Would You Support A One World Government

Great Debates
41

In other words, you want America to be destroyed and replaced with a bunch of indpendent states.

The US never was just a “coalition of states.” It’s always been a centrally controlled federal union, so there can’t be any “return.”

Your proposal is ridiculous impractical and implausible anyway. Is every state going to have its own military? Who gets the nukes? How about access to resources? Do residents of land-locked states have to get permission to travel through other states to leave their own states, or to import things into their own states? Does every state control its own airspace? Does every state have to issue its own passports. Does every state have to draft its own new Constitution and Bill of Rights?

What defines America as America if there isn’t any federal government?

What power does the current federal government have that you think it should not have?

42

Its highly relevant for the people that ACTUALLY DID IT. I think a few people that became known as americans might have even done that very thing once or twice. But that may just be a rumor.

I take you think all those mexicans should be forced to stay home and suck it up rather than sneaking across the border. Whats their beef ? Isnt THEIR gubment legit?

And of course there is absolutely NO chance that a world gubment would ever get as shitty as the mexican one :rolleyes:

43

I disagree, strongly. You don’t have to be predominant to have influence; all you need is enough numbers to throw your weight around. A minority that really, really wants something is much more powerful than an indecisive majority. The Ameican RR may not be predominant, but you can’t argue with the fact that it has influence, and the only reason it hasn’t torn your country down is that the habits of democracy have been deeply ingrained into its the American psyche these past two centuries - which is not something that you can say about most of the rest of the world. With the exception of parts of western Europe (which is too ineffectual to put up much of a fight, anyway), the vast majority of the planet is much less progressive than the U.S. as regards women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom and freedom of speech. They may not share much with each other in terms of culture, but as soon as politicians get involved, I’m sure they’ll find common ground in terms of issues. If a Chinese politician wants to make homosexuality a crime, do you think he’ll have a problem finding support in the Middle East or in Africa?

The bottom line is this: I don’t trust the world. I trust the citizens of my country.

44

Working in concert, but free to govern as they see fit. What’s wrong with that?

Actually, it was. Try this on for size.

Of course it is. In a thread about one world government, which is also ridiculous, impractical, and implausible. I didn’t mean to rile you up there Diogenes…

45

Well clearly there will have to be some convergence on basic values for a world government to work. That’s why it will take a long time. However in the long run I think that convergence will happen. It’s striking how similar rich democracies are to each other regardless of their history. China may not be that liberal on social issues but Japan is not that far from the West. Secondly a world government can be quite decentralized in structure and it would be quite possible to have an explicit right for constituent regions to secede through referendum.

46

If everybody agrees what needs to be done, why do we need an official one world government to do what everyone agrees to do?

If everybody doesnt agree and can freely leave if they want, then whats the point? Unless you mean free to leave like the southern states did and the shooting started.

Either this governement has enough power to enforce its actions and its a danger to the world if it heads towards the crapper, or it doesnt have enough power and is just another impotent version of the UN with a thousand times the red tape.

47

Well obviously regions would not leave the world government at a whim and there would be a large amount of inertia once they joined. However if they felt their fundamental way of life was threatened by the world government they would have a legal and peaceful option to opt out through referendum. Think of the EU today which can be left by any country but which has nevertheless been highly stable.

48

You would not have any choice.

49

Dictators tend to have more experience because they don’t have to worry about re-election. I don’t see that as a virtue in their favor.

50

For what 10 to 20 years? Sign me up!

China has been “stable” for thousands of years. Sign me up !

North Korea been stable since before MASH went off the air. Sign me up!

The USSR was stable for 50 years. Sign me up!

The Titantic floated GREAT until it sank…

Why in gods name do you people think you’d automatically get the world government YOU WOULD WANT ? Particularly when I’d bet most of the pro posters here do nothing but bitch and moan about their own government, or at least some other evil government like the USA or France. Chances are you’d get that or worse.

And even if you live in a perfect country with a government you want, there are probably crappy countries with governments you wouldnt be caught dead in. You really WANT THOSE guys having any input in how to rule the world?

51

3 Things.

  1. The US is not a straight democracy. It a democratic republic.
  2. We have inertia. If the religious right is now a minority, is has only become one recently. Its religiously influenced policies are still in effect, and much of the moral code, legal and popular, has a religious root. Change in a populations perspective having an affect on the government at large takes time. The larger the government, the longer that time will be. That is yet another reason against a global government.
  3. The Catholic church is in a way a government (already global) and it is not really a minority.
52

Only a limited one that promoted certain issues like medical care, human rights, infrastructure, democratization, economic growth, etc.

You run into tons of problems setting this up. In the US, in our senate we have 2 senators from each state. So Vermont has 2 senators and California has two, despite California having about 60x more people.

So does Morocco have as much of a say as China, and does a country like Myanmar or North Korea have the same level of influence as an established liberal democracy like France or New Zealand?

In the US, as a progressive liberal, I am pissed that I have to live under the leadership of senators elected in the south. There are 100 senators, and 26 come from the south. Of those 26, 19 are republicans. Of the remaining 74 non-southern senators a whopping 21 are republicans and of those republicans many are reasonably moderate (McCain, Luger, Snowe, Collins, etc). Extract the south from the equation and the US would’ve had labor and health reform a long time ago.

So I hate having to live with the consequences of decisions made by southern politicians in the US, and I’d hate having to live with the consequences of nations like China or Myanmar in a world government.

The human rights council in the UN has turned into a joke. The reason it did was because all the dictatorships got together and voted each other into leadership positions so they could avoid being criticized for their records. Now nations like Israel (which isn’t perfect but is still a liberal democracy despite all the threats it is under) is criticized far more than a nation like Libya, which despite being under fewer threats has a more oppressive domestic policy.

I do think everyone on earth is entitled to basic education, healthcare, infrastructure, human rights and civil rights. If a world government could promote those things (even if it meant overturning the decisions of sovereign nations), then have at it. The international criminal court as an example is something I can get behind, and I celebrated when they got 60 ratifications and it became a legit institution.

But I think a one world government should be limited to those things. And I think there is fairly broad consensus among the world that people are entitled to those things.And I would support global taxes to fund those programs.

53

Honestly, I don’t see any real advantage to having a global government. Even if local authorities still
had power, change would take forever, even on the local level. It would further separate the leadership class from the populace. There would be official oppression. And we’d have to worry about that whole “power corrupts” thing.

I for one don’t want Stewie Griffin telling me what to do, although maybe I would trust The Brain to do a better job of being a dictator.

54

Don’t forget Congress. I’ll bet you feel better represented by them.

55

There seems to be an assumption among the anti-OWGs that the pro-OWGs want a powerful OWG to over-rule national goverment. I am pro- and don’t want that.

I think (I am a liberal, so let your cognitive dissonance sink in for a while) the federal government has WAAAAY to much power and I wish it had less. I wish more of the concerns of the federal government (civil rights, drug & social policies, education, health) were dealt with at a state or local level.

But there are some things that local government is unable to deal with (interstate commerce, national defence, foreign policy) and it’s appropriate to deal with those at a federal level.

Similarly, there are some things that could be better dealt with at a supra-national level (climate change, trade policies, powerful global corporations).

I think it’s a real shame that the inter-state commerce clause created such a huge loophole for the federal government to abuse - and any global government would face the same fundamental problem: how to prevent powerful accruing to the highest level of government.

Some polities have managed to avoid this problem. How do they do this? Could the OWG successfully emulate their example?

There are other problems of course - like what form of democracy should we have, and how do we avoid a OWG Dictatorship and how do we avoid China+Iran+Zimbabwe forming a voting block that dominates OWG? - but I don’t think it’s a bad idea in principle even if its difficult to imagine in practice.

56

Only when/if the rest of the world becomes as secular and progressive as Western Europe. Our Christian-democrats have only recently become tolerable, I wouldn’t want a coalition of deeply conservative Christians/Muslims/Hindus etc interfering with my life.

57

Bingo. It will only have a snowballs chance in hell of working when most of the world is civilized/first world/generally democratic and everyone is reasonable.

At THAT point you dont NEED a world government. You would then have a UN that isnt a farce and the occasional treaty and resolution and gentlemans agreement that actually means something would work just fine.

58

No, more likely they’d have real “drag down knock out fights”, with guns and tanks instead of arguments in Congress. Or just having to suffer due to the behavior of their neighbor; such as an upstream state deciding to take all the water from a river parching the states downstream of it. Or dumping toxic waste into it and rendering it unusable. Given the “I’ve got mine screw the rest of humanity” attitude common in America I don’t see the states being able to get along in a civilized fashion without the federal government keeping them under control.

59

Yeah, I don’t see what the big deal is.

60

Neither did Hitler :slight_smile: