The conspiracy-minded might say it was part of a globalist plot, but I’m sure it was just a coincidence. The same day that the Senate passed GATT and put the United States in a World Trade Organization, I received a form letter from Walter Cronkite inviting me to contribute to the Campaign for Global Change, sponsored by the World Federalist Association.
We used to hear a lot from the World Federalists right after World War II, but they seemed to disappear from sight in those years when the United Nations became a forum for anti-American tirades. Walter Cronkite has long since identified himself as a liberal, but I didn’t know until this letter that the Longtime Father Figure of Nightly TV News was so committed to plunging America into world government.
Cronkite’s letter urges a “global call” for “dramatic changes” in the United Nations Charter to set up (1) “permanent UN peacekeeping forces” (that’s what George Orwell called “perpetual war for perpetual peace”), “a permanent International Criminal Court” (you can bet it won’t have any Bill of Rights guarantees), “a strong and well-funded Commission for Sustainable Development to protect the earth’s atmosphere and oceans” (a mechanism for Third World countries to steal U.S. wealth, resources and technology), and “a strong and well-funded High Commissioner of Human Rights” (that surely isn’t constitutional terminology).
All these changes are designed to be part of a “reinvigorated” United Nations that will be able “to forge genuine, enforceable international solutions.” The UN’s 50th Anniversary next spring is the date when all this is supposed to happen. These changes in our constitutional form of government might sound too way out for many Americans to respond positively. But don’t be too sure. Walter Cronkite identifies the liberal groups he confidently expects to rally to his cause: environmental organizations, “human rights” groups, foreign aid groups, and population control groups.
I wonder how many gullible people will mail donations into the coffers of the campaign for Global Change based on a lingering belief that Cronkite is telling us “the way it is.”
To entice donors to send dollars, Cronkite spells out a long list of pie-in-the-sky promises of what the Campaign for Global Change can accomplish. These world-class goals include wiping out ethnic cleansing, mass rape in Bosnia, environmental destruction, human rights abuses, and nuclear proliferation.
But that’s not all. Cronkite holds out the expectation that a reinvigorated UN will even solve our U.S. domestic drug problem. That’s a tall order! It’s hard to see how the UN could possibly solve our domestic drug problem. Or that we would want it to! The American people are unlikely to accept a foreign “peacekeeping force” invading our cities, even if it is for such a noble purpose and directed by a UN High Commissioner.
But those who want to straitjacket America in global organizations are advancing on many fronts, and they don’t seem to care that the American people don’t want to travel that road.
The GATT/World Trade Organization legislation passed by Congress on December 1 doesn’t set up an international military force with weapons, but it does tie us into an international economic organization where unelected, unaccountable WTO bureaucrats in Geneva will control our trade, our businesses, and our jobs. They won’t have a gun to our heads — just a lock on our paychecks.
Senator Bob Dole stated during the Senate debate that his office was receiving 2,000 phone calls per day against GATT/WTO and only two or three calls for it. Yet, he still voted for it.
Other Senators also received phone calls at the rate of a thousand to one against GATT, but still voted for it. Congress voted to make the United States a WTO member despite the fact that the only public opinion survey taken on the subject (Yankekovich) showed the American people overwhelmingly opposed to it.
Is that democracy in action? Is that the change the American people voted for on November 8? Or is it Big Government business as usual? It isn’t any coincidence that 80 percent of the lame ducks in Congress voted pro-GATT.
Dole’s much ballyhooed “compromise” that he worked out with Clinton is one of the biggest hoaxes ever put forth with a straight face. The net effect of his “compromise” is to force the United states to wait five years before we can exit the World Trade Organization, instead of the six months provided in the treaty.
Ten Senators who had pledged in writing in a July 15 letter to President Clinton to vote against the budget waiver on GATT broke their word and voted yes. If they had kept their word, the budget waiver would have failed and so would have our involvement in the World Trade Organization.
The day after the GATT/WTO vote, the Europeans started ganging up in a bloc and rounding up Third World allies to vote for their candidate for WTO Secretary General and against the U.S. candidate.
All Americans who believe in self-government should plan now to make getting out of the World Trade Organization a major issue in the 1996 campaign.
