Transnationally Progressive Tyranny

Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner on NRO pointed to his recent article at The New Criterion on Is the nation state threatened?, which is a topic of interest to all who enjoy freedom. Anyone familiar to reading my work will be familiar with John Fonte's analysis of the Leftist movements that have shifted from Jeffersonian concepts of universal liberty and freedom within mankind to more Marxist concepts of division based freedoms overseen by an Elite. As Mr. McCarthy picks up this topic, he looks at the status of the Nation State as a concept and practice and the effects of Transnational Progressivism upon it.

The first thing he does is transform the question from that of mere threat to terminal illness of the Nation State. This is not a sleight of hand substitution, but a clear indication from him that the Nation State is not only threatened, but clearly infected and starting to go downhill because of Progressivist concepts of Elitism and group-based privilege. Now, before I go on, some folks will be at-sea here about Transnational Progressivism, its outlook and goals, so a quick side-trip down memory lane and some of my other works should help. I first got introduced to this concept ages ago at the USS Clueless run by Steven den Beste, and he did the linking to Fonte's articles, giving them a bit of clarity even though the originals were clear enough to say the least. Thus Fonte described this movement as the following (highlighting by bolding is mine):

The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:

The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born.

A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy.

Group proportionalism as the goal of "fairness." Transnational progressivism assumes that "victim" groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population. If not, there is a problem of "underrepresentation."

The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities in major institutions if these institutions continue to reflect the worldview of the "dominant" culture. Instead, the distinct worldviews of ethnic, gender, and linguistic minorities must be represented within these institutions.

The "demographic imperative." The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the U. S. as millions of new immigrants from non-Western cultures enter American life. The traditional paradigm based on the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is obsolete and must be changed to a framework that promotes "diversity," defined as group proportionalism.

The redefinition of democracy and "democratic ideals." Transnational progressives have been altering the definition of "democracy" from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. James Banks, one of American education's leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that "to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy, the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power." Hence, American democracy is not authentic; real democracy will come when the different "peoples" that live within America "share power" as groups.

Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols of democratic nation-states in the West. In October 2000, a UK government report denounced the concept of "Britishness" and declared that British history needed to be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned." In the U.S., the proposed "National History Standards," recommended altering the traditional historical narrative. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a multicultural "convergence" of three civilizations—Amerindian, West African, and European. In Israel, a "post-Zionist" intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Even Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book , in which he deemphasized "sovereignty" and called for regional "elected central bodies," a type of Middle Eastern EU.

Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship. In an important academic paper, Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak asks hopefully "Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?"

The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. Transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of "global governance" because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future.

So, it is a relatively deconstructionist view of the world and the main thing being targeted are personal freedoms and liberties, and the way to get to those is to remove the Nation State as an organizational concept. From my own view on this in The Long Road you can get a feel of where this leads and what the overall objective of Transnational Progressivism is:

There is a name for Transnational Progressivism that is, in actuality, much older than this current formation. Where groups are administered *to* and the highest formulation of democracy is in group ascendancy. Where the interaction between groups is moderated by an enlightened or endowed group over them. Where individual perseverance and success is looked down upon and one must take only what one gets in life by birth.

That is the Dream of Nobility.

That is the Dream of Empire.

The sponsoring of these conceptions is the road BACK to Imperialism, back to Anointed Leaders of Wisdom by Birth, back to serfdom, back to slavery, back to all things which have been worked AGAINST for centuries.

By asserting forms of 'justice' not based on Jeffersonian outlook on liberty and freedom, Transnational Progressivists wish to replace that basis with one that is much more pliable to Elitist use. By denying that the individual has meaning or say, beyond their group affiliations, Transnational Progressivists seek to remove the ability of human culture to adjust to changing times and forever lock in a single class to rule everyone. The abuse of the language has been the main and supreme effort by these people so as to twist meanings away from ones that have centuries of basis and, instead, only reflect modern outlook and belief and then only those allowed by them as 'valid meanings'. This inculcation has been slow and deliberate and has changed view and outlook on what words mean and the actual solidity of them to have long-lasting meanings. This I went over in If it sounds like a duck:

Such has it been with other concepts, like 'Civil War' which has had a centuries long history of meaning: One organization within a Nation raises a flag and new concept of Governance, takes control over territory, puts up new Government, hands out uniforms and actively opposes the existing Government in all things in an attempt to either secede or to overthrow the existing Government and replace it with the new one. That has been a pretty stable meaning since the War of the Roses through the English Civil War, the Spanish Civil War and the US Civil War. Even the folks in Lebanon had this idea down pat when you saw individual neighborhoods standing up with flags and ruling councils and identification markers so you could tell who was who. By trying to shift that between disorganizations that actively oppose each other and the current Government and offer nothing better to replace it nor any open alternative nor raise a flag nor put on uniforms, what you do NOT have is a 'Civil War'. Throwing out centuries of meaning just to get an emotional 'feel good' about saying something is a 'Civil War' when it is not, is destructive to the import of the concept itself.

This is important as many people have a 'go along, get along' herd mentality and once fixated on an idea in a current meaning will deny its past meanings as having any bearing on a current situation. And that leads to a 'word meaning exactly what I say it means' sort of deal where one cannot properly identify anything (ex. "It all depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."). George Orwell first foresaw this in his novel 1984, and it has been a watchword abused by the Left that has then gone on to implement the very things that makes Big Brother possible. And first and foremost of that is the concept of Newspeak, which slowly erodes the language so that liberty and freedom will not even appear as concepts, very much like what China demanded and got from Microsoft and its dictionaries sold with software in China.

While pernicious in and of itself, the movement of this into the higher education system and, via that, to the Elementary, Primary and Secondary schools has had a further effect in eroding the concepts of putting forth Jeffersonian universal ideals of mankind. By putting forth 'group appreciation' days and months and 'awareness' days and months for groups that are relatively marginal is all well and good, but then asserting that their very marginality makes them more important than the majority common culture is something else again. Representative democracy does look out not only for the tyranny of the majority against the individual, but also for the majority to *have* a common culture so long as it removes no rights from the minority. That is accomodation given both ways, and trying to assert minoritarian views over the majority so as to remove culture and common society is also guarded against.

From this, then, we can look at one of the first key points that Mr. McCarthy examines, which is the use of the Judicial System to implement Transnational Progressivist ideals and erode the Nation State. This conception started after the First World War and with President Wilson and the outlook that while holding National ideals forward for the Nation, there needs to be a larger system over Nation States to oversee Law. This became Wilsonianism and is the 20th century view from the inter-war years that a better means to negotiate amongst Nations should be found to stop this silly thing known as warfare. As part of all of this, comes the putting forward of an Internationally recognized set of human rights, but with no real accountability by Nations for actually adhering to them. Transnational Progressivism wishes to erase the Nation State as a viable concept and put forward a World Governing System with themselves in control of it, because they have such high-minded ideals and would make the perfect folks to decide who gets what rights.

With that in mind here is what Mr. McCarthy sees happening:

What is new, however, is that transnational progressivism has become not merely a prominent jurisprudential current but, in fact, the dominant ideology of American and British courts. With the potent combination of a seismic shift in public attitudes away from democratic self-determination and toward oligarchic juristocracy (or rule by courts), as well as a sweeping infrastructure of so-called “international human rights law,” this movement is now poised to realize much of its goal: A world in which the nation state, the organizing geopolitical paradigm and engine of human progress since the Treaty of Westphalia, substantially gives way to a post-sovereign order of global governance led by supra-national tribunals (or tribunals that, though nominally “national,” pledge fealty to the higher calling of “humanity”). Like other utopian projects, the end of this one is tyranny.

Again, by using the education system to put forward that the rights of man decided by an international body have overarching meaning above the complete set of rights the individual in the US holds, Transnational Progressivism has sought to limit the discussion space a priori by not even allowing the Jeffersonian ideal as a valid jumping off point. By shifting the point of attack away from the ballot box and to the judiciary which has little democratic accountability to it, Transnational Progressivists are seeking to exploit a weakness in the structure of Nations that adhere to representational democracy.

Mr. McCarthy then looks at the Hamdan decision which he characterizes as follows:

That Hamdan’s case was before the federal judiciary at all was a reflection of transnational progressivism’s ascendancy, and a powerful warning sign that a majority of the Supreme Court was in its thrall. In 2004, six of the nine justices had astoundingly ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that enemy prisoners of war—despite being, firstly, hostile aliens with no legitimate claim on U.S. constitutional privileges and, secondly, detained outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. courts—somehow had a right to compel the executive branch, even as it was conducting the war, to justify their detention.

He had previously noted that in all wars before this the Judiciary had not stepped in on questions dealing with prisoners and their rights when they have been captured either during or after battle or in acts of espionage and sabotage. By attempting to utilize Treaties as a means for crafting a decision, the Supreme Court had done something that no other Supreme Court had done: it had crafted a decision of what a Treaty meant in spite of explicit citation of what its limitations were by the Executive and the Legislative branches.

The critical reason this is important is seen with this passage:

The U.S. Constitution, it might be recalled, is a compact between a primary source of power, namely, the American people, and the government that power created. It is not a treaty between the United States and the rest of the world—indeed, it explicitly presumes (in the Treason Clause, art. III, 3) that the rest of the world will include enemies of the United States.

This is a critical and necessary reminder that the United States, unlike other Nations, does *not* see its power vested in the State and given to the People, but in the People who grant limited powers to the State.

When I reviewed what the Supreme Court had used as argumentative basis for their decision, I cited those problems and one which the court had decided to 'read into the Treaty':

The problem is not one of falling on one side of a conflict or another. That is clearly demarcated by the Conventions.

The problem is that al Qaeda falls COMPLETELY outside of this framework. To be inside this framework al Qaeda must have the level of stature granted to non-recognized Nations. To be able to be part of this framework one must be part of an organization that can become a Contracting Party and that is what the Court has done.

There you have it, folks. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that al Qaeda shall be afforded all of the benefits of a Nation, even a non-recognized Nation, without having any of the fundamentals to actually *be* a Nation.

By attempting to put a non-State organization on State based footing the Supreme Court had violated the very precepts of international law and attempted to make law. The telling point is that the 1977 Geneva Convention to amend the treaties to put terrorists *into* the conventions was not only not ratified by Congress it was not *signed* by the President as it would be an overstepping of the Presidential warpowers to do so. Just as the Privateers language is inoperable in all treaties for the United States, so are the terrorist's rights international law areas. This is a Sovereign Right of the United States to determine internally and the division of Federal powers leaves no doubt that such Treaties may not be put in place and even if done so would be inoperative. In the United States the Constitution over-rides mere Treaty.

The usurpation of the Constitutional divisions by the Supreme Court to reach *beyond* National or States law and to international law as a guiding force is one thoroughly destructive to the Constitutional system that has been set up by the People of the United States. The Court now presumes to tell the People what are and are not valid Nation States and how those shall be viewed by the Nation without any recourse to the National discourse within the Nation. The blatant disregard for what the Executive and Legislative have already put forth as views is toxic to the way the Federal system works and for the foundation of Individualism within the United States.

This is no minor bandying about of wordplay as the Transnational Progressivists would assert. By basing their decision and argumentative thought processes on Treaty language that does not even *exist* for non-State based organizations, the Supreme Court has broken faith with the Constitution and the People. Even until recent times the Supreme Court has sought to avoid any endangerment of the division of Powers and checks and balances of the Constitution and, while it has cited international law, it uses reasoning based wholly upon the laws and precedential laws via the Common Law up to the founding of the Nation. From mere insight into reasoning, the Supreme Court now brings in external reasoning fully and redefines Treaties to its liking. By doing so they put the very foundation of Due Process and rule of Law into shadow by now eliminating the People as the necessary foundation of such Law.

From here Mr. McCarthy cites multiple precedents but starts that section with this paragraph:

With that understanding, Rasul was a bracing clarion. The courts, it announced, are no longer the neutral referee within a sovereign structure, ensuring that Americans get a fair shake from their government. Instead, in the teeth of the Supreme Court’s reaffirmation, only a quarter-century ago in Dames & Moore v. Regan (1981), of the concession that the Framers “did not make the judiciary the overseer of our government,” the courts have sublimated themselves to the status of über-branch, transcending mere national considerations to ensure that all the world—including that part of it energetically trying to kill Americans—has a forum in which to press its case against the United States. With Hamdan, this evolution, or downward spiral, has proceeded to its next logical stage.

That common agreement seen by previous Courts, all the way up to 1981 has seriously changed since then towards an outlook of the United States as 'just one State amongst many' whose laws must be considered in their 'context'. Mind you that 'context' specifically *includes*: North Korea, Red China, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Iran and Burma. Thus the degradation of external citation and 'expansive interpretation' allows for *any* reading based on international law to be applied by the Supreme Court on anything. By not seeking recourse within the Constitutional system and by citing the Geneva Conventions deeply and going on to interpret them in ways that were not agreed to specifically by the Executive and Legislative branches, the Court may now use such 'expansive' interpretations on whatever it pleases.

Why this is critical is in the foundation of what the Sovereign Right of a Nation is with regards to its own conduct and self-preservation. Here is the key to that understanding from Mr. McCarthy:

There is no more basic assertion of this natural right than the waging of a defensive war, bringing to bear, after provocation, the national might necessary to quell the enemy so that he is no longer a threat. There is no greater security, for both the nation state and the order of civilized nations, than victory over forces that thrive on inhumanity—forces that always and everywhere process accommodation as weakness.

Thus, any attempt to change the Due Process proceedings of those captured as enemy combatants or in acts of espionage or sabotage falls directly to the Executive and the Uniform Code of Military Justice as set by Congress. Acts of Terrorism are not mere 'criminal' activities and I have outlined the reasoning behind that as it is plainly obvious, but no one dares to say it in this era of Politically Correct speech:

These modern day terrorists that threaten civilians with Acts of War to incite their terror are employing means that have, traditionally, fallen into the realm of the military and armed conflict. Treating it as a *police* matter is wrong-headed in conception and ill-thought out in any event: if true foreign power backing is *found* then this is, immediately, a Declaration of War on the United States. But even *without* foreign power backing, the act of terrorism that kills individuals or destroys property in an attempt to disrupt a people, region or Nation are, in and of themselves, Acts of Warfare. There may *also* be criminality involved in support of such acts, but the act itself is *not* a civil act but a military act. Warfare taken up illegitimately is *still* warfare, not a bunch of armed thugs running around.... hold that thought.

The single most and over-riding factor in judgment is in judging the activity of individuals, groups and Nations. It is not the *intent* of the activity that matters but the activity itself that defines what was done. Thus, the shift to a 'law enforcement' mode during the 1980's and 1990's is destructive to the Nation as it does not acknowledge warlike acts as *being* acts of war. That is not only a breach of diplomatic niceties, it is a breach of the constructs of civilizations that actually defines war. If that is no longer put forth, then acts of war are no longer responded to with military means.

Once these illegitimate acts of war are put into mere civil arenas for discourse, the very activity of putting such into that arena lessens National Sovereignty. All through every war up until this one the Supreme Court has given that the separation of powers to prosecute a war is done by the Executive with the outlay for such work done by Congress via declarations for war and via the UCMJ. So long as military Due Process is upheld, the Supreme Court has no say on 'civil rights' of those held during warfare who have been actively working against the United States. Transnational Progressivism would like to see warfare, indeed, put to an end and would love to define it out from the very thoughts of mankind. Thus, by trying to lessen acts of war to 'civil crimes' they are undercutting the right of a Sovereign Nation to BE Sovereign in its outlook. Again, Mr. McCarthy looks at this, too:

Such brute exercises of sovereign self-protection, however, cut sharply against the post-World War II era’s internationalist ethos. That mindset has three characteristics: denying the natural basis on which human rights (including self-preservation) were founded; subordinating the community to its ambitious new individual, a chimera mixed-and-matched from its transitory pieties; and undermining the security imperative of defeating evil by elevating the arrogant fantasy of negotiating with it.

Yes, civilization actually does have a brutal side to it as human nature has a brutal side to it. And just to put that point home, Transnational Progressivism has its proponents across the political spectrum who would dearly love to put the concept of 'evil' and 'brutal human nature' aside and appease tyrants and dictators. These folks, on the international side and foreign affairs side have been known as 'Realists' and the Iraq Study Group was full of them. The 'Realists' in foreign affairs use a form of diplo-crypto speak to self-identify so as to make their position known in things, but when ever you hear such terms as 'Realpolitik', realism in diplomacy or pragmatic geostrategic statesmanship, you can bet that you have now found someone that only deals in a rarefied atmosphere where actual 'people' are never discussed except in a generic, third-person way. By not being able to identify the actual problems of people, they have no idea of how to deal with them and, from that, the Nations that they are in. If you have a problem with the modern set of geopolitical statesmanship, look no further than the Realists who are the most un-real of folks around this globe. Thus the splendid folks at the ISG put this forth on page 32 of their report:

In order to foster such consensus, the United States should embark on a robust diplomatic effort to establish an international support structure intended to stabilize Iraq and ease tensions in other countries in the region. This support structure should include every country that has an interest in averting a chaotic Iraq, including all of Iraq’s neighbors—Iran and Syria among them. Despite the well-known differences between many of these countries, they all share an interest in avoiding the horrific consequences that would flow from a chaotic Iraq, particularly a humanitarian catastrophe and regional destabilization.

Now, far be it from me, but aren't Iran and Syria the main CAUSE of instability in the Middle East? And if Iran and Syria were so hot on civil rights and humanitarian causes, why don't they give any civil rights to their own people? Well, that is 'Realism' for you, things exist because you want them to. Mr. McCarthy goes over this entire insane proposition in a separate piece, but in this piece and relating to the Judiciary the juxtaposition of 'Realists' and Transnational Progressive outlooks upon the Supreme Court itself has grave consequences.

One of these is the Supreme Court looking at the UN Charter for guidance which, in and of itself, is an undemocratic institution of the highest form. This grand and glorious institution was formed so that something like World War I or II couldn't happen again, and looking towards that its charters included the Security Council, from which Mr. McCarthy has some deep qualms (emphasis his via italics):

The Charter’s Article 51, though often ignored, purports to reduce the right of self-defense to limited responsive engagements which ensue only until “the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Literally, a member nation is expected to endure a first strike, no matter how clearly signaled and existentially threatening, before taking protective action. Moreover, it is the Security Council, not the besieged sovereign, which is authorized “to take at any time such action as it deems necessary”; and the goal of any such action must be the restoration of “international peace and security” (emphasis added), not the well-being of any one nation.

So, if you are Poland or France, say, seeing a huge build-up of German troops on your border and huge re-supply columns moving in behind them and all sorts of general mobilization going on... well... it is a big 'no-no' to take advantage of an opportunity to actually strike first if you get a chance to surprise or cripple such a force by doing so. And heaven forbid if one actually defends themselves robustly contrary to the orders of the UNSC! And you can see where this train of Transnationalist tripe is headed by letting unelected international bureaucrats decide Sovereign National outlook on law you get such things as this, which Mr. McCarthy points out:

The fallout abounds. For example, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations’ new Human Rights Council recently released a report on the “Prevention of Human Rights Violations Committed with Small Arms and Light Weapons.” In its haste to rid the world of guns, regardless of contrary national laws (such as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution), the report breezily contradicts international law’s ancient origins, declaring there is no right to self-defense—neither for the individual nor for the nation state. At best, self-defense was said to be available in most jurisdictions as a defense to be interposed, not a privilege (much less a natural right) to be guaranteed. Thus, there is a right to life, but not to preserve that life.

Thus the unelected international elite get to decide who gets which rights and when, as you have NO natural rights that accrue to you. So, no matter what the actual foundational precepts of the US are via the Declaration of Independence nor the actual enshrinement of the Nation founded to protect those natural universal rights, a loving bureaucrat wishes to wipe them away with a stroke of a pen on a report propounding that no one nor any Nation has the right to protect itself. From here Mr. McCarthy goes on to cite the problems of Israel, having to deal with non-Nation State and Nation State terrorists and being hit hard by the UN amongst other groups for actually attempting to defend itself. That perception, then, is why the Hamdan decision is so very worrying and for the reason that it goes against stated outlook by the Executive and the Legislative branches and from the actual reading of the Geneva Convention itself.

The standards of the Geneva Convention relates only to Nation States or unrecognized States as is in the case of many Civil Wars (amazing how that comes around again, isn't it?). It is Common Article 3 that the Supreme Court cites most often and it is that one that he describes thusly:

CA3 is something of a Geneva aberration. It addresses civil war occurring within a single country, not the Conventions’ raison d’être, international conflicts. Very often, at least one faction in such a conflict will not be a national army. Arguably, there may be some justification for relaxing privileged combatant qualifications in order to extend basic standards of humane treatment.

But the war on terror, launched after savage attacks in the United States prompted military operations in Afghanistan, is manifestly not a civil war. The Supreme Court’s pedantic end-run around that inconvenience—namely, the suggestion that because al Qaeda is not a nation it cannot by definition participate in international conflicts—would no doubt surprise thousands of victims strewn across four continents.

The twisting of CA3’s language, though, is just a side-issue. The salient point for the future of the nation state is how the Court got to CA3 in the first place. Here, it is necessary to pause momentarily over the state of play before the Supreme Court got involved.

CA3 was designed before there were such concepts as non-State based terrorists, although pirates, brigands and outlaw regions had been known, they were then amenable to previous modes of warfare which were, in turn, disappearing as the might of the Nation State rose. The move by the Supreme Court to vacate the lower court's ruling and judge this case and apply the CA3 concept to it is not an anomaly of the system, but a direct refusal to acknowledge the past history of the Nation, the Court and the Treaties all the way back to the founding of the Nation in 1787. By incorporating CA3 into the 'rules of war' for *everyone* the Supreme Court is no longer following signed Treaty language nor merely interpreting Treaty language along the lines the signatories have laid out for it. Instead the Court has *made* Treaty interpretation based on the loosest of all possible interpretations that follows the 1977 work that the US did *not* sign up to:

That several of these compacts have never been ratified in the U.S. under our constitutional procedure (calling for presidential negotiation and, later, ratification only after consent by two-thirds of the senate) would now seem to matter little. In 1977, for example, the UN spearheaded Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. While much of the world, including the United Kingdom, signed on, the Reagan administration demurred, largely because the treaty would confer rights on—and thus reward and encourage—terrorists, in addition to outlawing effective war-fighting (ostensibly to strengthen international guidelines against the indiscriminate and disproportionate use-of-force). No matter. By resorting to, and torturing, the text of CA3, the Supreme Court has effectively imposed on the United States some of the very treaty terms the nation’s accountable political representatives rejected in Protocol I. The justices seemed untroubled by the absence of constitutional legitimacy and institutional competence in their conduct of foreign relations.

By doing as it has done the Supreme Court has now placed itself into the Foreign Policy realm which is the sole outlook of the President save for Treaties which must go through the Senate. The role of the Court is to figure out if the means of implementation are compatible with the Due Process of Law in the United States. That is *it*. The interpretation powers on such Treaties is limited to exactly what was signed up to and any further side agreements also signed during that process along with further clarification points. When it is unclear, the Supreme Court is to give deference to the Constitution, the Laws of the Land, the States, the Executive and the Legislative branches and *not* make it up as it goes along.

Of further worry is that the Courts are now misapplying older statutes which have not been applied to very much in the period just before the modern era:

The revival by U.S. courts of the moribund Alien Tort Statute is illustrative of the trend. Under this 1789 law, judges now presume to regulate the internal affairs of foreign nations—no matter how remote and inconsequential to American interests—if, in their view, “definable, universal, and obligatory” international norms have been transgressed. The trend, further, has reached ambitious new heights with the Rome Statute, creating the International Criminal Court, which claims jurisdiction over all the world—even non-ratifying states—as well as power to criminalize the defensive use of force as, for example, a war crime.

That is why so many groups are going 'Court Shopping' on the international scene, especially to the World Court. Once done they can then go 'Court Shopping' in the US to find a pliable judge to get a ruling for them and then start to tie up the US judicial system with inapplicable rulings and judgments which, heretofore, have gone through National channels via the State Department. So anyone in the US can be judged upon *anything* an international body holds forth, tried in absentia, convicted and then have those same folks come knocking on their door with a US trial in which the foreign motion will attempted to be used against them. Find the right judge and *presto*, you get: international courts getting jurisdiction in US Sovereign Territory.

That is the path the Supreme Court is opening up.

Of course the Constitutional system leaves open a pathway even if the Executive and Legislative do not reign in the Courts: the various States within the Union have the right to self-autonomy and provisions against times of invasion or Danger to see to their own defense. That, of course, assumes that the People still *want* to have a Nation in which a Free People may have their inalienable rights acknowledged... and not an authoritarian system run by the Courts implementing the decisions of unelected international bureaucrats. But so many on the Left are pushing for PC and hate-speech laws that apply to any but themselves that even *that* would get its defenders.

The Defenders of Tyranny.

Because it is so 'progressive' for someone else to make decisions for you.