On this July 4, as Americans celebrate the birth of the United States and the sacrifices of the founding generation to secure the blessings of liberty, U.S. independence is under threat like never before. The implications of the threat are enormous. As long as the United States retains its independence and the U.S. Constitution is preserved, the American people still possess the means to chart the nation’s destiny. But if the United States is submerged into an “interdependent world” under the control of international “authorities,” all of that — and much more — will be lost. Yet the threat is growing.

The United Nations already has its own courts, bureaucracies, “international law,” and even “peacekeeping” armies under its command in over a dozen nations, and on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the UN last year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took it a step further. Speaking at the “lighting ceremony” when the Empire State Building was lit up in “UN Blue” in commemoration of “UN Day” on October 24, he boasted that the UN was in fact the “Parliament of Humanity.” In the months after that, he referred on multiple occasions to Agenda 2030 — the UN plan for the planet — as a “Declaration of Interdependence.”

The theme of the UN’s 70th anniversary festivities was also about as blunt as could be: “Strong UN. Better World.” All over the world, hundreds of monuments — ranging from the Empire State Building to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro to the Great Wall of China — were lit up blue as part of the “turn the world UN Blue” campaign. The “Stronger UN. Better World.” slogan was unfurled on banners worldwide. So was the UN flag.

“There is only one flag that belongs to all of us,” Ban said in a UN Day 2015 message, referring to the blue UN flag. “The United Nations works for the entire human family of seven billion people, and cares for the earth, our one and only home,” he continued, claiming the UN brings hope, peace, security, and sustenance to the world. “The timeless values of the UN Charter must remain our guide. Our shared duty is to ‘unite our strength’ to serve ‘we the peoples.’”

A “Parliament for Humanity” that will unite humanity under a shared flag to serve “We The Peoples”: That is, in a nutshell, the globalist agenda, at least as promulgated for public consumption — a monopoly of power at the international level, supposedly for humanity’s own good.

Even the White House got involved with the 70th anniversary celebrations last year. Obama, a staunch UN proponent, issued a “presidential proclamation” urging all 50 governors and “officials of all other areas under the flag of the United States” to “observe United Nations Day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.” He also called on everyone to “summon the spirit of unity and cooperation at the heart of the United Nations Charter.”

A few years earlier, in a 2012 speech at the UN General Assembly, Obama told assembled dictators and representatives of government from around the world that we live in “an interdependent world” where “all of us have a stake in working towards greater opportunity and security for our citizens.” Conflicts, meanwhile, arise from “difficulties of reconciling tradition and faith with the diversity and interdependence of the modern world.”

Clearly, “interdependence” is a major theme of the Obama White House. It is also a key marketing slogan being used by the UN chief. Just a few months after first declaring the UN to be the “Parliament of Humanity,” Ban was at it again. “This General Assembly has truly become the Parliament for all people,” Ban declared on January 11, 2016, noting that presidents and prime ministers were increasingly being joined “by individual activists, business executives, superstar entertainers and major religious leaders” in speaking to the UN body.

The UN boss also pointed out that last September the UN General Assembly adopted the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as UN Agenda 2030. “This 21st century Declaration of Interdependence is our collective promise to deliver a life of dignity for all,” Ban explained. The “interdependence” theme is not new, of course, but it is now being pushed with increasing regularity.

The media mostly missed the UN chief’s rhetoric about building a stronger UN and even transforming the outfit, often ridiculed as the “dictators club” by critics, into what he called a “Parliament” for all mankind. But it was a big deal — no, a huge deal. Words have meaning. And you can be sure that words as important as those do not just slip out of the mouth of the UN boss, repeatedly, without a great deal of thought, preparation, and approval from the powers behind the curtain.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “parliament” as “the group of people who are responsible for making the laws in some kinds of government.” That definition, combined with Ban’s explosive claim, leads to a number of questions. Is the UN already a government? And if it is a government — it has basically all of the attributes of one, as we shall show — who are these people who imagine that they get to make “the laws” that would govern all of humanity? Who, if anyone, voted for this, or gave their consent to be ruled by this global government? What checks and balances are in place to prevent abuses? How does the UN system compare to the American system, and would Americans be better or worse off if they gave up American independence for UN interdependence? Let’s take a look.

The American System

The Founders of the United States were very clear on what the purpose of government is, and who was to make the laws in America. Laws governing domestic affairs were to be created, primarily, by state legislatures and local legislative bodies such as county commissions, city councils, and so on. All legislative powers at the federal level dealing with the few powers specified in the Constitution — foreign affairs and war, for example — were vested in a Congress composed of a House of Representatives to represent the people, and a Senate to represent the states.

But neither Congress nor the state legislatures were to be seen as supreme. As influential founding-era jurist Sir William Blackstone explained so eloquently, all human laws must necessarily be subject to the laws of man’s Creator to be valid. “This will of his Maker is called the law of nature,” Blackstone explained, adding that the law of nature was “of course” superior to any other. “No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force … from this original.”

The ideas outlined by Blackstone were all widely understood in America’s founding era. So was the purpose of government, as the Founders explained in the Declaration of Independence adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. “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,” reads the Declaration, pointing to a higher power while outlining timeless principles that were to serve as the foundation for the new nation then being birthed. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The purpose of government, then, is the protection of God-given rights.

Yet on its own, the historic document was just a piece of paper. After realizing that the government created under the Articles of Confederation was not adequate for the task, America’s Founders developed the U.S. Constitution. Essentially, the document was an effort to put the principles enshrined in the Declaration into practice — creating a national government that would help “We The People” to, among other goals, “establish Justice” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The governmental system established under the Constitution, while building on thousands of years of tradition and Western Civilization, was unique in many respects. One of its chief attributes was that it limited government by granting it certain powers. If there was no specific delegation of authority over some area, that power was retained by the states or the people, as was later explicitly stated in the 10th Amendment.

The Constitution also enshrined the separation of powers. First of all, it divided power vertically, leaving the sovereign states to stand as a bulwark against abuses of power from the federal government. Next, the Constitution divided power horizontally by dispersing it across three branches of government — judicial, legislative, and executive. The idea was that the God-given rights of the people would be best protected if power was divided. If one of the three federal branches abused its power, the others would rein it in. And if either the feds or the states abused their power, the other level of government would rein it in.

The UN System

Unlike the American system, which is based on the principle that rights come from God, the UN acknowledges no higher power than the UN itself.

The UN “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” which according to the UN is supreme over all the Earth, assumes that “rights” are bestowed by governments and treaties. The problem is that, if government is the originator of rights, then government may properly limit and abridge rights.

Consider Article 29 of the UN “human rights” declaration, which claims that “rights” can be limited “by law” under the guise of everything from “public order” to “the general welfare.” Separately, the same article claims that everyone has “duties to the community” and that “rights and freedoms” may “in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” Already, as this magazine documented in the January 6, 2015, article headlined “United Nations Exploits Pseudo-‘Human Rights’ to Attack U.S.,” the UN and its top officials have claimed that “human rights” and “international law” require that governments outlaw and punish certain speech, impose more gun control, ignore due-process protections, overturn state self-defense laws, eliminate constitutional limitations on federal power, prohibit spanking of children as a disciplinary tool, regulate private schools, provide more welfare and subsidized housing, and much, much more.

Further evidence of the UN’s view on “human rights” can be gleaned from the composition of its UN “Human Rights Council,” created 10 years ago after Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime was elected to chair the UN “Human Rights Commission.” Among the rights-violating regimes serving on the current UN “human rights” body are the communist and socialist autocracies oppressing Cuba, mainland China, Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Namibia, South Africa, Venezuela, and Vietnam. Plenty of Islamist dictatorships serve on the council, too, including, among others, those ruling Algeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and more. Also on the outfit are the rulers of Russia, Macedonia, Kyrgyzstan, Ivory Coast, Congo, Burundi, and more. Just a handful of governments in what could be properly considered truly “free” countries serve on the UN Council.

Then there is the membership of this global parliament that must be considered. Most of the UN’s member states are oppressive or worse. Many are outright dictatorships controlled by mass-murderers and genocidal maniacs. Even according to Freedom House, an establishment-minded organization that ranks governments based on its definition of freedom and democratic credentials, less than half of the world’s governments qualify as “free.” Yet these are the very same UN member states that are currently in the process of becoming the “Parliament of Humanity.” In the UN General Assembly, a vote by mass-murderers such as Raúl Castro, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, or Omar Bashir is worth the same as a vote by the U.S. government. Will those governments protect your God-given rights? Of course not, as history amply shows.

Another problem is the nearly clichéd truism by Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The UN does not have a U.S. Constitution limiting government to a few specified powers, nor does a 10th Amendment reserve all other powers to the member nations or people. If absolute power were concentrated in the hands of the UN, it is guaranteed to attract the most dangerous elements, with the most ruthless and cunning rising to the top.

Agenda 2030: Global Socialism

It should therefore deeply concern anyone who values freedom that there are already big plans to replace American independence with global interdependence.

At the center of the new order will be the UN, of course, and what’s known as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Agenda 2030, a sort of outline for global governance agreed to by the UN and Obama last September, along with virtually every national government on Earth. “Sustainable development” may sound like a good thing, but the UN uses this euphemism as a rationale for its vision of global totalitarianism.

As already noted, Secretary-General Ban has referred to Agenda 2030 as the “21st century Declaration of Interdependence.” So too has UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who said in January, “Let us make the 2030 Agenda a living and lasting Declaration of Interdependence for the 21st century.”

Just what is this Agenda 2030, or “Declaration of Interdependence,” which received so little coverage in the establishment media, but which purports to be the master plan that must guide all nations and every last person on the planet? In brief, it is a comprehensive plan to govern virtually every element of human existence, comprised of 17 “Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals” with 169 specific “targets.” The scheme dovetails nicely with the deeply controversial UN Agenda 21, even including much of the same rhetoric and agenda. But it’s even bigger than that. “This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity,” reads the preamble. “All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan.”

Among the many elements of the plan is an undisguised demand for national socialism — and even global socialism. Goal 10 calls on the UN, national governments, and every person on Earth to “reduce inequality within and among countries.” That, the agreement continues, will “only be possible if wealth is shared and income inequality is addressed.” But national socialism to “combat inequality” domestically is not enough, with the Agenda calling for international socialism to battle inequality even “among” countries.

Socialist rhetoric is found throughout the scheme. “By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources,” the document demands. “We commit to making fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services.” In short, what remains of free markets must go, with wealth redistribution and central technocratic planning of the economy to take its place.

Education is another key component of the global agenda, with an entire goal dedicated to ensuring that young people everywhere are indoctrinated into supporting the plan and its overseers. “By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity.” Euphemisms such as “sustainable lifestyles” (read: getting by with less), “gender equality” (read: the LGBT agenda), and “global citizenship” should telegraph to the discerning reader the UN’s interest in indoctrination in the name of education.

Of course, a plan as grandiose as Agenda 2030 won’t be cheap — it will all cost trillions of dollars. One official propagandist for the agenda, Thomson Reuters Foundation editor-in-chief Belinda Goldsmith, cited unnamed “experts” putting the price tag as high as $172.5 trillion. For perspective, that is more than 10 times more than the annual economic output of the United States. Western taxpayers will be the primary financiers of the scheme.

Step by Step

In many respects, the UN is already behaving as if it were a global government. In Agenda 2030, the UN claims that no person can be left out of the new system, and therefore, the population and territory of the entire globe are under its jurisdiction. In other words, everyone must be subject to UN rule, even if the specifics are administered, for now, by member states. Despite the fact that many governments have refused to ratify the relevant treaties, the UN has its own courts, such as the International Criminal Court, that purport to have jurisdiction over every person on the planet for vaguely defined crimes of “aggression” and more. The late Dr. Charles Rice, who served as professor at Notre Dame Law School, called the ICC “a monster” that essentially “repudiates the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and cancels the 4th of July.” He is right.

Despite these obvious concerns, the UN continues to accumulate and usurp more and more power. It has an environmental agency that purports to have global powers over the environment. It has an education agency that boasts of using schools to create “global citizens” with UN-approved values, attitudes, and beliefs. It has “peacekeeping” armies that currently occupy some 16 nations, often raping and brutalizing the most vulnerable civilians it is ostensibly sent to protect. It has a world health organization that purports to have awesome powers over humanity, including the ability to quarantine entire nations. It has an agricultural agency, an aviation agency, a terrorism agency, a postal agency, a drugs and crime agency, a world trade agency with “tribunals” that already overrule the U.S. Congress, an Internet agency led by a Chinese communist, and much, much more. The architecture of global government, then, is already in place.

The UN also already has its own means, albeit limited thus far, of raising revenues independently of member states. The UN World Intellectual Property Organization, for example, charges “fees” to inventors who seek protection for intellectual property. If globalists get their way, though, they have plans to radically expand the UN’s ability to raise its own funding. From a slew of proposed new global taxes to power-grabs such as the UN Law of the Sea Treaty that would grant the “dictators club” control over the resources of the world’s oceans and the revenue they generate, the outfit has major plans to extract wealth from humanity without member states acting as intermediaries.

And the International Monetary Fund, part of the “UN system,” has plans to become the would-be global government’s own central bank. If the agenda is not stopped, as has been documented many times in the pages of this magazine, the IMF would be to the UN what the banking cartel known as the Federal Reserve is to the U.S. federal government — an out-of-control currency-printing machine that funds the welfare-warfare state while trapping the people into a cycle of perpetually expanding debt.

American Collaboration

Of course, without collaboration and support from the United States and its leadership, the UN would be mostly a joke — a gaggle of dictators who get together to praise each other and make demands for more money. The notion that U.S. independence is outdated and that it is time for “global interdependence,” though, has existed among U.S. leaders for generations.

One such leader, John Foster Dulles, approvingly acknowledged that world governance was the goal behind the United Nations from the get-go. And he was in a position to know, having participated in the San Francisco Conference that led to the creation of the United Nations in 1945, before becoming U.S. secretary of state in the 1950s. “The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage,” he wrote in his book War or Peace. “Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.” Dulles also observed in his book, “I have never seen any proposal made for collective security with ‘teeth’ in it, or for ‘world government’ or for ‘world federation,’ which could not be carried out either by the United Nations or under the United Nations Charter.”

Since the 1940s, dozens of “declarations of interdependence” have been proposed by various groups and individuals. One of the most notable was written by liberal historian and Columbia University Professor Henry Steele Commager for the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia. Dated October 24, 1975 (UN Day), this undisguised call for global government was endorsed by well over 100 members of Congress. “When in the course of history the threat of extinction confronts mankind, it is necessary for the people of the United States to declare their interdependence with the people of all nations,” the declaration stated. “Two centuries ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation; now we must join with others to bring forth a new world order.”

The declaration includes this brazen call for UN empowerment: “A world without law is a world without order, and we call upon all nations to strengthen and to sustain the United Nations and its specialized agencies, and other institutions of world order, and to broaden the jurisdiction of the World Court, that these may preside over a reign of law.” Who would make this global law? The “Parliament of Humanity.”

Even as far back as 1962, a U.S. president made the case for a “Declaration of Interdependence” rather than independence — on July 4, America’s Independence Day, no less. That president was John F. Kennedy, whose administration actually took some of the boldest steps toward surrendering U.S. sovereignty to the UN. In an official 1961 State Department publication entitled Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World, the Kennedy administration outlined how the United States would disarm as the UN’s military forces were progressively strengthened to the point where no nation would be able to challenge the UN’s monopoly on force.

In his July 4 speech, Kennedy put it all out there. “I will say here and now, on this Day of Independence, that the United States will be ready for a Declaration of Interdependence, that we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership, a mutually beneficial partnership between the new union now emerging in Europe and the old American Union founded here 175 years ago,” he declared at Independence Hall. “For the Atlantic partnership of which I speak would not look inward only, preoccupied with its own welfare and advancement. It must look outward to cooperate with all nations in meeting their common concern. It would serve as a nucleus for the eventual union of all free men — those who are now free and those who are vowing that some day they will be free.” In other words, a global government.

In 1991, President George H. W. Bush, in his address to the American people announcing U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, said that “we have a real chance” at bringing about a “new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role [war-making powers] to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.’s founders.” And in 2002, President George W. Bush, in his address to the UN General Assembly, asked regarding UN resolutions relating to Iraq: “Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” He went on to say that “we want the resolutions of the world’s most important multilateral body to be enforced.”

Get US Out!

Americans must resist the siren calls for surrendering their right to self-government.

One organization, The John Birch Society, which publishes this magazine, has been working to “Get US out of the United Nations” for some 50 years. And it is still possible to do exactly that. In fact, right now, legislation sitting in the House Foreign Affairs Committee would end U.S. membership in and funding of the UN, and evict it from American soil. Dubbed the “American Sovereignty Restoration Act,” or H.R. 1205, the bill could set the globalist agenda back decades in one fell swoop. But Americans must act to make that happen.

“The reason that we declared and fought for our independence in 1776 was that we could no longer decide for ourselves as a people our economic future and we saw that we would never be allowed to do so again,” JBS CEO Art Thompson said. “Now our leaders are involving us in international schemes that will do the same thing our Founders fought against. Without independence, we will not only be hindered in our economic affairs, but military, environment, etc. It will become more harsh than the patriots who died for us ever imagined. Their sacrifice will mean nothing if we proceed down the road to internationalism.”

Fortunately for Americans, it is not too late to stop the agenda. In fact, the foundation of the plot is built on quicksand. The UN Agenda 2030, or the “Declaration of Interdependence,” as top UN officials call it, has not even been ratified by the U.S. Senate, as required under the Constitution. Obama does not plan on even asking for ratification, because he knows it will flop. Plus, it is all built on lies and false assumptions. With truth and organized action, activated and educated Americans can kill the agenda with relative ease, especially when compared with what the earliest American Patriots were prepared to sacrifice when they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and defied the most powerful empire then in existence.

If liberty and self-government are to survive, Americans must firmly resist the dangerous push for global government and expose the soothing rhetoric of “interdependence.” It can be done — and for the sake of our posterity, it must be.

This article, originally published under the title "Independence: Yesterday, Today — and Tomorrow?" is an example of the exclusive content that's available only by subscribing to our print magazine. Twice a month get in-depth features covering the political gamut: education, candidate profiles, immigration, healthcare, foreign policy, guns, etc. Digital as well as print options are available!

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