ORWELLIAN

Posted at 8:15 a.m. ET

This'll give you the creeps.  Gideon Rachman, in the Financial Times, predicts a push for a world government.  We'd better wake up before the push comes to shove:

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

When does the next space rocket leave?

The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might. 

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature...

...Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.”

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

But there is hope for us yet:

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular.

And here's the money quote:

International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

Yes, and that's the heart of the problem.  Do we really want to be run by the "freedom-loving" countries in the UN?

Finally...

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

And, knowing the UN, they'll lose the combination.  Which is good luck for us.

We, as Americans, had better stay on top of this.  We're weakened in this financial crisis, and vulnerable to all kinds of schemes. 

December 9, 2008.