Reno Hayek Symposium

Naive, dishonest, egotistic, all aptly describe Obama. Given a chance to get in front of an audience he’ll take it every time regardless of the venue. The past week gave him two international venues, the UN and the G-20. He seems to be launching his campaign for president of the world. Yes, that’s right, his latest cause is world governance. Why, because the interests of all nations, all peoples are “shared interests!” Janet Daley’s post in the Telegraph says it well:

The idea of global governance is meaningless without mechanisms to enforce it, so what are we talking about here? World government? A system of laws and policing which would be beyond the reach of the electorates of individual countries, and therefore have no direct democratic accountability to the peoples of those nations? Even assuming that such institutions did not take on a self-justifying life of their own – which history teaches us is almost inevitable – and that they remained fastidiously responsive to the heads of national governments, they would still be, by definition, supranational…….

Then there is the moral blackmail of “shared interests”. Mr Obama has actually contended that, in the newly interconnected world, all of our interests are shared. Which is clearly false. Some of them are and some of them aren’t, as has always been the case. When nations do indeed share interests, whether they are economic or military, there are traditional ways of formalising their mutually advantageous understandings. There have always been bilateral or multilateral trade and credit arrangements, just as there have always been mutual defence treaties and foreign policy agreements. It is no coincidence that such arrangements have tended to be temporary: national interests change with time and circumstances. Does Mr Obama (and Mr Brown, who is trotting alongside him) believe that we have reached the end of history, or that circumstances are actually altering more slowly now than in previous eras? Surely not. All of his rhetoric, in fact, says the opposite.

Which brings us to the sticking point: the tricky bit comes when the interests of sovereign countries are not shared, but actually conflict. When Russia’s territorial inclinations are at odds with the independence of eastern European republics, or China’s reliance on exports is contributing to America’s credit problems, or Germany’s economic priorities threaten Britain’s finance industry – what then? Intoning pious banalities about global consensus will not make these differences go away: for the countries concerned they are – or may seem like – fundamental imperatives…………

What nobody seems to be saying is that it is the proper business of democratically elected governments to protect and defend the needs and wishes of their own people. This is nothing less than the whole 18th-century project of modern democracy with which we are playing fast and loose. Ironically, the fad for “global governance” – whatever that turns out to mean – suits democratically elected leaders rather well: it absolves them of responsibility while enhancing their prestige. Perfect. But then exposure on the world stage is also likely to betray the limits of their understanding: does Mr Obama really think that he can coerce or shame European nations – with all their historical baggage and self-serving complacency – into forsaking what he calls their “collective inaction” on foreign policy (on Iran, say)? It is hard enough for a leader to remain in touch with the consciousness of his own people: playing to a global electorate puts almost any politician out of his depth. Not that we are talking about electorates any longer. Voters are way, way down on the list of considerations in this new ball game.

via Thinking global brings a world of problems – Telegraph.

No thanks, Mr. President, I don’t want to absolve you of one bit of responsibility for the statist agenda you are foisting on this great nation of ours. And, by the way, I don’t anticipate having any shared interest with governments in Iran, North Korea or for that matter Russia, any time soon.

Tom Motherway