We are a union of states that the Civil War transformed into a nation that then became a de facto world government. This triangle with the angles union, nation, world leader should give us Americans a triple identity. If we try to be only the citizens of a nation, we betray the Constitution which has not bestowed upon the federal government enough powers to make it the head of a nation. We neither can think of ourselves as being only citizens of one of our 50 states without threatening our loyalty to the federal government which is the unifying power of our economic, judicial and political systems. Since the Second World War our government in Washington has been manipulating foreign states for its own interests and also for the good goals of all of humanity. We are morally obligated to identify ourselves at least in part with the upsurge of our central government towards the global unification of all the peoples of the world. We believe ourselves a nation like other nations at our economic and moral peril as long as our central government continues galloping all over the globe chasing a goal of universal worldwide peace and unity for all the peoples of the world.
Our government recognizes no national frontiers of foreign states as beyond its reach. Since it does not act only as a nation, we should base our patriotism on our total and absolute loyalty to the federal government. That is enough. Since we recognize Washington’s laws as superior in their place to state laws, we should regard it as the leader of a nation only in a very limited sense. Since Washington is already a de facto world government, we should think of our loyalty to Washington also as loyalty to its worldwide goals. It is part of the fundamental character of our political identity as Americans that we have been continually admitting new states to our union since its foundation in 1790, in all 37. The Constitution that rules state and federal actions asserts in article IV section 3 that Congress has the power, an unlimited power, to admit new states. Our political identity must be triple to be true. The United States with characteristics of both a union of states and a nation and with a dominant role in the world can never fulfill itself except by admitting new states from all over the world and by transforming itself to a united states of the world. Only if we Americans act in harmony at the same time with the three elements of our political identity - state,national and international - can we create our true good and the world’s true good.
Daniel McNeill
Daniel McNeill