When I left the U. S. Army in the spring of 1946 I really hated war. I speak not only about the fear, anger, pain, cold, heat, and other forms of physical suffering, but also from my (mostly invisible) help in reinstalling Nazi technicians during what we called the “occupation.” Nazis?” What else could we do? The water works of a town like Mannheim had to be managed, and we couldn’t get some so-called anti-Nazi who ran a Bierstube to do the job. So the Nazis were back with our blessing, doing all the stuff necessary to restore order. The leadership of the country was turned over to those few anti-Nazis with the political bona fides to let us get away with the Mickey-Mouse occupation.

Could it have been otherwise? Of course not, wars are bad; so I joined the United World Federalists because the only way to prevent wars between nations was for the world to unite. Nations could join together, and, under the protection of agreed upon laws, never fight again. So many of us believed this that I even felt less animus toward John D. Rockefeller and his grandsons (and his Standard Oil Company for destroying the American railroad system, but that’s another story) when he offered land and money to build the UN.

Every Nation joined and had a voice, but of course some special nations had more voice than others. Those were the Security Council nations, with Uncle Sam running the show. Now the laws that were to constrain all of us were drafted, along with amendments called resolutions. These were of course unambiguous, just like our Constitution and its amendments. Oh, I forgot, sometimes unambiguous laws are ambiguous to some, like the First Amendment or the Second. Flag burning if you hadn’t known really is a form of speech, and some speech is “hate” speech and is not allowed if directed toward members of a political minority. And because a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, one would have thought it obvious that the militias were not the bearer of arms, rather the law gave a right to the people, but oh well, let’s strive to ban guns.

Now the member nations saw that if they were richer and stronger than their neighbor, they could not simply occupy and exploit their weaker neighbors by force of arms (that was the original point remember), but rather they must help their neighbor. This could be done by taxing the richer nations, and giving some to the poorer, and much of this e.g., by UNICEF and UNESCO did some real good. However, some of these hand-outs ended in the Swiss bank accounts of the rulers of the poorer nations, who in return for the largesse, sided with their richer “friends” to further adjust how the laws and resolutions worked. Pretty soon things got out of hand, and what with delegates living pretty high on the hog, some shady dealings took form. I have no idea how many or of what sort those dealings were, but I do know that these things happen. Indeed even the biggest and most generous of the Security Council members started acting in their own interests rather than the interests of my one-world dream. I quit the World Federalists and went to work anticipating the next war would be a real horror. And so it was. It was the first UN military fiasco called the Korean War. The point was that a country’s people had divided sharply, so sharply that the usual procedures for conflict resolution—talking and negotiating—failed. Not the first time, and I’m remembering Prime Minister Chamberlain who returned to England in 1938 from his meeting with Hitler in Munich announcing “Peace in our time.”

I won’t bore you with the second act, Vietnam. Many of you were there or should have been, that it suggests maybe civil wars should not get others, even a World Federation, involved. Especially when the political bosses rewrite how a war is fought. The principle, as I understand the pols, is that wars shouldn’t kill anyone. I could rehearse again our own history about civil wars, at least to point out that another of my favorite Generals, Robert Lee, surrendered at Vicksburg, rather than engage in an insurgency that he believed could last 20+ years.

And what truths do I draw from these comments? Only that Imperialism, whether disguised as internationalism, free trade, multilateralism, or some other new moniker is the same old Globalony. It fails its instigators, good intentions to the contrary not withstanding.

Next time, class, we’ll take up my own preference: Isolationism, which means to me independence, tariffs, self reliance, closed borders, immigration only for the national good, Fortress America, and one of my best loved college mottos, Leges sine moribus vanae, and all the other stuff academics tell you is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Contributed by Gene Harrison on August 2, 2006 at 12:41 PM in Gene Harrison | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: John

Hey, isn't that the motto for Penn?

Posted by: John | Aug 7, 2006 6:06:36 AM