: Henry Lamb is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the United Nations. He publishes a quarterly journal, Eco-Logic on behalf of the Environmental Conservation Organization. Its address is PO Box 191, Hollow Rock, TN 38342. You can send email to ecologic@freedom.org Its Internet web site is http://www.freedom.org.
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