Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" was hatched in some darkened cavern of the Council on Foreign Affairs and is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
The problem with the Bush administration is that not enough of its officials have read the U.S. Constitution. Take, for example, Section 2 of Article 2. When dealing with foreign nations, it says that the President “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur . . ..”
So, why is President Bush and his administration seeking to establish a North American Union that would, in effect, abolish the borders between Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America?
Moreover, it would involve our government in so many common regulatory mandates with these two nations as to render the sovereignty of the United States a memory of what national self-governance is supposed to be.
The name of this effort is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and, guess what, it has not been submitted to the Senate for its oversight or concurrence because, by some magic of governmental definition, it is not a treaty. Instead, its administration is buried in the bowels of the Commerce Department.
It does have, however, the blessing of the political and corporate elites of all three nations. A visit to the SPP Internet website () says it “was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort to increase security and enhance prosperity among the United States, Canada and Mexico through greater cooperation and information sharing.”
It is an attack on American sovereignty. In the smoothest and most soothing writing you will find anywhere, the website spells out the wonders of SPP. They include the North American Competitiveness Council, the North American Energy Security Initiative, the North American Emergency Management plan, and plans for “smart, secure borders.” And right now there are “working groups” whose purpose is to “improve productivity, reduce the costs of trade, and enhance the quality of life.”
And if you like snake oil, permit SPP to sell it to you by the barrel, the boxcar, and by the tanker.
The SPP didn’t start out as an idea the presidents of the three nations started kicking around on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas, but it became the official policy of the United States at a special summit convened by President Bush and joined by then Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Like so many really bad foreign policy concepts, SPP owes its origins to the Council on Foreign Relations; in this case, CFR’s Task Force on North America. Its report, “Building a North American Community,” envisions the elimination of U.S. borders in just five years. Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
The Marxist majordomo of this task force is Professor Robert Pastor, who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The best way to secure the United States today is not at our two borders with Mexico and Canada but at the borders of North America as a whole.” Oh, yeah????
This surely explains why Mexico is doing such a great job of stopping the drug smugglers or the one million Mexicans who each year consider the U.S. border a mere fiction in their pursuit of jobs President Bush keeps telling us Americans won’t take. This is pure bunk and dangerous bunk at that.
I have many Canadian friends, but it seems to me Canada took too long to discover it had some fanatical Muslims in its midst who were plotting terrible things. Frankly, I want us to cooperate against a common enemy, but I do not want to place the responsibility for America’s security in anyone’s hands, but our own.
A North American Union promises not only security, says SPP, but prosperity too. Without SPP, however, the three nations already do more than $800 billion in trilateral trade.
Surely the U.S. needs Mexico’s help to improve our economy? As the economist, Robert J. Samuelson, noted in a June column, “The subtext for the United States immigration debate is Mexico. Why doesn’t its economy grow faster, creating more jobs and higher living standards?” The answer to that has something to do with the endemic corruption that infests all levels of Mexico’s governmental and business sectors. Something is very wrong when Mexico’s economy must literally depend on the billions its illegal aliens send home from the U.S.
In 2002, then-Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castanega explained to the local press that destroying the border involved “the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant. Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants.”
Bush43 is carrying out Bush41’s daft and dangerous “new world order” and his indifference to America’s illegal immigration crisis is symptomatic of the SPP objectives.
On June 15, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio Garcia de Alba, and Canadian Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier joined North American business leaders to launch the North American Competitiveness Council. The objective is the promotion of “regional competitiveness in the global community.”
As if the floundering economies of the member nations of the European Union were not warning enough, it is proposed that the United States enter into a similar union.
A lot of corporations with global interests like this idea. Among those sponsoring the North American Union are FedEx Corporation, Mittal Steel USA, General Motors Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Campbell’s Soup Company, Gillette Inc., Merck & Company, and Wal-Mart Stores.
Since the United States is already a signatory to NAFTA and CAFTA, why is SPP necessary? Just how many treaties, agreements and protocols are necessary to promote trade and economic growth?
Just how many nets and norms, traps and snares, will ultimately undermine U.S. prosperity, drive down the wages of America’s middle class, and improve the ability of the Mexican drug cartels to deliver their goods?
Like termites eating away at the sovereignty of the United States of America, this grandiose scheme, hatched in some darkened cavern of the Council on Foreign Affairs, is a major threat to American security and prosperity.
It was been introduced by fiat, by executive action, by a “summit” of the three nation’s leaders, and the time is long overdue for the Senate to demand to exercise its Constitutional responsibility and right to determine if it wishes to give its consent to yet another “entangling alliance.”
ACaruba@aol.com
http://www.anxietycenter.com/
Read more articles by Alan Caruba
Don't blame it all on Bush.
http://www.freedom.org/news/200608/22/evensen.phtml
Comment by Gary Hyde | August 23, 2006
Then who else should we blame?
Comment by Alan Caruba | August 23, 2006
Fault lies always in the same place; it lies with him
weak enough to lay blame. Our President is not the
only one responsible, however; Congress has allowed
this thing to pass without challenge, the courts are more
bent on hamstringing Bush's efforts and creating law than
in preventing such threats to our sovereignty, and
John Q. Public is too busy trying to pay off his debts,
feed his family, and keep a roof over their heads
to worry overmuch about this political stuff. Truly, is
this not why we elect public officials? And it looks like
we've elected foxes to guard the henhouse.
We the people must come together and exercise
responsibility for our citizenship. We can no longer allow
those who have degrees and credentials to run things
at our expense simply because they know how to
blabber us into compliant confusion.
Comment by Lane Russell | August 23, 2006
At the pace we are heading towards destruction of this republic, it is only a matter of time before that one last straw breaks the camel's back to wake John Q. Public.
Keep in mind, many of us wish to see a restoration of this country to constitutional law. That will probably require us to excercise our rights under the 2nd ammendment.
Comment by RC | August 24, 2006
I wish I could be as confident as RC, the writer of # 4 above, that John Q. Public eventually will be awakened. Personally, I see so much public apathy around me amid all the shattering of our culture and our society by the administration, the judiciary, our "elected" politicians and a few oversized wealthy influential anti-Americans that, at times, I fear for our future.
Comment by B.K. | August 24, 2006
I'm not a big fan of the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America", but I worry about the openly nationalistic rhetoric on an "intellectual" conservative website- nationalism is leftist to the core, and I would have expected a conservative to use a better argument than "it sabotages American sovereignity".
Why not argue that it's just another regulatory disaster waiting to happen, that the whole thing is just a way to add one more layer of dangerous bureaucracy? Why argue that free trade (gasp) is a more efficient and just? Why not argue that this is part of a trend toward larger central governments, just as the crushing of the Confederate States of America was a trend toward larger central governments? Have conservatives begun to forget these arguments?
I fear for the world if they have, because a "conservative" movement that is hyper-nationalist and little else is nothing more than a fascist movement- and fascism is just another ugly manifestation of LEFTISM. For that matter, nationalism is leftist, too.
Comment by Ted | August 24, 2006
Sorry Ted but your point is confusing. First, I don't get how conservatives are "hyper nationalist and little esle" I think that is really unfair. Further, I don't think its clear cut that nationalism is leftist. Nationalism is used to help a country join together in commonalities such as language, culture, and values. It is a tool used to assit assimilation within a country and I don't view that is wrong or leftist. It is important that there is a national identity to help coalesce a country- especially one as disjointed as the U.S. Now, let me be clear- I don't know much about this topic however it just seemed to me that you were making statements and not backing it up. I would actually love to hear you expound on your points. Just be more explicit about what you mean and how you define the terms you are using.
Comment by JJ | August 24, 2006
Teds' head is on backwards. Up is down and right is left. Another guilt-ridden liberal pretending to have a
a brain. Just look for words beginning with hyper and you'll spot a lib is a lib is a lib.
Comment by Randy S. | August 24, 2006
Since the United States is already a signatory to NAFTA and CAFTA, why is SPP necessary
Mr. Caruba, I am not defending Mr.Bush, I am saying that he is no more a villain than the designers of NAFTA and CAFTA. Our government officials, regardless of their political affiliation, have decided to lead us into the one world system. And what is saddest, there is nothing we can do to stop it, there is no unity left in the United States.
Comment by Gary Hyde | August 24, 2006
Whether or not a treaty comes up before the Senate, won't implementation of this plan require some capital spending to upgrade US infrastructure or money for handouts to Mexican nationals? Congress can voice its displeasure by not funding anything related to this agreement. But they won't. No matter what the elites say for public consumption, they are all in favor of this union. Each party has different reasons for what it does, but they share the same goal. It's time to vote against all incumbents, but even that is not enough. Americans need to vote for a party other than the Democrats or Republicans. What happened in Minnesota a few years back could happen nationwide, as long as we don't surrender.
If conservatives really oppose the loss of American sovereignty, let them prove it. For starters, let them stop hiring illegal aliens. Let them stop outsourcing American jobs. Let them put their money where their mouth is.
Comment by Pat | August 24, 2006
Nationalism is largely a product of the enlightenment and all that followed it. I can hardly imagine a conservative like Klemens Von Metternich embracing nationalism, of all things. The nationalist revolutions of 1848 were progressive to the core, as was the systematic destruction of the multinational, polyglot empire of the Hapsburgs in the name of "National self-determination" after WWI. The medieval model of government was largely based on land ownership, oaths of loyalty, and personal relationships, not on "shared language and culture" or "national boundaries". Nation-states themselves are modern innovations, whose creation was generally spearheaded by progressives and leftists. Furthermore, nationalism in America usually overlooks the fact that this "nation" was smashed together by force, with the crushing of the CSA. Conservatives opposed Lincoln's nation-building efforts, just as they opposed those of Garibaldi in Italy. That's how nationalism is leftist.
As for fascism being leftist, I'm on much firmer ground, and fewer conservatives will disagree with me here. "National Socialism" was an outgrowth of garden-variety socialism- Mussolini, for example, was a socialist before he became a fascist. Even the cause of military dictator Oliver Cromwell can be read as a precursor to leftism and progressivism. This is why quasi-fascist leaders like Hugo Chavez are adored by leftists in America- because fascism is, at its core, leftist.
With all that made clearer, I wasn't suggesting that conservatives today are "hyper-nationalist and nothing else", I was suggesting that that was the way in which conservatism is headed. I also wasn't disagreeing with this article, but I was pointing out that most of the author's arguments revolved around threats to American sovereignity, even though there are many other (better) arguments that can be made against this plan.
I hope that clears things up.
Comment by Ted | August 24, 2006
Pat, you have my vote. It seems since the end of World War II, our elected leaders have been earnestly employed in dismantling the values and doling out the resources that are the birthright of every American. Often this treason takes the form of a free cash handout — several billion here another couple billion there.
At other times it involves trading American jobs for a supposed political favor or incentive, which rarely materializes. Remember that we weren't going to offer Most Favored Nation trade status to China until they made meaningful political reforms? Well they got their MFN status while barely changing a damned thing in their communist system. Slave labor, political prisoners, executions for organ harvesting, aiding and arming America's enemies — it all continues, business as usual.
So I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that the next step in this grand giveaway is America itself as a political and physical entity. We the People, are no longer a part of the debate or even a consideration. Our duty now is to look up and nod from time to time, like grazing cattle, and leave all the thinking to the elites.
Comment by R. B | August 25, 2006
Hi Ted,
Thanks for the addendum. That was helpful but unfortunately, I do not think I completely appreciate the point you are trying to make. It seems to me that you are arguing that the history and beginnings of what you define as nationalism negates the concept itself and that I would disagree with in any example. Regardless of how the idea was conceived- the idea should be judged on its own current merits. Second, whatever the reason for its conception "land ownership, oaths of loyalty, and personal relationships” it should not negate what function it serves now.
It is true I do not know much about this topic but I found it interesting that “Conservatives opposed Lincoln’s nation-building efforts.” I guess I don’t know how you are defining conservatives as Lincoln was republican and it was Southern liberals who did not appreciate Lincoln’s actions but this really depends on how you define conservative and I suppose one could argue semantics that conservative and republican (of that period) were mutually exclusive. This point can be quibbled with as you might define the conservative as the southerner who was opposed to a central federalized power, which would have the power to dictate via fiat how each state should operate. However, I do know that one of the central reasons for action was because European countries were attempting to get a foothold in the new world through the south, who could trade and survive quite well with out (and even at the expense) of the North. Lincoln’s actions were not just to free slaves but were to protect and safeguard the country and its national interests from European outsides who did not have the states best interests at heart and were rather try to divide and exploit the country.
On another point- sure I can take your point that fascism is a leftist concept. They tend to paint it up as something else but fundamentally, it is fascism. I guess its just semantics, as I don’t tend to view the present function of nationalism as analogous to fascism. I think they are and should be two separate ideas. Certainly, one can argue that at times the demarcation between them has been blurred and overlap but that to me does not make the case that one is equivalent to the other.
Comment by JJ | August 26, 2006
The "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" is nothing short of treason. Every hear of the Constitution?
Bush and all his neocon cronies are traitors to his country. (Not to say Clinton was any better. He also was a liberal internationalist traitor just like Bush.)
People need to rise up. Citizens arrests? Militias?
Comment by David | August 28, 2006
Pat,
I agree. I'm voting Constitution Party this November.
Comment by Tim | August 28, 2006