World Unity 3

Today in an interview on French television, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the founder of the Left Party (le parti de Gauche) said that France was governed by a presidential monarchy (une monarchie presidentielle). He suggests what we believe, that old-fashioned democracies in nation-states like France don’t work for most citizens and don’t work at all for those at the bottom. A postmodern state must govern  from the top down but its citizens must have enough influence from the bottom up to cancel laws that are unjust or that violate their unalienable rights. A mechanism that the American system uses to broaden democracy is judicial review. Rather than only protesting against unjust laws in the streets, Americans also challenge them in courts. Our Constitution of 1789 allows us to appeal beyond the power of all our governments to state and federal courts who can rule any law invalid guided by universal principles of justice embodied not only in the words of Constitution but also in several amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees to all citizens in any state freedom of speech. Neither the Federal Government nor any state can make any law or take any action that prevents the exercise of this freedom. Democracy at all levels in all our many governments is compulsory and all the laws of all our governments are made by officials ruled by the dictatorship of the higher universal law that all humans possess unalienable rights. This type of top-down and bottom-up democracy can not exist in nation-states because their absolute sovereignty makes them too top-heavy to let their power sift down to those powerless at the bottom. Don’t think however that we Americans have never had presidents who acted like monarchs. It has just been more difficult than in France because our central government is not fully sovereign and the government of France is.
Daniel McNeill
The United States of the World, The Theater of the Impossible, The End of All Beginnings, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:amazon.com/author/graceisall