At the U.N. this week, President Donald Trump mounted one of the most coherent and timely defenses of U.S. sovereignty ever given.  Trump's previous inspiring and unexpected remarks about sovereignty were made in the Rose Garden, when he announced we were withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord.  He was thus withdrawing from the globalist premise inherent in that accord.  In June 2017, he said, "As president, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people.  The Paris Accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world."  How refreshing.

By inserting concerns about U.S. sovereignty, President Trump implied American exceptionalism, emphasized by Ronald Reagan in his famous election eve 1980 speech, where he quoted from John Winthrop's reference to creating a "city on a hill" that would be a beacon of Godly living for the entire world.  However, Trump has chosen to emphasize the term "sovereignty" because of its implications not mainly for culture or the providential founding of America by God, but for the institutional-constitutional-legal framework of our country.

The concern about our sovereignty is longstanding.  Henry Cabot Lodge in 1919 led the Republican Senate to reject the Treaty of Versailles because it would have allowed us to be members of the League of Nations.  Lodge had fourteen objections to the League of Nations, but his main concern was that we could be impressed into foreign wars without our following the constitutional requirements for declaring war.  The treaty died in the Senate, but the idea of U.S. participation in a world body lived on.

That idea was brought back to life by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at their Atlantic Conference meeting in August 1941 and implemented with the founding of the U.N. in San Francisco at the end of WWII.  The U.S. veto power in the U.N. Security Council was to allay fears of being drawn into an unwanted war, but the role of the U.S. in "peacekeeping" was still vague in many respects.  Issues like U.S. servicemen serving under non-American nationals who are officers continues to be a sticking point.

The issue of U.S. sovereignty remained a concern as multilateralism in economics picked up steam during the past 30 years.  The U.N. morphed gradually from international peacekeeping and cooperation to ameliorating some of the undue sufferings of the people in less developed countries to a globalist vision of world government touching every sphere of life.  The U.N. Declaration of Rights would define the new world order.  Its principles, while based in some respects on the U.S. Declaration of Independence or some ideas from our Constitution, are also at variance from those documents.  For example, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is replaced with "life, liberty, and security."  To this writer, these few words are a significant modification.

Our Senate continued to show concern about this internationalist trend in 2012.  At that time, the Senate rejected the U.N. Treaty on Disabilities, which fell five votes short of the number needed for two-thirds ratification, although eight Republicans voted for the treaty.  Heritage Action for America insisted at the time that the treaty "would erode the principles of American sovereignty and federalism."  Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) led the opposition on the basis that "the treaty could lead to the state, rather than parents, determining what was in the best interest of disabled children[.]"  

Since 2012, the U.N. has stepped up its game of moving toward global governance.  Under its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Government, the U.N. lists and waxes ecstatic about seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs).  Among the 17 SDGs are "Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure" and "Responsible Consumption and Production."  Looks good on paper, right?  But how will this development come about in the corrupt and inefficient Third World?  This writer remembers that noted liberal and Harvard economist Walt Rostow in the 1960s also waxed ecstatic about the Third World having its economic pump primed by the developed world until they reach the "take off stage" and begin to produce enough wealth to have sufficient cash surplus to generate their own economic growth without continuous infusion of foreign aid.  This theory, which was considered holy writ, has proved to be utterly mistaken, a bona fide mistake of the first order.

The 17 SDGs are in turn supplemented with 33 Program Themes that embrace "intellectual property"; "international financial systems"; and "education, culture, and science."  In the face of this monster arising out of the ocean of globalist aspirations, can there be any doubt that we need American exceptionalism and American sovereignty as a defense against the takeover aspirations of others?

The U.N. has morphed from an organization for greater world cooperation to a body strategizing for world governance and taking steps to implement that government.  Shockingly, too many Americans are unwittingly embracing those strategies.

President Trump at the U.N. stated upfront, "The U.S. won't tell you how to live, work, or worship.  We ask you to honor our sovereignty in return."  Here he presented a simple restatement of the Golden Rule as a principle of ethical engagement for the world community.  We are not trying to impress our values or goals on you; you should likewise respect and do the same for us."  He went on to explain that our engagement with the world is not to impose our values, but to protect ourselves and the world from economic tyranny and aggressions by bloodthirsty countries such as Iran.  In listing these points, he was explaining that our proactive stance in various areas of the world is not to impose U.S. values or culture on other parts of the world, but to use our position of wealth and military strength to protect ourselves and others who are vulnerable to predatory states.

He called this defense of sovereignty "principled realism."  This term is new.  It will, I believe, be used with increasing frequency.  It conveys our interest in being high-minded and ethical ("principled") in a world where self-interest is a reality, but where excessive self-interest in the form of brutal aggression, economically or militarily, is too often a reality.

Trump's realism was powerfully stated.  He castigated OPEC for ripping off the rest of the world (the USA has laws against cartels within our sovereign borders), which is especially egregious for the USA, since we are protecting many of those countries militarily.  Yes, make your own countries great again, but not by bullying and exploiting other countries.  He ended by asserting in a concise way deep truths that are not typically understood according to power-mad mindsets in our own country, let alone by the sinister hearts and minds of many in the body of the U.N.  "To unleash the potential of our people, sovereignty and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom succeeds.  We must protect sovereignty and independence above all.  When we do we will find new avenues for cooperation unfolding before us, new ways of peace making, new purpose, [and] new spirit flourishing[.]"