World Government is 55!

"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On this date, September 4th, since 1953, the founding year of our world citizen government, we have posted the above-quoted article 55 times either in press releases or "Letters to World Citizens." (See www.worldservice.org/ells.html.)
Given today's international headlines describing the leaders of the United States and Russia once again glaring at each other-over a tiny country, Georgia, fingers poised on upwards of 6,000 nuclear weapons apiece, many of them hair-triggered-this posting is the most important of any news item you, dear reader, can reflect on in our turbulent and potentially apocalyptic times.

Why?

First of all Nation States are political fictions - when we photograph our planet from space we see that these borderlines don't really exist; we (or our forefathers) have made them up. The leaders of these political fictions stay in power by protecting "us" against "them" in a condition of world anarchy. Thus the nation-states themselves perpetuate the condition of anarchy which breeds war:

"The real cause of wars has always been the same. They have occurred with a
mathematical regularity of a natural law at clearly determined moments as a result of clearly definable conditions:
1. Wars between groups of men forming social units always take place when these units - tribe, dynasties, churches,
cities, nations - exercise unrestricted sovereign power.
2. Wars between social units cease the moment sovereign power is transferred from them to a larger or higher unit. In
other words, wars always ceased when a higher unit established its own sovereignty, absorbing the sovereignty of the
conflicting smaller units."
(The Anatomy of Peace, Emery Reves, 1945)

Second, given the actual physical oneness of the world community, only a world government by definition can eliminate the anarchy between nations and divert us from our current path toward omnicidal war and environmental disaster.

No candidate for national public office, including the two who today in the current United States aspire to be president, can even mention "world security" as the essential component of their political platforms. For they are on the wrong power level. While the BOMB is virtually total in its destructive power, a national president's power and perception is, by definition, local, i.e. limited to its nation's "security."

And therein lies the danger for we've put in the hands of our political leaders absolute nuclear power, the very use of which is not only criminal in a legal sense but socio/politically, morally and humanly insane.

If we are to prevent humanity's demise, it is essential that we, the people of the planet, recognize our sovereignty on the global level thus acknowledging systems and institutions that not only reject the absolute power of national leaders like President Bush and Prime Minister Putin (or their successors) and all the other leaders of nuclear power states, but fulfill the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the 60th anniversary of which arrives December 10th. (Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." Art 28, UDHR)

The evolving citizenry of the World Government, in its 55 years of existence, by definition, transcends national boundaries. It represents both the whole community and the particular individual. Simply to declare oneself a "World Citizen" is to claim the world as one's immediate community to be recognized by world law and protected by its accepted legitimacy.

In that public sovereign declaration, the individual effectively "outranks" the national leaders. (Thomas Jefferson: "Every man possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will.")

In my last blog, I contrasted the Olympic games and one world principles with the presence of President Bush and Prime Minister Putin together in the Beijing "Bird's Nest" applauding and encouraging the trusting, while competitive, athletes.

Today, back in their furtive, fear-driven national bunkers, they eye each other through the deadly illusion of their respective nuclear gun sights.

While, ironically, the international Space Station continues silently circling the planet every 90 minutes at 17,000 mph, the human crew gazing at the earth in wonder and awe at its majesty and cosmic role being played out against the indifferent heavens for the past 4.5 billion years.

Will we humans ever wake up to the reality of our human situation in time to avoid a final holocaust? National soldiers are programmed to die for their particular country. How many of us are prepared to die that humanity survives? An intelligent species cannot organize its survival until and unless it first recognizes its fundamental unity. This is the message of all sages of the past. "One for all and all for one" is the prime formula for survival not to mention well-being and happiness.

But more relevant, do our children, all 2.4 billion of them, deserve to die before reaching maturity because of our own immaturity?

And so, despite skepticism, humiliation, doubt and daily fear of failure, we, lovers of humanity, carry on our sacred mission begun 55 years ago today.

The happiest birthday for me is to continue carrying the torch, ignited in 1948, which illuminated both the dangerous course we are still on, and the incredible potential we human beings have to build the world of our dreams, a peaceful and sustainable world governed of, by and for all on this, our home planet floating majestically in the starry sky.

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