In their new book, Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order, Julian Ku and John Yoo, propose three devices through which the threat posed by international law can be moderated. These devices are: (1) eliminating self-execution of treaties, (2) recognizing the president’s ability to interpret international law, and (3) relying on state implementation of international law and agreements. Through each of these devices, as I see it, Ku and Yoo are trying to place one or more of our democratic institutions in a position to mitigate the anti-democratic intrusion of international law on our sovereignty.

Before briefly discussing these three devices, it seems worthwhile to ask whether, instead of mitigating the intrusion of international law, the U.S. should take a stand against the entire internationalist project. Ku and Yoo argue that this is unrealistic and probably not desirable. In their view, “globalization” is here to stay and it requires that, or at a minimum makes it prudent for, the U.S. to accrue the benefits of international cooperation. Accruing these benefits, the authors say, entails acknowledging the force of international law. The trick is to find ways to ensure that international law does not undermine American self-government. This is where their three devices come into play.

The non-self-execution of treaties doctrine means that treaties and other international agreements are not law within the United States unless or until some other domestic institution (usually Congress) decides to implement them. Although the Constitution makes treaties the law of the land, Ku and Yoo argue that our courts should not give domestic legal effect to treaties until Congress passes implementing legislation. Courts would presume that treaties are not self-executing.

I like the result. For one thing, it provides a role for the House of Representatives, which has none in the treaty ratification process. However, the authors’ proposal seems like cheating to me. If a treaty is the law of the land, shouldn’t it be enforced without more? Ku and Yoo seem to be adding another step not contemplated by the Constitution. The decision to “cut out” the House was made by the Framers in Philadelphia.

Perhaps a better way to obtain the benefit the authors are looking for is for the Senate, when ratifying a treaty, to stipulate that the treaty is not self-executing. Because treaty ratification requires a two-thirds vote, and because Congress is now well aware of how aggressive certain parties can be in using general treaty language to attack specific American practices, the Senate probably can be trusted to stipulate that particular treaties are not self-executing. No presumption should be required.

The second device proposed by the authors addresses the threat posed by “customary international law,” which is not contained in treaties and other agreements. This is a massive threat, in my opinion. Ku and Yoo propose that the president, not the courts, control the interpretation of international law. They argue that the Constitution does not recognize customary international rules as federal law unless the politically accountable branches actively incorporate them. In the absence of congressional codification, implementation of customary international law thus becomes “a policy choice,” and one best made by the president.

I agree with the authors here. Of course, the usefulness of this device in “taming” international law will depend to a significant degree on who the president is at any particular time.

The final device gives a “limited but important role” to the states in implementing international law on matters that impact areas of their traditional control. The authors describe this proposal as their most radical, and this assessment is correct. I find their approach troubling because I believe that we must act as one nation when it comes to our international dealings.

Ku and Yoo also have a chapter on the judicial practice of looking to foreign sources for guidance in interpretating our Constitution. They argue, and I agree, that to the extent foreign nations’ opinions help determine the outcomes of cases interpreting the Constitution, this practice conflicts with our constitutional structure and with the basic underpinnings of popular sovereignty.

To find out more, read the book. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject matter.

Is this another example of MSM bias? Of course it is. Yet one can distinguish Obama’s indiscretions from those of Romney and Bush. The two Republicans came from very wealthy backgrounds and had a clear path they were expected to follow. They can be viewed as spoiled rich kids, and in Bush’s case as someone who strayed a bit from the path.

Obama did not come from a wealthy background, nor was there a clear path for him to follow. His youth was filled with ambiguity – including, but not limited to, ambiguity about his race and his relationship to the United States (though not ambiguity about where he was born). In Obama’s words:

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. . . .I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents. . . .

Thus, it was natural for the young Obama to experiment as he searched for his identity and his own way into the world.

But this raises an obvious, though seldom asked set of questions: Did Obama resolve his identity issue? If so, when, and what was the resolution?

We know that as an adult, Obama continued to associate, and started with working, with the same kind of left-wing radicals he had gravitated towards as a youth. And when he found religion, it was in the form of the Black liberation theology of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Moreover, as late as March 2008, Obama said he could “no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. . .no more disown him than I can my white grandmother. . .”

Based on the record, the case can be made that Obama still has not resolved the fundamental identity issues that drove him to experiment with weird, obnoxious ideologies that are fundamentally hostile to America and what it has stood for. That’s scary.

The case can also be made, and has been by Stanley Kurtz, that Obama has resolved these issues in favor of a radicalism that, though less virulent than that of Rev. Wright, Frank Davis (the Communist who mentored Obama in Hawaii), and Bill Ayers, is ambivalent at best about America and what it has stood for. That’s very scary.

But I’m hard-pressed to see a plausible case that Obama has resolved his identity issues by fully discarding the radical belief systems to which he was drawn both as a teenager and a mature adult. If he has genuinely done so, when did he do it and what prompted the change? His candidacy for high political office likely would have prompted only steps to conceal his ideology. His ascension to the presidency would have imposed constraints on his ability to act, but not necessarily any change in his underlying beliefs.

It’s easy to outgrow a penchant for nasty pranks. It’s difficult, though not uncommon, to overcome alcohol abuse problems. It’s common to discard radical ideologies as one matures. Romney accomplished the first feat and Bush the second. Unfortunately, we know that Obama continued to be attracted to radical ideologies during the late 1980s and 1990s, and the evidence is lacking that the attraction has ended. Perhaps it is too deeply rooted in persistent issues of identity.

JOHN adds: I hope Paul won’t mind if I add a bit of personal sub-text. As Paul says, “It’s common to discard radical ideologies as one matures.” When Paul and I were college roommates, we were both radicals; it is fair to say that we were Communists. That may sound implausibly stupid now, but it is true. As we not only got older but experienced more of the world, our views changed–”evolved,” as Barack Obama might say. You can easily document that change. We became convinced that we were horribly misguided in our youth–for example, by opposing, on radical rather than prudential grounds, the Vietnam War–and tried hard to make amends. There is no mystery about our current views; we have expressed them countless times in many forums. I don’t think it has occurred to anyone to doubt our sincerity, whether they agree with our mature judgments or not. I agree with Paul that it is weird, at best, that there is apparently no documented process whereby Barack Obama “evolved” from an anti-American radical to a person who could possibly be fit for high office.

In order to either help or hurt the economy, Republicans would have to 1) enact policies that would do one or the other, or 2) block the Democrats from enacting policies that would do one or the other. The Republicans haven’t enacted anything since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, so the theory has to be that the GOP has blocked something that otherwise would have helped. In fact, however, the Democrats have been able to enact the major components of their economic plan, including the stimulus–perhaps the most dismal failure of any legislative initiative in American history–and Obamacare. Democrats have caused discretionary spending to skyrocket and have run up $5 trillion in new debt since President Obama took office. So they have pretty much had their way.

It is true that Republicans have been able to block a few Democratic proposals, like cap and trade and card check. But those proposals would have damaged the economy even further, and Democrats should be thankful to Republicans for stopping them. So how, exactly, could the GOP be “trying to sabotage the economy to hurt Obama?”

The AP story offers two possible answers. First, John Boehner has said that he will not agree to another increase in the debt limit unless the Democrats agree to spending cuts. But why would that hurt the economy? If more government spending were the path to prosperity, we would all be lighting cigars with $100 bills. I created this chart last summer to track federal spending against total payroll jobs. Another year of data is available since then, but the trend lines would be the same. Since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, federal spending has boomed. Has that spending been good for the economy? You be the judge:

It would be much more sensible for the AP to suggest that the Democrats are deliberately injuring the economy by increasing spending and running up more debt (not to mention deliberately driving the cost of energy higher).

The AP suggests a second reason why Republicans might be “trying to sabotage the economy.” This is the fact that under current law, after the first of the year taxes will jump and spending will be cut, or anyway won’t increase quite as fast:

Regardless of whether Schumer’s suspicions are right, there’s evidence that unceasing partisan gridlock and the prospect of big tax increases and spending cuts in January are causing some companies to postpone expansions. Even small economic slowdowns are bad news for Obama, who is seeking re-election amid high unemployment. …

The most obvious showdown will happen soon after the Nov. 6 election. Unless a lame-duck Congress can make deals, the economy will suffer a double whammy of large tax increases and spending cuts, starting Jan. 1. The tax increases would hit virtually every working American and the spending cuts would affect military and domestic programs.

But wait! Why is it the Republicans’ fault that businesses are spooked by the prospect of giant tax increases after January 1? It was the Democrat-controlled Congress that scheduled the current tax rates to expire in 2013, conveniently after the election. And it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who want some or all of those tax rates to increase. So it is mind-bendingly perverse to blame the job-destroying prospect of higher taxes on Republicans. The AP supplies this further explanation:

Economists say that what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke calls a “fiscal cliff” could possibly lead to another severe recession.

He is referring to the possibility that the federal government may not get control over its out-of-control spending and trillion-dollar-plus deficits. But again, whose fault is that? The most elementary starting point for getting our fiscal house in order, and thereby reassuring financial markets, is to enact a budget that charts a course out of our current death spiral. The Republican House has passed such a budget; the Democratic Senate refuses to do so, in violation of the law. In fact, the Democrats refuse to commit themselves to any budget, including their own President’s! No wonder the financial markets are spooked.

As Speaker Boehner points out, the Republican House has passed approximately 30 job-creation measures which Harry Reid refuses to allow the Senate to vote on. So if any party is being obstructionist, if any party is going out of its way to damage the economy, it is the Democrats.

The fact is that the Democrats have had their way in Washington for some years now. The results have been disastrous. What is really significant in the AP’s attempt to provide cover for the Democrats is the implicit admission that their policies have had disappointing results. If the Democrats’ years in power had been successful, they would be crowing about their results and claiming credit. Instead, they are trying, however unfairly, to spread the blame. That tells you all you need to know.

“What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.”

“The composition of the Greens seems to be the same as that of the population in general — mainly pieces of drifting wood, people who never think.”

“A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence.”

“Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.”

“The most central and irrational faith among people is the faith in technology and economical growth. Its priests believe until their death that material prosperity bring enjoyment and happiness – even though all the proofs in history have shown that only lack and attempt cause a life worth living, that the material prosperity doesn’t bring anything else than despair. These priests believe in technology still when they choke in their gas masks.”

“Alternative movements and groups are a welcome relief and a present for the society of economic growth.”

“We will have to…learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.”

“Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed.”

“If the present amount of Earths population is preserved and is reduced only by the means of birth control, then:

- Birthgiving must be licenced. To enhance population quality, genetically or socially unfit homes will be denied offspring, so that several birth licences can be allowed to families of quality.

- Energy production must be drastically reduced. Electricity is allowed only for the most necessary lighting and communications.

- Food: Hunting must be made more efficient. Human diet will include rats and invertebrate animals. Agriculture moves to small un-mechanized units. All human manure is used as fertilizer.

- Traffic is mostly done with bicycles and rowing boats. Private cars are confiscated. Long-distance travel is done with sparse mass transport. Trees will be planted on most roads.

- Foreign affairs: All mass immigration and most of import-export trade must stop. Cross-border travel is allowed only for small numbers of diplomats and correspondents.

- Business will mostly end. Manufacture is allowed only for well argumented needs. All major manufacturing capacity is state owned. Products will be durable and last for generations.

- Science and schooling: Education will concentrate on practical skills. All competition is rooted out. Technological research is reduced to extreme minimum. But every child will learn how to clean a fish in a way that only the big shiny bones are left over.”

He even includes approving links to the Unabomber Manifesto, but his link doesn’t work for some reason: darn that advanced technology anyway.  But I’ve saved the best for last:

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.

Now, your average environmentalist will dismiss Linkola as a nutcase, and perhaps he is.  However, you can find much the same sort of thinking from quite a few “respectable” people whom mainstream environmentalists never distance themselves from.  I wrote about this problem in the Claremont Review of Books a couple years ago, noting the anti-liberal and anti-democratic strain of thought near the heart of modern greenery:

This preference for soft despotism has become more concrete with the increasing panic over global warming in the past few years. Several environmental authors now argue openly that democracy itself is the obstacle and needs to be abandoned. A year ago a senior fellow emeritus at Britain’s Policy Studies Institute, Mayer Hillman, author of How We Can Save the Planet, told a reporter, “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it. This [rationing] has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.” (Hillman openly advocates resource rationing.) Another recent self-explanatory book is The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy by Australians David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith. Shearman argued recently that “[l]iberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the U.S.A., unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens…. There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties.”

Whom does Shearman admire as an example of environmental governance to be emulated? China, precisely because of its authoritarian government: “[T]he savvy Chinese rulers may be first out of the blocks to assuage greenhouse emissions and they will succeed by delivering orders…. We are going to have to look at how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions.” Separately, Shearman has written: “To retain an inhabitable earth we may have to compromise the eternal vicissitudes of democracy for an informed leadership that directs. There are countries that fall within this requirement and we should use them to initiate more active mitigation…. The People’s Republic of China may hold the key to innovative measures that can both arrest the expected surge in emissions from developing countries and provide developed nations with the means to alternative energy. China curbs individual freedom in favour of communal need. The State will implement those measures seen to be in the common good.”

Perhaps the film version will be called An Inconvenient Democracy.

Academic political theorists who take up what might be called “green constitutionalism” understand that Lockean liberalism has to be overturned and replaced. In The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty, Australian political scientist Robyn Eckersley offers up an approach that, despite being swathed in postmodern jargon, is readily transparent. The “ecocentric,” transnational “green state” Eckersley envisions is represented as an explicit alternative to “the classical liberal state, the indiscriminate growth-dependent welfare state, and the increasingly ascendant neoliberal competition state.” Achieving a post-liberal state requires rethinking the entire Enlightenment project: “By framing the problem as one of rescuing and reinterpreting the Enlightenment goals of autonomy and critique, it is possible to identify what might be called a mutually informing set of “liberal dogmas” that have for too long been the subject of unthinking faith rather than critical scrutiny by liberals. The most significant of these dogmas are a muscular individualism and an understanding of the self-interested rational actor as natural and eternal; a dualistic conception of humanity and nature that denies human dependency on the biological world and gives rise to the notion of human exceptionalism from, and instrumentalism and chauvinism toward, the natural world; the sanctity of private property rights; the notion that freedom can only be acquired through material plenitude; and overconfidence in the rational mastery of nature through further scientific and technological progress.”

Every traditional liberal or “progressive” understanding is up for grabs in this framework. This passage does not require much “parsing” to grasp its practical implications—the establishment of institutions and governing regimes that are not answerable to popular will, or that depend on transforming popular will in a specified direction. Eckersley makes this clear in a passage about the “social learning” function of “deliberative democracy,” which she describes as “the requirement that participants be open and flexible in their thinking, that they enter a public dialogue with a preparedness to have their preferences transformed through reasoned argument.” (Emphasis added.) In practice, of course, Eckersley’s “reasoned argument” would resemble nothing so much as the infamous “ideology struggle” sessions of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This outlook gives new meaning to the old cliché about rulers selecting the people, rather than vice versa.

Losers.  Actually, such people are worse than losers: they are aspiring tyrants.  Thanks goodness for the Second Amendment.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose “God damn America” sermon set off a firestorm during the 2008 campaign, agreed not to publish an account of the episode until after President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, according to an interview Wright conducted with the author of a new book on Obama. Wright said he made the decision at the urging of a friend and mentor, the prominent University of Chicago emeritus professor Martin Marty.

In the interview, Wright told Ed Klein, author of “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House”, that he keeps a cardboard box of documents and notes detailing his experiences beginning in March 2008, when the controversy over his sermons began. “It’s a painful box to look at,” Wright said.

Marty is both a former Lutheran pastor and professor emeritus of the University of Chicago Divinity School. I guess we can count his advice to Wright a little bit more of the divine intervention that has proved of such great assistance to Obama. Until Rev. Wright can tell the story after the election, we’ll have to keep our thinking outside the box. Lucianne directs attention to the fitting musical commentary on the situation, words by lyricist Sheldon Harnick (“There is nothing unorthodox/About a little tin box…”).