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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 21, 2007 / 7 Elul, 5767

Eroding sovereignty

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A likely upshot of President Bush's meetings this week with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Montebello, Canada, will be a further impetus to the effort to engage in what is euphemistically called the "harmonization" of the three countries' economies, regulatory systems and policies. The effect will be to contribute to what is on track to become one of the most worrying legacies of George W. Bush's presidency: a significant, and possibly irreversible, erosion in the nation's sovereignty.


Sovereignty is an abstraction to which few Americans give much thought. We take it for granted, like the air we breathe or the water we drink. Yet, the essence of the most successful political experiment in history — the United States of America — is the sovereign power entrusted by the people via our Constitution to our elected, accountable representatives.


Unfortunately, such sovereignty is endangered by those who believe the world of nation-states is too disorderly for efficient global commerce and the peaceable resolution of disputes. Call them the Transnational Progressives (conservative wit John O'Sullivan coined an abbreviation he insists must be spelled Tranzies). They prefer supranational arrangements like the European Union, run by wholly unaccountable bureaucrats.


The trouble for the Tranzies is that a lot of folks who value their freedoms — notably, the American people and many who represent them in Congress — generally don't fancy such arrangements. They see them for what they are: big government on steroids, unwieldy, unchecked and unresponsive to the will of the ruled.


So it is necessary for the Tranzies to resort to extraordinary means to supplant national governments. The European Union's architects have acknowledged privately they could never have pulled it off if the publics of the Continent's various nations understood what was afoot.


Today, we know a similar effort is at work behind the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) on the agenda at the Montebello Summit. In fact, thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests doggedly pursued by Judicial Watch, we know there are some two-dozen trilateral "working groups" whittling away our sovereignty — er, "harmonizing" our rules and regulations on immigration, the environment and health care with those of Mexico and Canada. This effort, as one of the SPP's admirers has put it, involves the nation-state's "erosion by stealth."


The way this is being done in the U.S. is by having the working groups operate secretively, with essentially no transparency or accountability to Congress, the media or the public.


In fact, even some proponents of the SPP and the North American Union (NAU) it ultimately seeks to institute, Greg Anderson of the University of Alberta and Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute are beginning to worry about an approach they describe as "eschewing the more traditional diplomatic and trade negotiation models in favor of talks among civil service professionals and subject matter experts within each government... [which] places the negotiation fully within the authority of the executive branch in the United States."


They went on in a paper prepared for a recent Hudson event to declare "the [SPP negotiating] process must be made more transparent to answer legitimate citizen concerns about potential outcomes. ... The design of the SPP is flawed by the exclusion of Congress from the process."


At the same time the Bush administration is complicit in stealthy negotiations eroding U.S. sovereignty in our hemisphere, it is responding to aggressive behavior by others in ways that seem sure to encourage still more such erosions — if not vast new threats to our security.


For example, Russia's KGB thug-turned-president, Vladimir Putin, has announced his country would resume its Cold War practice of sending nuclear-capable, long-range aircraft on forays into or near the airspace of various Free World nations, including ours. According to the New York Times, during such a mission in July near U.S. bases on Guam, the Pentagon says it did not even bother scrambling fighters to intercept the Russian bombers.


A White House spokesman pooh-poohed this ominous behavior, saying "Militaries around the world engage in a variety of different activities" and that "it is not entirely surprising" that the Russians would engage in this one.


Meanwhile, The Washington Times' Bill Gertz reports the Chinese military recently proposed that the Pacific be divided into spheres of influence. Presumably, what the PRC has in mind is getting the part that includes Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the Philippines and acceding (for the moment at least) to the United States having Hawaii. While a senior American general scoffed at the idea, Mr. Gertz says: "Some pro-China officials in the U.S. government ... are said to favor the Chinese proposal."


Then, there is the Tranzies' defective Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The Bush administration hopes to get it ratified this fall with help from senators willing to join in entrusting 70 percent of the world's surface — its oceans and international seabeds — to supranational agencies and tribunals. Think this can't impinge upon our sovereignty? In fact, LOST lends itself to myriad erosions of U.S. sovereign conduct via the treaty's provisions with sweeping environmental, tax, business-related and military implications.


The 2008 presidential election is an opportune moment for a national debate about safeguarding America's sovereignty. The question is: Will there be much of it left to safeguard 14 months from now?


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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