How Our Thinking Has Become Paralyzed

More than sixty years ago,  the Detroit Free Press ran an editorial about world federalism, in which it asked the following rhetorical questions:

• Are you willing to exchange our Stars and Stripes for any other flag?

• Are you willing to have the United States of America lose its rights as an independent nation?

• Are you willing to have any man world ruler, for life, with unlimited powers?

• Are you willing to have unrestricted immigration from all countries?

• Are you willing to risk bringing the American standard of living down to the average of the rest of the world?

The above questions contain several popular misconceptions, which I explore in my essay, Overcoming Fear.  Dictatorship, for example, is not a threat in the United States. It should not be a threat in a world federation either.

Regardless of any misconceptions, these questions accurately reflected the state of public opinion when the editorial was written.  Since then, the assumptions behind them have been thoroughly absorbed into our thinking.   

We will see no editorial like this in today’s papers, because there is no longer any debate on the topic.  In the mainstream media, nationalism has won and world federalism has lost.  

Meanwhile, globalization continues, greatly accelerated by technology.  Our political institutions  remain stuck in a nineteenth century nationalist model, more and more incapable of dealing with the challenges of the modern world  This is a stubborn reality we will eventually  have to face.  Here are some questions, then,  for my fellow citizens:

• Are you willing to raise the flag of Planet Earth alongside the American Flag?

• Are you willing to pledge allegiance to the earth, as well as to your country?

• Are you willing to give other people the chance to enjoy the standard of living we have enjoyed for so many years?

• Are you willing to treat immigrants like people, instead of like criminals?

• Are you willing to finally get serious about global threats, like climate change, which could destroy our entire planet?

• Are you willing to take the steps necessary to eliminate the greatest scourge mankind has ever known:  war?

• Are you willing to remember your humanity, and forget everything else?