Kathleen Moore
Europe’s Light is not merely dying, it is being snuffed out.
So is Canada’s Light, although we’re only now catching up. The natural peoples and races are being swept from their ancient territories by flood gates of so-called multiculturalism.
While we citizens struggle with this, like swimmers in the flood, disoriented and kicking about for a hand-hold as we belatedly realize we are going under, the politicians have always known they were going to do this to us.
Not long after the birth of Responsible Government in Canada, our London-based elites were already conspiring to overthrow it and recover their iron-fisted feudal hold on a society — that being so new to freedom — hardly knew how to use or keep it.
We are therefore losing our western democracies before they have been able to grow into “traditional” institutions.
As for the academics, they know what is happening. For them, there is no question, as there is for many of us who are still in denial as the Titanic ominously shifts her load.
I translated an article by one of those academics to give you a taste of what we are in for: (temporary url: http://christmasdreamthemes.com/home/audentes/public_html/comment-aire/?p=75)
DEMOCRATIC SOVEREIGNTY OR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE?
Translator’s Foreword
If you are at all concerned with the survival of democracy, representative and responsible government, and the continued existence of Canada as created in 1867 by its founding peoples, I think you will want to read this article which I translated this morning.
The original author, John Fonte, speaks of “post-democracy emerging from democracy”. I wonder if he just couldn’t spit out the word “totalitarianism”, which does not “emerge from” liberal democracy, it’s retrogressive; it is the reversal of civilization, and the end of individual rights and freedom.
– Kathleen Moore for HABEAS CORPUS CANADA
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Exclusive English translation from the French original* is by Kathleen Moore for Habeas Corpus Canada:
Democratic Sovereignty or Global Governance?
August 23, 2004
by John Fonte
At its opening session in September, France will pass a law prohibiting the wearing of the Islamic veil and all other religious insignia at public schools.
My country, the United States of America, has complained of the discriminatory character of such a law. The French notion of “secularism” may not be compatible with the American notion of religious pluralism, but it is an integral part of the French national and democratic tradition, and is applied in the context of a democratic nation-state.
The principle of democratic sovereignty implies that the United States must not highhandedly oppose the internal policies of (other) nation-states. Thus, the American government should not have condemned the French law on secularism. In the same fashion, the French government must keep silent on the question of the death penalty in the United States.
This debate puts democratic sovereignty in question. The great ideological conflict of the 21st century will be between democratic sovereignty and global governance. The notion of democratic sovereignty implies that power resides in the liberal-democratic nation states where citizens elect representatives who are responsible to the voters. Citizens of the democratic nation-states are equal before the law and exercise full freedom of expression.
The notion of global governance implies that power resides in non-elected transnational institutions and in courts which escape the control of nationally elected governments. Equality of individuals is replaced by membership in a racial, ethnic, linguistic or religious sub-national and/or transnational group in which groups called “victims” (racial, ethnic, linguistic, sexual minorities, women, immigrants…) are endowed with special privileges which flout the principle of equality. Under transnational pressure, anti-racist laws forbidding “hate speech” weaken liberty of expression.
Unfortunately, the 21st century may well become a “post-democratic” century, a century in the course of which liberal democracy will be slowly, almost imperceptibly, replaced by a new form of global governance.
The ideology and the institutions of global governance already exist and are being rapidly developed. The philosophical foundation of global governance is based on the fact that all individuals on the planet are protected by human rights. International law is the supreme authority which determines these rights while international treaties establish and develop new laws and norms.
The international institutions (the United Nations and the World Bank, for example) control, negotiate and manage the international laws and treaties at various levels. Non-governmental international organizations (NGO’s) claim to represent “global civil society” or the “peoples” of the planet.
The regime of global governance is promoted and managed by interconnected transnational networks of elites composed of international lawyers and judges, activists of the NGO’s and of the United Nations, and other functionaries belonging to international organizations, the directors of international corporations and a number of supporters in the governments of the nation-states. The “progressive transnationals”, leftist Yuppies, and multinational corporations of the right are equally represented among these elites.
Contrary to democratic sovereignty, global governance does not offer direct responses to the fundamental questions of political science: Who governs? Where is the seat of authority? Who sanctions the legislation? The NGO’s that participate in drafting global treaties with democratic governments are essentially non-elected pressure groups, responsible to no one but themselves. The strength of the post-democracy is based in large part on its non-transparency.
By hiding the reasons and the manner in which political decisions are taken, these decisions become irreversible. For example, global governance does not give the “governed” any significant democratic means of rejecting the decisions they oppose, but which their new “masters” have nonetheless imposed upon them without their consent. And how can these “masters” be replaced? Global governance provides no democratic answer to these questions.
Global governance is implicitly a grand ideological scheme (and a Utopian project with universal ambitions). This system is post-democratic to the extent that it emerges from democracy but transcends it, in the same manner that “post-modernism” emerged from modernity but transcends it.
The European Union is the model for post-democratic governance. If there is one point on which both the friends and the enemies of the European Union agree, it is on subject of its “democratic deficit”. Many will admit that inside the [European] Union, the power is, to a great extent, exercised by non-elected transnational bureaucrats, and frequently contrary to the preferences of the national majorities.
Nonetheless, democracy may conquer post-democracy. The first step is to recognize the reality of the post-democratic threat. The United States, France and other democratic nation-states must undertake to promote the principle of democratic sovereignty inside the institutions of the liberal-democratic nation-state.
Democratic sovereignty is compatible with the morality of the Age of Enlightenment and the 18th-Century revolutions in France and The United States. It is compatible with the idea of “government with the consent of the governed” where state power is defined and circumscribed by a Constitution, which is the ultimate source of democratic legitimacy. To renounce democratic sovereignty without the consent of the people is not compatible with true democracy. In the end, anyone seriously concerned with democracy and the rights of man must have democratic sovereignty as their core value.
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* Historian John Fonte is the current Director of the American Common Culture and a researcher at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. He has worked for the American Education Ministry on the development of standards (for teaching?) national history. This article is an extract from his essay, “Democracy’s Trojan Horse”, published in The National Interest in the summer of 2004. (This segment translated [into French] by the American, Dan Gorlin. Translated back into English by Kathleen Moore for Habeas Corpus Canada, 25-26 April 2011.)
This article appeared in the August 9, 2004, Le Figaro (Paris).
Here is a link to the FRENCH article which I have translated, above: “Souveraineté démocratique ou gouvernance globale?” – John Fonte: http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3447
John Fonte is a senior fellow and director of Hudson’s Center for American Common Culture.
Links for John Fonte:
John Fonte – Biographical note at Hudson Institute: http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=fontjohn
Essay: “Democracy’s Trojan Horse” – http://nationalinterest.org/article/democracys-trojan-horse-1155
Essay: “Global Governance vs. the Liberal Democratic Nation-State: What Is the Best Regime?” – http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org/resources/global-governance-vs-the-liberal-democratic-nationstate-what-is-the-best-regime-2 (you can download a free PDF)
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Here is a link to the FRENCH article which I have translated, above: “Souveraineté démocratique ou gouvernance globale?” – John Fonte: http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details
