BradSpangler.com

I’ve noted very appreciatively and very much endorse the call by Amnesty International for prosecution for war crimes of leading figures in the Bush administration — Pinochet style.

I do recognize that, while not an optimal solution, limited government is preferable to unlimited government, so long as you have any government at all. That’s why I oppose all of several initiatives for instituting some form of over-arching global regime, even in the name of human rights. It is the nature of political institutions that they will be corrupted and used in ways you never envisaged — and Liberty will suffer. Quite simply, we already have way to much government already.

However, this does not mean there is no legitimate role for international law per se. Indeed, a rational anarchist could point out that there is, essentially, anarchy already amongst nations — yet international law was a thriving body of work long before the rise of the globalists with their desire for ever more powerful political institutions.

Furthermore, one could describe anarchism in terms of a desire to let all people be recognized as sovereign over their own individual selves. Viewed in that light, one could say that what we seek is itself foreshadowed in some of the best traditions of international law and that our goal is global hyper-sovereignty — each individual their own king.

This offers the beginnings of a standard to evaluate international law — how multilateral is it?

Global political institutions serve to undermine and subordinate the sovereignty of nations. They are government — a monopoly of law maintained by force or the threat of it — writ large.

The prosecution of Pinochet, and hopefully Bush, is the other way. Without unequal privilege being vested in a global institution with sole authority to prosecute and punish, any state on Earth could (with the nerve) arrest and punish mass murderers of the Bush-Pinochet sort.

We don’t need your stinkin’ New World Order.

Tags: Politics //