I coined "transnational progressivism" too

[Update: the Michael Ratner mentioned below is also trying to use the ICC "as a tool to restrain American military power" as described here and here.]

Several lefties are mad with glee over their discovery of errors in a National Review article ("Liberate the universities") about something called "transnational progressivism."

First, they say there's no such thing as a "transnational progressivism" movement. And, more importantly, they point out that the author mistakenly believes that Princeton University has a law school.

As I pointed out in the comments to the post linked above, some professors and others "[envisage] an international political monolith with which to replace America" as the article states. For an example, see the piece "Could U.N. use military force on U.S.?":

Could the U.N. use military force to prevent the United States and Britain from waging war on Iraq without a Security Council mandate?

Some anti-war groups are urging the world body to invoke a little-known convention that allows the General Assembly to step in when the Security Council is at an impasse in the face of a "threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression."

The willingness by the U.S. and Britain to go to war with Iraq without Security Council authorization is the kind of threat the U.N. had in mind when it passed Resolution 377 in 1950, said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (link), a human-rights group in New York City.

In a position paper, Ratner wrote that by invoking the resolution, called "Uniting for Peace," the "General Assembly can meet within 24 hours to consider such a matter, and can recommend collective measures to U.N. members including the use of armed forces to 'maintain or restore international peace and security.'"...

As far as the statement "Within such a regime the key political unit would not be the individual citizen who voluntarily associates with fellow citizens but the racial, ethnic, or gender group into which one is born," that should ring some bells. Multiculturalism, "corporate pluralism," etc.

Comments

Great! Now what am I supposed to do with my law degree from Princeton?

As many have already said, the war in Iraq will be an historical turning point in many ways. One way, we can hope, will be the clear division between those who ACT... and those who talk.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with talking. But some people seem determined to point out a need for action... and then go on talking. The nonsense quoted above by Lonewacko is a perfect example of this; they mistakenly believe that the UN could go to war against the United States. Perhaps they could, if the UN was an organization of action. But it isn't, and it never was... and those who insist on going through the UN are, in effect, insisting on talk instead of action. The war has made that plainly clear.

In other words: Michael Ratner's proposal sounds very reasonable, as reasonable as the mice who proposed to bell the cat... and as unlikely to actually happen. I wish him well in the fantasy world he seems to inhabit.

Daniel Schwartz
Medford, MA

Bring 'em on! We can get rid of the lot of them in one fell (and swell) swoop! Kinda the same reason I was hoping the war would last a few weeks longer, that way more of the terrori, er, 'guest-liberators' would make their way into Iraq and be squashed...