Dacia Nichol Taylor I believe we are at a juncture in political thought that has the potential to poison the future of our country. It can be summed up as follows: The idea of an international community and with it, international “citizenship,” is absurd. “You can’t be a citizen of an entity that doesn’t exist.” – John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations. He knew. And it will never exist. As long as we are Americans, it never can. Admittedly, growing up in a world where Captain Planet gave me the vision of world cooperation and peace, I saw that the motto “we are the world” was the common understanding of what we were all setting out to achieve. It was second nature. All things relating to “global good” were seen as just that – good. Never did it occur to me that this was one of the greatest threats to Americans, disguised in pretty wrapping paper. Ironically, there was another idea that I didn’t remember hearing about at all in relation to the United States: American sovereignty, emphasis on “American”. The right of an entity to have control over its own affairs is supposedly something to which all legal states are entitled. There are basic rules for the road that we all pretend to understand are necessary in order to hold on to “legitimate” power. Yet it is those countries that defy them in the most vile ways that are defended by international advocates in the name of sovereignty. Now riddle me this: Where then do you see advocates of American sovereignty decrying international institutions seeking to control us in the name of our sovereignty? You don’t. Unless of course you’re part of the evil cult of conservatism, and especially if your name is John Bolton. But you don’t count. I’ve come to the conclusion that 9/11, in all of its horrors and sadness, had a very important message that the liberals in this country have been fighting since the 1930s: Wake up America. The response in the aftermath of the attacks brought a wave of contraction from globalization. In its place, a new wave of nationalism set in, bringing to the forefront American interests, namely American security, and with it American sovereignty. As a nation united, we sought to defeat our enemies and protect our shores in a grandiose display of patriotism not seen since the end of World War II. Once the liberals splashed their collective faces with cold water (not the bottled kind of course, mind you), the drum beat toward dismantling the newfound solidarity began. This time they focused on a new word to which to give demonic definition: Unilateralism. Without having set the stage that portrayed the idea of international “citizenship” as a force for “global good,” their mission to craft unilateral action as an evil never would have succeeded. Liberals understand the idea of American memory, namely that it only lasts perhaps a decade or so. And even better still, that decade is reset with each new generation’s political awareness. See, while my parents may have lived through Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama, their judgments on the issues will only be based on their perceptions of the last two or three presidents and how they compare to the options in front of them. For example, although they lived through Reagan as active adults, they will weigh prospective leaders against their perceptions of Clinton and Bush because their memories are closer tied to more recent years – their Reaganism buried in recent disappointment. My generation, on the other hand, was born during Reagan, and while we became aware of the presence of political and international evil in 2001, our political maturity developed while George W. Bush was being slaughtered in the mainstream media. Clinton and the first Bush had enough of a focus on international approval to sway my parents toward the desire for international consensus, and my generation saw the portrayal of unilateral action as evil. Neither generation has a focus on American exceptionalism and sovereignty in the front of their minds, and the left has used this lack of awareness to manipulate what is seen as good and evil in mainstream thought. We all want peace. We all want to get along. International cooperation has been portrayed as the only way to achieve this, which is a soft ball of wax to mold into whatever agenda is sought. Please sign your name here, here and here, and we’ll all get along. If you don’t sign, you’re a war monger. And so went the fate of George W. Bush. He wouldn’t sign. He took the oath of office of Commander in Chief of the United States instead. Only in a world of liberal manipulation would the idea of self-preservation deserve to be weighed against the interests of anyone besides the entity seeking to preserve itself. Whether the means is unilateral, bilateral, trilateral or multilateral, American best interests should be the primary objective. Just because our neighbors do not see enough value in protecting their own interests does not mean that we follow suit. In a strange irony, as the guarantors of freedom in the world, our neighbors also have security in knowing that should they tumble into their own mess, we will always be there to save them from themselves. It is shameful that they would expect us to not act to protect our own interests when it is those very actions that extend to protecting their interests as well. Unilateralism be damned. Unless I need you to use it, of course. The evil of liberalism in our country has been underestimated, however, as no one in the world community truly expected the proud American people to ever sign their own death warrant. Then we elected Obama, and they all quickly figured out that they still couldn’t quite fill out their “big girl” panties on their own. Until threats such as communism and socialism are completely wiped from the planet, each American generation needs two things in order to carry the torch of our liberty forward: 1) A reminder of the importance of America in the world, and 2) A leader who will show us how important it is for us to be Americans and model our future after ourselves. Sometimes, that leader spans multiple generations, as it has with Ronald Reagan. Sometimes it dies before it can manifest into movement, and the light that it left behind is dimmed by liberal adversaries, as has been the case with character assaults we know so well. As Americans, our objective should always be the interest of America. We are American citizens, not world citizens. We are guarantors of freedom, and without our guarantee there can be no freedom. The liberal message has been one that takes away from the very core of American exceptionalism. They tell us our city doesn’t shine so bright. It’s just that our hill is so large everyone can see it. And further, since everyone’s view of the horizon is obstructed by our hill, we should let them come and tell us what buildings should and should not be built, how we should build them, and who we should let use them. But it’s our hill, and we have the right to exist as we see fit because had we not built the city on the hill, there would simply be a hill. It is our creation, and we have the right to protect it. We are not “citizens” of an international community. We are American citizens. And that should embody the purpose behind everything we do.

Read more:
Citizens of America vs. destructive internationalists