"Exactly one day after writing what was to be my last political post ever, I had decided to shelf my quitting because Chalmers Johnson's Evil Empire article needs to be addressed. It turned up practically everywhere I read and actually said many things which needed to be said, but failed to address some key problems." 

        The world is not yet ready to rule itself. That is an admittedly arrogant statement by an admittedly arrogant person, myself. Yet it is the truth. There has not yet been strong enough institutions set up for global security nor adequate control over or support from populations for a global democracy or any other 'just' system of government founded upon the support of the people for such an international government to emerge. People are too unaware of global issues to recognize the need to give up local autonomy for international security, real security, not as in the US, 'security' as an excuse to remove the rights of people to oppose it.

        Yet they are intertwined. If people would not yet willingly embrace limits on what their 'sovereign' states can and cannot do, a 'democratic' world government at this point would have to be forced upon governments and over the opposition of their publics as much as supposedly and questionably 'democratic' systems have been forced upon other nations recently, at the point of a gun before or after 'regimen change', or under threat of economic sanctions.

        Ironically, there is little 'demos' now for democracy, real global democracy, in the West which claims to embrace (or even own) the concept of democracy, and certainly not in the monarchies or semi-dictatorships where it would create an upheaval and ouster of those who rule them presently. One only needs to look at the collapse of the European Union's Constitution, that white Europeans who share close cultural and economic ties and traditions of democracy cannot bear the idea of giving up state control, even for an overarching democratic system which would guarantee greater local autonomy, and even when a near unanimity of political parties in those countries endorse it. What chance would a more global effort or institution inclusive of far more diverse cultures and racial differences have today?

        But of course that is a ridiculous concept, that you can 'force' democracy upon the world, or on cultures that have a privileged position or would be reluctant not only to embrace change, but even to shun changes which they might even concede could be beneficial to them over the long run. And when refusal to embrace the idea of change creates an ever growing imbalance of dangerously rising potential of chaos, public support, though ideal, can become a luxury. So if a new and increasingly necessary system cannot be 'forced' nor sometimes put off to be considered, which way is left?

        Many could say, there is no need for a global system of government, nor better integration at a supra-national level. If there is an groundswell of popular public opinion on global integration at the moment, it is mostly negative in regards to the havoc that globalization has already made upon all cultures, rich and poor alike, becoming poorer and less empowered over their governments, economies, and their abilities to survive. What 'integration' has already been 'forced' on publics, in the benefit of mostly the few and wealthy, has killed off most any desire for any other integration's that could balance that, international governments or agreements which could reign in supra-national corporations and regulate comprehensively a global economy.

        And of course, there is no country of great wealth or power that would wish to create an international system which would regulate it more, or wish to make such an idea more attractive to their own publics, to which it would be a difficult to impossible sell to them in this current climate anyway. This creates a situation almost in which there is no way out should such a need for one be present, or even dire.

        No system of power would be willing to hand off its power to an international regulatory system of global security it could not control, nor could there be a public groundswell for pushing its government to do such things even if that is in their own, and its own, long term interests. What global integration there has been, elite based as it was and serving the most wealthy, which created a foul taste in the publics mind, has been done in an autocratic way because not only has the public been uniformed of the necessity for greater international integration, but when informed, would still balk at it.

        One could argue the elite based economic integration up until now has not been in their publics best interests so the publics would be right to cry foul at having been, or continuing to be, shut out of the process, or only given perfunctory oversight or approval long after the deals have been made and have become intractable. But that integration up until now, as economically unjust and sometimes sickening in its effects as it has been, are the strings upon which better and worse integration's to come will have to be based upon or somehow around. Good or bad, they are the first steps.

        One of the first modern 'democracies' after the middle ages was in Lithuania where nobles and princes got to elect a 'king'. It was hardly democratic in the modern sense of the term: the average person was shut out completely, had no rights or say in the matter, yet it was an improvement. Instead of warring with each other, those who ruled directly over the people, questionably legitimately and completely irregardless of their consent, nonetheless began to work out a system between themselves which limited the conflicts and saved the lives of many who would have died if the previous warlord system it replaced did not evolve as it did.

        As bad as the globalization of the world is proceeding, extremely unjust and unfair to the vast majority of the people of this planet, it is coalescing into a single system which has the potential to limit wars and other things which would destroy what could only be termed most people and most civilizations. With that centralization comes a lack of individual control, a tyranny to suppress those who would oppose it, yet if managed right, can break into more freedom as well as the greater likelihood or tendency to obliterate freedom.

        One can say you have no freedom if you are dead, so it could, by that argument, only be better than chaos. It also holds true that in such circumstances, only the dead are free if there is only a single structure which one cannot oppose, and that the greatest freedoms, and sometimes the only real advancements in freedom, are won in times of chaos and decentralized control.

        But as I have tried to impress before in other writings, decentralized control is becoming impossible without an overarching system to guarantee it. As much as the big powers of the security council, nations which have basically an indefensible lack of oversight through their veto powers, have used that power (do as we say and not as we do) to become the world's biggest arms dealers and by that, by that ability to dump off large amounts of weapons to whomever they choose and call lesser powers doing that criminals, think weapons improves control or stability, are soon to learn it is not something that will guarantee their dominance any longer. Weapons will shortly become too powerful, too cheap, and with too much war and too much conflict, democracies and governments pretending to be ones would collapse with civil wars and terrorism as bad as Iraq.

        There are always local groups who would commit terrorist acts at home. There has been overkill in hyping these threats as an excuse to take away freedoms at home in the US and the UK, and it has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet within 20 years, our own unbridled quests for creating the most devastating weapons will create a class of small arms lethal enough to turn cities into wastelands, and those driving that future now have complete control over our governments to an extent that it is unlikely to be turned, even when widely foreseen as almost inevitable.

        Constantly making more portable and cheaper and more powerful weapons will empower these fringe groups to be able to warrant the police state which will ironically keep creating better weapons to stay on top or ahead of them and continue the downward spiral into chaos within, and with that chaos, greater profits for the arms industries and their becoming more integral to the maintenance of whichever groups seek to hold onto power in such a climate, and more necessary.

        So if such a scenario seems possible or even likely, what is the way out? Only educating the world to embrace what it now finds the most distasteful paths, more globalized structures which will bring even greater risks of suppression and dictatorships at home in every country all over the world.

        If you look at the world as a whole, it is doing this already. Democratic rule as defined by peoples controls over their legislatures and their legislatures control over their executive leaderships have been in rapid decline for decades now. And this has set the stage for rising discontent which will force even greater centralization's of power and greater erosion of democracy, which will continue in name only.

        This centralization of power will either become global by choice of its governments regardless of the opinions of its peoples, because vacillation and self-interest of feeding their localized weapons and other industries in the most powerful countries will be overcome, or the failure of which will set off endless wars which will erode global cooperation completely. Even regional blocks of alliances may become unmanageable without a overarching global structure to keep them safe from chaotic shifts in weapons, biological, nuclear, and worse ones to come. Because there is little time to educate publics to the dangers, routes to survival and greater democracy may inevitably need to be forced upon the world.

        Yet that as I said, and most should intuitively know, that is a contradiction in terms. If you force something from above, it cannot be called'democratic'in any sense of the word. Add to that, in the best of times, any country or power attempting to force even what may at that time seem the only course of survival possible against the will of most people or most other countries, would be suspect at best. That the only power which had been recently able to do so, the United States, has suffered a completely warranted meltdown of trust to be able to bring it off, makes the situation that much more unmanageable.

        If you take that as a given, that the United States has frittered away its golden opportunity to put in place a global system in favor of its purported values, instead losing or wasting or lessening that opportunity for a power grab at resources, namely oil, to no longer be able to dictate the terms of how a global order might take shape, we all over the world may be left with only a series of only bad and worse choices. Because without a referee, even a bad one, debates may not hold sway or even take place.

        With US power in every measure, economic power, soft power in goodwill, and military power diminished through overreach on multiple wars and fronts it cannot afford, on the decline, there is less chance for any powerful nation to commit itself now to giving up any autonomy necessary for prohibiting aggressive actions in the future to enhance its economic, military, or political power when the sudden unpredictable changes to come now by our decline shortly might leave themselves on top to dictate the possible necessary structures and integration's to come either on their own terms, or on terms far more to their own benefit.

        If indeed, the so-called American Empire has peaked or is on the wane through the actions of one reckless administration hastening its decline faster than most would have thought possible only a half dozen years ago, it is as great a reason for Americans to grieve as the collapse of the Soviet Union was for Russians, not just in lost pride or in economic hardships, but of the loss of better controlling the ability to influence the debate on how the 'new world order' will take shape. Some hate that term, 'new world order' and rebel against it. Every 5 or 10 years there is a new world order! Every 50 or 100 years it is so completely changed that any previous or new order becomes almost unrecognizable and inapplicable to those that it proceeded or came after.

        As the dust settles and it becomes clearer even to those in the US that the US has now greatly lessened its ability to put its own stamp on the changes taking shape, this upcoming 5 or 10 or 20 years version of a 'new world order', they can only hope that their values (the ones that should more accurately be called their former values, so completely have they now been [trounced] upon by their own present government) of liberty, democracy, and human rights, and above all else, free speech and freedom of thought and expression, would even have a place at the table, never mind being put at the head of the table.

        I don't claim the US has been necessarily an effective champion of such values so much outside of its own mind, nor that it necessarily deserves to be called the best or most effective proponent of them even before this century's astonishing abandonment of them, but that those values integration into a global structure would have been to most of our past generations of Americans a measure of our greatest success and worthy of our most heaviest of losses, as well as a vindication or lessening of our greatest mistakes. We have lost that initiative. We have lost that right to claim that as our signature, and we are losing fast that ability to direct such a spin. Worst than anything, we have lost any leadership that would warrant linking such a progression to be traceable back to us. We have become the obstacle, not the cure.

        To this America must rededicate itself to, to creating such a future democratic order that codifies the values in practice that we still mouth in rote, yet have been as of late abandoning in droves. We must reaffirm that freedom of thought, of expression without fear of being labeled a terrorist or of recrimination, the rights of citizens to oppose governments, even our own, when they think they have erred, and one that curtails any rights only when in the most extreme cases imaginable, and never without debate and consent of those who lose or are asked to give up such rights. Such orders and world governments will come about one day, and if this dark present is any guide, they will come about over our objections and not by our examples, or with our aid.

        America has become like an old king, unwilling to pass on the kingdom to our heirs, forgetting that it was only given to us as a loan, was not and never to be ours to own. "They are not ready yet, too reckless to get any of our power, to yet take the throne." Yet if that is so, it is because we have shown no magnanimity toward ever giving any of it up, have not used that power to create enlightenment in those who will ultimately have to succeed us, but have spent it recklessly upon ourselves without watching the clock on how long that could last or go on.

        When we claimed we were giving some of our power up, portioning it out, it usually was really as a rich old man tries to manipulate those around them seeking to get what they prize, to use that to degrade them and make them subservient. We cannot fathom those who do not want what we have to offer and seek only to find their own way through life if it is contrary to our ways.

        We have lost the war of ideas and now use the most debase forms of control, money and weapons, to limit and close the debates early, but there was time when we valued the ideas more than the power. And there was a time when the love of liberty and justice in ourselves would have prevented us from taking it and denying it so readily and so constantly from others. And valuing the truth more than allowing and permitting the lies of telling ourselves that we are not doing so to them while we know, and it is so obvious to others, that we are robbing them of those freedoms and self-determination and self-rule free from our influence or control.

        We will inevitably lose the head of the table, the control of the debate, the hypothetical throne, if not to our ideological heirs of liberty and justice, then to the heirs we are begetting now of treachery, lies, deceit of the publics, making ignorant misinformed subjects cowering in fear to make ourselves seem larger or omnipotent, and who would torture innocents to get to the guilty, no matter how many to find how few.

        We have not done a good job, not done any job, to prepare the world for being one where we are not in control of whatever we wish to be in control of, yet if we were while we still have some degree of power, we might be able to justify what we have inherited, as all kings have, something won through previous generations manipulations, conquests, and unspeakable acts, yet trying to turn it into something noble and something worthy of being passed on, which those whom it touches would be held up by it, and not made to bow, to cower, nor to be afraid, but far more than we, and more even than we can realize, to be freer men and women.