Sunday, August 4, 2013

Transnationalism vs. American Sovereignty

I’ve got to admit, it took me a while to catch on to what was really going on.

This is a difficult confession for me to make, because I like to think of myself as someone who “gets it” and can usually see “The Big Picture.”
And yet, the truth is this:
From time to time, there were some things being reported in the news that I found very puzzling, and left me, as the saying goes, “scratching my head.”
For example, I remember hearing that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had expressed her opposition to Mothers’ Day as “sexist,” and had proposed a more androgynous “Parents’ Day.”
“Ok,” I thought, “she’s  a Liberal. But why is she talking about this?”
And, during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, there were questions about whether or not she believed in using foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution.
I did not understand why such a question was being asked. “Shouldn’t they be more interested,” I thought at the time, “with her views on, for example, abortion and the death penalty?”
Then, last year, there was a fight in the Senate over the Law of the Sea (LOST).  I remember reading the following:
Ceding authority to the ISA /International Seabed Authority/ would mean that the sovereignty currently held by the U.S. over the natural resources located on large parts of the continental shelf would be lost.
So, why were some Democrats (including then-Senator John Kerry) eager to pass this treaty? (Btw, the Dems lost on LOST).
And during Obama’s push for gun control, there was talk of the United Nations taking control of guns in the U.S. “What in the world,” I thought, “does the U.N. have to do with our Second Amendment rights?”
Then, two weeks ago, I came across a Wall Street Journal interview with former Senator Jon Kyl, entitled “American Sovereignty and Its Enemies.”
And suddenly, “The Big Picture” became all too horrifyingly clear.
Because all of these news items were, in fact, very connected, by a  term called “transnationalism.”

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