I'm sure you're pissed about Slaughter but you're holding back because she's so damn sexy.

I saw her speak once and she's essentially a less-angry neo-con. She just calls it something like muscular liberalism. And looks like a goddess doing it.

Please remind her that it was muscular liberalism that the neo-cons relied upon to justify their exuberant imperialism.

Dennis Ross is an idiot of Ahmedinejadian proportions.

Insider gossip - this blog gets better and better! Can't wait to see what comes next!

How about: Anne-Marie Slaughter: Major Supersessionist Thinker[s] . . .

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Excerpt from:

The Enablers of Transnational Progressivism

Is the Nation-State Threatened?

By John Fonte

Paper delivered for US-UK New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit sponsored conference in Winchester, England September 28-29, 2006

During the last several years I have developed a theory of "transnational progressivism." I have argued that as an ideology, social movement, and alternative counter-regime, "transnational progressivism," represents a long-term existential threat to the liberal democratic nation-state.

Let me first provide a very brief and simple overview of transnational progressivism and then proceed with an expanded taxonomy of the entire global governance project. . . .

Political Philosopher, James Ceaser describes liberal democracy as a “compound” regime with two distinct constituent parts that developed during different historical periods: liberalism and democracy. Traditional liberalism means support for limited government, individual rights, private property, freedom of speech and association. Democracy denotes government by “consent of the governed” or some form of majority rule. A modern liberal democratic nation-state combines these two elements: a distinct “people” govern themselves, but popular government is limited by individual rights.

I have argued that transnational progressivism challenges both liberalism and democracy and offers an alternative world-view.

Post-Liberal. Instead of individual rights and equality, transnational progressives advocate ethnic, racial, and gender group rights. In place of equality for individuals, proportional equality for ascribed groups (or “diversity”) is favored. Free speech is to be circumscribed if it “offends” designated victim groups. This perspective could be called “post-liberal.”

Post-Democratic. Transnational progressives argue that the nation-state and national sovereignty are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the 21st century. New political forms are required beyond the control of national governments. Global governance would consist of networks of overlapping transnational institutions, courts, agreements, treaties, laws, regulations, and norms. Evolving definitions of international law and human rights would provide the philosophical basis for such a regime. Because it is not clear how this new global system would deal with the core democratic principles of consent of the governed, accountability, representation, popular majorities, and the like, this perspective could be called “post-democratic.” . . .

Expanded Taxonomy

In my expanded taxonomy transnational progressivism is one part of an overall global governance project that consists of four forces. Besides the transnational progressives, there are transnational pragmatists, regime super-sessionists, and extreme libertarians (who sometimes unwittingly advance political transnationalism). . . .

Regime Supersessionists (Harnessing and Transforming Gulliver)

Applying the controversial supersessionist concept from religion to political systems, global governance replaces (supersedes) the democratic nation-state as a higher form of political regime, a higher stage in the evolution of human politics. Regime supersessionists would say, the nation state (including the American political order, Britain’s parliamentary democracy) were progressive during their heyday, but are no longer adequate to address global problems; therefore, a new global political architecture (including new forms of sovereignty) is required.

For the regime supersessionists the nation-state continues to exist and (under the principle of subsidiarity) performs many useful functions, however, it is relegated to a subordinate status in a normative and instrumental hierarchy, inferior to “global governance.” In this view, like the superseded religion, the nation-state would continue to exist as something that is incomplete and inferior, just as state or provincial governments continue to exist in federal systems.

Among major supersessionist thinkers we should list Anne Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. In an attempt to answer critics who object to global governance by what the UN leadership describes as “global civil society” (or unelected NGOs, officials of international organizations, global corporate elites, private actors, etc.), in her A New Global Order, Slaughter proposed a world political system based on trans-governmental networks. She insists that "Global governance is not world government." Slaughter argues the world of “unitary states” as described by James Madison in Federalist 42 has been replaced by the new world of "disaggregated states". She writes:

“In US Constitutional law, for instance the Supreme Court and the President have often had recourse to James Madison’s famous pronouncement in the Federalist papers: ‘If we are to be one nation in any respect, it clearly ought to be in respect to other nations.’ ”

Nevertheless, Slaughter declares we should no longer be “handicapped by the conceptual lens of the unitary state,” as Madison and most international relations scholarship have traditional described it. Instead, Slaughter advocates the concept of the “disaggregated” state both horizontally (e.g., American judges, regulators, and legislators coordinating joint policies with their foreign counterparts) and vertically (nations ceding sovereignty to supra-national institutions in cases requiring global solutions to global problems). An example given of the latter is the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Slaughter argues that global government networks “can perform many of the functions of a world government--legislation, administration, and adjudication--without the form.” Therefore, a “world order out of horizontal and vertical networks could create a genuine global rule of law, without centralized global institutions, that could encourage, support, and constrain government officials of every type in every nation.”

The anticipated supersession of the democratic nation-state by transnationalism that Anne Marie Slaughter conveys indirectly with her verbal somersaults about "disaggregated states" and "horizontal-vertical networks," is put more bluntly by leading international law professor Peter Spiro, who writes as follows: “features of globalization may result in at least a partial subordination of the Constitution to international norms;" further, “federal constitutional law may come in the future to resemble the role of state constitutional law today—of significance, yes, but clearly of secondary importance in the broader norms system.” . . .

John Fonte is a senior fellow and director of Hudson's Center for American Common Culture.

October 4, 2006

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=4232

From:

The Hudson Institute

May 14, 2008

Global Governance vs. the Liberal Democratic Nation-State: What Is the Best Regime?

By John Fonte

"Who Governs

"In the coming years of the twenty-first century the ideology, institutions, and forces of "global governance" will directly challenge the legitimacy and authority of the liberal democratic nation-state and American constitutional sovereignty. What is this ideology, what are these institutions and forces, and how do they challenge liberal democracy and American sovereignty? To begin to examine these issues let us start with the primary questions of politics.

Who governs? To whom is political authority responsible? How are rulers chosen? How are rulers replaced? How is the power of rulers limited? How are laws made? How can bad laws be

changed? These are the perennial questions of politics. As Plato and Aristotle inquired: what is the "best regime"? . . .

" . . . But what of the governing American center-left? By the governing center-left I mean the views of policy makers who serve as political appointees in administrations, such as deputy secretaries of state and assistant secretaries of defense (figures like Strobe Talbott, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Harold Koh), as opposed to "theoretical left" academics, such as Martha Nussbaum at the University of Chicago.

Overall, the American governing center-left is intellectually prepared to deal with transnational governance conceptually and rhetorically. In essence, the governing left has internalized the global governance project as America's "leader-ship" mission. However, in promoting this "leader-ship role" the governing left has blurred the boundaries between our constitutional democratic order and post-constitutional supranational governance, while at the same time obfuscating the distinction in foreign policy between traditional American leadership within an inter-national system versus an American "leadership" that translates into acquiescence to a transnational system with its concomitant surrender of democratic sovereignty.

Strobe Talbott clarifies this mindset best. In a memo to Bill Clinton shortly before the 1992 election the future deputy Secretary of State wrote:

"Americans are all for having the Japanese and West Europeans pony up to pay for the Gulf War, but they are mighty chary about any arrangement that smacks of pooled national sovereignty or authority. The way to counter this resistance, of course, is to sell multilateralism as not just an economic imperative but as a means of preserving and enhancing American political leadership in the world, since the various multilateral outfits will be effective only if the US does lead them."[24]

The concept of "pooled" or "shared national sovereignty" is central to the thinking of the transnational elites who are promoting global governance. This is an idea we will be hearing about over and again in the decades to come. Talbott's endorsement of the principle of "shared sovereignty" suggests that his interpretation of "multilateralism" is, in effect, a means of fostering transnational authority.

Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University Anne-Marie Slaughter could be described as the "John Bolton of the left." She would in all likelihood be appointed to a top foreign policy post in a future left-of-center administration. Slaughter has envisioned a system of global governance based on "trans-governmental networks."

Slaughter argues that nation-states should cede a degree of sovereignty to transnational networks "horizontally" and supranational institutions "vertically." Horizontally, means, for example, that American judges would interact with foreign judges, quote each other's opinions, and develop joint legal doctrine (what she calls "trans-judicialism"). Vertically, she argues that nations should cede sovereign authority to supranational institutions in cases requiring global solutions to global problems, such as the International Criminal Court.[25] In this way, Slaughter maintains that global government networks "can perform many of the functions of a world government—legislation, administration, and adjudication—without the form," thereby, creating a genuine global rule of law.[26]

Harold Koh, the dean of Yale University Law School, served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor during the Clinton Administration. In a detailed article in the Stanford Law Review responding to the Bush foreign policy, Koh articulates the central viewpoint of the American governing left.[27]

Koh chastises the US for failing to "obey global norms."[28] America, Koh tells us, "promotes double standards" by refusing to ratify the International Criminal Court treaty; "claiming a Second Amendment exclusion from a proposed global ban on the illicit transfer of small arms and light weapons"; and "declining to implement the orders of the International Court of Justice with regard to the death penalty."[29] Indeed, Koh complains: "The World Court finally found that the United States had violated the Vienna Convention" (on the death penalty), but "American courts have essentially ignored" the ruling of the ICJ.[30]

Koh's proposed remedy to American exceptionalism is for "American lawyers, scholars and activists" to "trigger a transnational legal process," of "transnational interactions" that will "generate legal interpretations that can in turn be internalized into the domestic law of even resistant nation-states."[31] For example, Koh suggests that, "human rights advocates" should litigate "not just in domestic courts, but simultaneously before foreign and international arenas."[32] Moreover, they should encourage foreign governments (such as Mexico) and transnational NGOs to challenge the US on the death penalty and other human rights issues.

Supporters of the International Criminal Court should, Koh recommends, "provoke interactions between the United States government and the ICC" that might lead to the US becoming enmeshed in the ICC process (by, for example, having the US provide evidence in ICC trials). These interactions with the ICC would show cooperation with the tribunal and therefore "could be used to undermine" the official US "unsigning" of the treaty because it might "constitute a de-facto repudiation" of the "act of unsignature."[33]

Of course, the "transnational legal process," advocated by Koh (and others in the governing center-left) is a process outside of American constitutional democracy. The American people have a Constitution, judicial institutions, and a democratic political system. Transnational "interactions" (such as appealing to foreign courts) are not part of the institutional authority and accountability inherent in the meaning of the phrase: "We the People of the United States." Koh's "interactions" are something "outside" of the "People of the United States" and "beyond" the Constitution and our democratic process. Therefore, they could be characterized as extra-constitutional, post-constitutional, or post-democratic. In effect, they seek to achieve results that could not necessarily be achieved through the regular process of American democracy. This clearly raises the core "regime" questions of what constitutes legitimate political authority and who is responsible to whom in a democratic state." . . .

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Notes

[24] Strobe Talbott, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, ModernStates, and the Quest for a Global Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 439.

[25] Anne Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 12-35.

[26] Slaughter, A New World Order, p 4.

[27] Harold Hongju Koh, "On American Exceptionalism," Stanford Law Review, Volume 55, 2003, pp. 1480-1527.

[28] Ibid. pp. 1480-1487.

[29] Ibid. pp. 1485-1486

[30] Ibid. p. 1486.

[31] Ibid. p. 1502.

[32] Ibid. pp. 1509-1510.

[33] Ibid. pp. 1506-1509

This essay was prepared for the 2008 Bradley Symposium, "Encounter at 10: The Power of Ideas," to be held on June 4, 2008 at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. The symposium is co-sponsored by Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal and Encounter Books.

Encounter at 10: The Power of Ideas

The 2008 Bradley Symposium

June 4, 2008

Visit http://pcr.hudson.org for more information.

John Fonte is a senior fellow and director of Hudson's Center for American Common Culture.

©Copyright 2007 Hudson Institute. All Rights Reserved

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5599&pubType=HI_Reports