Just like only total seclusion will provide the environment in which an individual can exercise 100% of their personal freedoms, countries/nation-states must also find ways to ‘get along’ with its neighbours and the all the other ‘countries’ out there. Therefore, countries must develop rules: treaties, agreements, etc. to govern their interactions.
This is kind of like the matryoshka dolls!
Families have ‘rules’ which govern how individual members interact, villages/towns/cities have by-laws that govern how people and families in that municipality behave and interact, provinces/states have the next level of rules that govern how all the people in the municipalities that form that province/state behave and interact…. and so on, and so on…
Through this very process – through agreeing to rules how ‘communities’ at each ‘level’ interact with each other, we are necessarily building the governance framework of government at the ‘next higher level’. The treaties and agreements governments enter into become binding rules which their industries and citizens must abide by.
And THAT is where a very great danger to the ability to exercise our individual rights and freedoms is coming!
We have, to a better or worse degree, worked out rules about what rights we can exercise, and to what degree. This we have done within our borders, all the citizens agree (or, at least, respect) in the form of constitutions and the body of our national laws. Right?
But, our countries do not exist in seclusion. We need to trade and interact in all kinds of ways with ‘other’ countries.
To do that in as peaceful and amicable way as possible, we enter into international agreements about ‘things’. All kinds of things. But, the primary focus of most international treaties is ‘trade’.
When our legislators propose laws, we examine them publicly for all kinds of ‘things’ – including any infringements on the ability of us, the citizens, to exercise our freedoms. And so it should be. But, when countries enter into binding, international agreements with other countries, there is nowhere this level of scrutiny!
These agreements and treaties are negotiated by a limited number of representatives (all bureaucrats) from each side, usually in secret, giving in here to get an advantage there… And the aim of these treaties is usually one form of economic interaction or another: ‘freedoms’ are not usually even ‘on the radars’ of those doing the negotiating.
Please, do not misunderstand – I have nothing against international treaties and agreements in principle. They are necessary. All I am trying to do is highlight something many people do not consider very seriously: whenever our government signs a treaty or similar international agreement, its rules are just as binding on us as the laws our government passes, but do not undergo anything like the scrutiny…
A recent example relevant to Canadians is the EU-Canada Trade Agreement…
To make this work, some of our laws – and even attitudes – would have to change.
For example, our ideas about our ‘property rights’ might need a serious adjustment…
Right now, if we purchase a painting – or another other piece of art – most of us think that we own it. That we can hang it on our wall, store it in the attic or even use it as kindling… Or, perhaps, that if we wish, we can sell it.
That might be just one of the laws and attitudes we would have to change: according to a leaked chapter of the EU-Canada Trade Agreement now under negotiations, the EU is pushing for a royalty to be paid to the artists EVERY TIME their work is re-sold, FOR EVER!
This post is not about that particular trade agreement.
It’s about the fact that so many of the people who are valiantly and tirelessly fighting to preserve our freedoms are focusing only on ‘government policy’ and on the laws which our governments are passing. And that is important!
But, our rights and freedoms can be lost ‘through the back door’, so to speak, when our governments enter into binding international agreements which are very large ‘packaged deals’ which our countries may be forced to enter into in order to remain a member of the international community…
And THAT is something we should be thinking and talking about!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
December 22, 2009 at 14:10
Redefining first sale property rights in such a way will lead to more fraud and theft. Consider a painting “owned” by a department A in organization A. Department A “sells” this to department B within the same organization, and hypothetically due to the way bookkeeping is done, A marks it as a sale, and B as a purchase. Now, a cut goes to the painter. B “sells” it back to A, and another cut goes to the painter. Let the people in charge of purchasing in “A” and “B” be the painters, or friends with the painters who will get kickbacks for the sale, and you have a recipe for stealing money from the organization (gov’t, business, …) It is not just how something is supposed to work that is important, but also how it fails.
Peter
Xanthippa says:
Thank you, Peter!
It was when I was typing in a response to your comment that I killed the computer my son loaned me, because I had killed my own earlier…. It is only few minutes ago that I got back online!
I’ll need to do some little stuff to get myself all set up (and used to) my brand-spanking new tiny little computer – and I will be back!
December 24, 2009 at 14:16
Merry Christmas Xanth!
Xanthippa says:
Thank you! And, merry Christmas to you and your family!
December 25, 2009 at 03:21
Xanthippa:
You are exactly right about the stealthy danger to freedom posed by international treaties. But you write “treaties and agreements governments enter into become binding rules which their industries and citizens must abide by.”
Really? Wherever did you get that idea?
Since when does the government have the right to make binding agreements on behalf of private citizens? Can you show me one clause in the constitution that empowers the government to do that? I don’t recall ever signing over a power of attorney to them. Do you?
If you believe that governments have the right to make agreements between themselves which are binding on private citizens, then you have already forfeited your freedom! And getting citizens to believe that is real root of this stealth attack on freedom: the danger comes less from the content of the agreements than from tricking citizens into believing that any such agreements can ever be legitimate – whatever their content!
One entity can make a binding agreement on behalf of another if the first is the parent, guardian, or owner of the second. So which is it?
Are we wards of the state? Are we its chattel?
Or are we free?
Two governments can agree on how they will conduct themselves in dealing with each other and with each other’s citizens, and even this they can only do legitimately with the explicit approval of their own citizens. Beyond that, they have no rights whatsoever.
The extent of such treaties should be something like this: we won’t nuke you if you don’t nuke us, we won’t interfere when your citizens do business here if you don’t interfere when ours do business there, and if any of our citizens break laws in your country then you send them home, because it’s not your place to prosecute our citizens.
Period.
Anything much beyond that is simply not legitimate.
Xanthippa saya:
I WISH YOU WERE RIGHT!
Unfortunately, reality sucks!
Our governments are our legal representatives in international negotiations…
When they enter into a legally binding agreement with another country, it is implied that they represent all of their citizens. It is equally implied that the citizens will abide by the agreements entered into on their behalf by their legal representatives. At times, the citizens may get a chance to vote to accept or reject a specific treaty or such, or the elected officials may get to vote on it to ratify it (yes, ‘RATify’ it), but, since those doing the negotiating are already ‘legal representatives’ of ‘the citizens’, this is not always done.
We really, really need to understand this – and bring it up in any discussions of rights and freedoms.
December 26, 2009 at 21:00
Xanthippa:
Your wording is exactly right: “it is implied that they represent all of their citizens.”
Implied.
By the state.
Not explicitly agreed to by the people.
And how long has this implication been tacitly floating in the air? When did states (as distinct from despots and totalitarian regimes) start claiming that their agreements amongst themselves are binding upon their people?
I doubt whether you can find an example prior to the year 2000 or so.
But every time we let them get away with it, their claim gets stronger. If we don’t challenge their arrogant presumption, the implication will become legitimized de facto, if not de jure. That’s because a long standing – and, I think, very reasonable – principle of jurisprudence is that if you act as though you’ve made an agreement, then you have.
Therefore, every time the state claims to make an agreement that binds the people, and we must stand up en masse and correct them – swiftly, publicly and unequivocally – to make absolutely sure that everyone understands:
They do not speak for us!
To do otherwise is to sell ourselves into slavery. Cheap.
If we act as though we’re chattel, then we are.
Xanthippa says:
My dear CodeSlinger,
I wish things were that simple.
Our government is our legal representative. That is the whole point of of government… We elect them to codify the rules of behaviour we agree to abide ourselves when interacting with each other, and to represent us at supranational-level governments.
After all, the two core functions of a government is to provide functional governance/policing/judiciary within the borders of a country and to protect the borders of the country from external aggression. Entering into international agreements furthers that end – and therefore is a legitimate function of a nation-state’s government.
So, if a government agrees that it will, say, stop its citizens from firing rockets into a neighbour’s cities in exchange for, say, opening the common border to trade, it is that government’s duty to ensure that its citizens do not fire rockets into the neighbour’s cities: just making sure the government forces are not the ones doing the firing of the rockets is insufficient – all the citizens are included in the ‘deal’.
Another example: unless a state has completely socialized all trade (meaning that the government owns the means of production and outlets of commerce), it is not ‘the government’ who does the ‘trading’ when they enter into ‘trade agreements’. Yes, it is the governments who do the taxing of commerce at the border, that is true, but they are not actually doing the trading.
So, an international trade agreement does not govern the direct interaction between two governments. Rather, it governs how one government will treat the other government’s country’s citizens and businesses when they do trade with its people. In other words, the merchant does not have its government’s representative deal with the other government’s representative – he or she deals with that representative directly….so it is a ‘citizen/government’ interaction….your government is making a deal on how the relations between you and the other government will take place.
OK – I am getting lost in minutiae here…let me re-focus.
UN.
EU.
…and so on.
These are all supranational governments with a specific set of laws which supersede the laws of the nation-states who are members.
The UN pre-dates 2000 by, well a few decades, anyhow.
Its universal declaration of human rights and freedoms is binding on its member states.
And, remember Article 29 thereof: everything the Inquisition did would have been in perfect accordance with the UN universal declaration of human rights and freedoms! (I’ve ranted on this before, at great length…)
Or, consider the Treaty of Lisbon: it makes it illegal to prosecute pedophiles in the countries who are signatories, regardless of their own laws on that matter!
Or, going back to UN – think of the Law Of the Sea Treaty, which replaced the Freedom of the Seas….the first draft of which comes from the 1960 (yes, by a friend of Maurice Strong…). This treaty gives UN jurisdiction over development on land, within nation-states, which might impact the oceans…..and, since all land is on watershed which eventually flows into – and thus affects – seas and oceans…..do you see where this is going?
The precedent has already been in place for decades….
And, even if it were not – even if this were a new thing – HOW?!?!?
December 27, 2009 at 21:52
Xanthippa:
It’s fitting that you use the UN and the EU as examples to illustrate the idea that, as you put it,
Our government is our legal representative. That is the whole point of government… We elect them to codify the rules of behaviour we agree to abide ourselves when interacting with each other, and to represent us at supranational-level governments.
This idea is very recent and very poisonous.
It was introduced for the specific purpose of lending a semblance of legitimacy to these loathsome monstrosities, the UN and the EU. It has been cultivated by the cultural Marxists and propagated like a thought virus for the last fifty or sixty years, to make people forget the true purpose of government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness;
that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it …
— The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
So… when did the purpose of government change from securing inalienable rights to codifying rules of behaviour?
Answer: It never did; they just want you to think it did.
And the longer we put off calling their bluff, the tougher it’s going to get.
Xanthippa says:
The one is a means of achieving the other.
It is through codifying the voluntarily and democratically agreed upon rules of how we behave and interact – and then enforcing these rules – that our governments are to secure our inalienable rights and freedoms.
Perhaps I am revealing my deep naivite as well as significant ignorance here – and I am ready to admit that I lack formal education on this topic, but, how else – through what other ‘practical application’ methods – could a government perform its function?
December 28, 2009 at 21:49
Xanthippa:
Actually, formal education on this topic is the very last thing you want!
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
— Bertrand Russell
Formal, state-run education is one of the main vehicles propagating this nonsense about needing a government to “regulate” our behaviour. This whole headlong rush to replace morality with legality is completely wrong-headed:
Must a citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? … It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
— Henry David Thoreau
It is wrong-headed, that is, unless your intent is to enslave the people:
A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved.
— Benjamin Franklin
But of course, enslaving the people – not only the people of this or that country, but all the people of the whole world – is exactly what the globalists intend. And therefore their schools (and their media) ensure that men are not well informed, and teach that men have no inherent rights but only privileges granted by the state, and that men are so vile that only the force of law can mitigate their depredations. Sadly, after spending centuries creating the conditions which make these false teachings seem more believable, they are close to achieving their detestable goal.
They are close to making people forget that the purpose of a Bill of Rights is not to confer rights upon the people, but to impose limitations on their infringement by the state. They are close to making people forget that laws are but pale and imperfect caricatures of moral principles, and that the proper balance between rights and laws is very simple:
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
— Thomas Jefferson
And again:
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
— Thomas Jefferson
The tyrants of today are the global plutocratic oligopoly, and they are close to making people forget that the worst depredations of all are the ones carried out by the state, against its own people, under cover of corrupt laws, carefully crafted by the guilty to exculpate themselves and criminalize their victims.
This corrupting effect of the over-proliferation of laws has been know since antiquity:
Corruptisima republica plurimae leges.
[The more corrupt a republic, the more laws.]
— Tacitus
This is true of any nation, but all the more true of the world as a whole. When the government of a nation becomes corrupt, you can always go somewhere else. But when the government of the world becomes corrupt – and of you doubt that it will, just look at how corrupt the UN already is! – where can you go then?
Xanthippa says:
Yes, that IS the question: where CAN we go?
But, one thing I most vociferously disagree with: we must NEVER EVER permit any government to legislate morality. That way, Sharia and Inquisition lie!
The ‘law’ is the minimum intrusion into one’s liberties, necessary to ensure the liberties of all.
‘Morality” is a personal code of behaviour according to each person’s highest reasoning …and all that.
Whenever the laws attempt to reflect a particular ‘morality’, it becomes a weapon of oppression…
December 30, 2009 at 23:49
Xanthippa:
There is nowhere to go. We have to make a stand right here and now.
Regarding law and morality, I agree completely.
I wrote, “laws are but pale and imperfect caricatures of moral principles,” meaning that moral principles based on individual rights and personal conscience must always take precedence over the letter of any law.
Why, for example, is murder a crime? Because murder is morally wrong – not because some legal verbiage declares it to be wrong, nor even because we all agree that it is wrong, but because it violates the right to life and the golden rule.
Laws against murder attempt to legally codify this principle. But any such attempt is bound to fail, because there can be so many nuances operative in the context of the event. Perhaps the killing was accidental. Perhaps the killing resulted from defending someone against the person killed. Perhaps the person killed wanted to die. And so on. The potential extenuating circumstances are endless. No law can take them all into account ahead of time, and no two people will agree on exactly where the line should be drawn.
This is the reason we have judges and juries; the intent is that that they should apply human reason and compassion to the circumstances surrounding each individual case and do their best to ensure the primacy of moral rectitude over the letter of the law. However, (even without its corruption by modern legalistic tampering) this remedy is still far from perfect.
And therefore the least harm is done when the number of laws is as few as possible.
In my view, ten are already too many. I think that the wrongness of an act is proportional to the harm it causes, and to determine that harm, only two questions need to be asked:
1. What harm would result if someone did that to me?
2. What harm would result if everyone did it?
An entire legal system could be based on the moral principles encoded in those two questions, together with the idea that less is more when it comes to legislation.
But then there would be no room for police states, and no place for imams, and the global plutocratic oligopoly would be hard pressed to find rationalizations for its program of worldwide oppression and enslavement…