Dancing to the ism of the world.(Brief Article)

INTERNATIONALISM is the world's newest, sexiest "ism"--and, in some ways, is as sinister as the last big "ism", socialism. Like socialism, it's sold as the inevitable scientific and moral trajectory for enlightened people. Like socialism, it's a mix of folksy, harmless Eurovision songfest--think Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man", "in the jingle-jangle morning I'll come followin' you"--and a not-so-folksy European Union-type power grab by a collective big brother. Like socialism, it's a promise of a fairer world that is likely to result in a more oppressive one. Like socialism, its enemy is democracy.

If it all sounds a little dramatic, think about the exponential growth of international law in the last fifty years. We've gone from governing relations between countries to dictating relations between people. We've gone from asserting fundamental civil and political rights to allowing a merry band of cosmopolitan globalists, bureaucrats in Brussels and human rights activists to force-feed countries on a fashionable diet of newfangled economic, social and cultural rights--all united under the banner of international law.

Internationalism reached its high point a few weeks ago with the new International Criminal Court, with its power to prosecute and jail individuals over vaguely defined war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide whether or not the victim's country ratifies the treaty. Quite a leap for the globorulers.

Recently Paul Kelly said bodies like the UN and the ICC "are experiments, but history suggests, on balance, that they are for the betterment of mankind". That's the orthodoxy of internationalism. But the UN's recent history suggests that, as Neil Clark said in the Spectator, internationalism is a Trojan horse for the political agenda of the politically correct liberal elite who are unable to secure their agenda through democratic institutions.

Last year delegates to the UN Conference on Racism, Racial Intolerance, Xenophobia and/or Related Intolerance in Durban left with the resounding message that slavery is only slavery when carried out by the West. Never mind that African countries like Sudan and Mauritania still tolerate the ownership of black slaves. And racism is only racism when practised by Jews or whites.

That the Third World was born guileless and innocent only to be brutalised by the West is a popular slogan in many parts of the world. It's especially popular with the globalists in the West. And the Nobel Prize-winning UN has done little to correct it.

Look at the UN Human Rights Commission. It may have enjoyed a certain cachet. But, like Durban, too many activist groups cash in on the cachet to push their own pet causes. Fewer than half the UN member states are democracies. Many have not signed human rights treaties, yet that does not preclude them from sitting on the Human Rights Commission. In May, the USA was dumped from the commission despite having been a founding member in 1947. Instead, the overseeing of human rights abuses is left to one-party states such as China, Cuba, Pakistan and Libya.