Sermon for 12/30/2001: One World, One People John H. White

While the Gospel according to John starts out with the phrase, "In the beginning was the word," I am going to start more nearly at the beginning of man's written record. We get the idea of families and of tribes of people and maybe villages. Their area of concern was severely circumscribed. Probably it didn't extend more than a few tens of miles at most. What went on beyond that distance had little or no effect on the person or the family and hence elicited little concern. Sure, some tribes wandered and traveled many miles. But their concerns moved with them: conditions in their former habitat were no longer important. Their sphere of concern was limited by communication and transportation. Movement was largely foot travel, augmented sometimes with the feet of various beasts of burden.

By the thirtieth century B. C. some of the tribes had merged to form villages and cities and these had combined into states such as in Egypt and in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers area. Yet, in Greece, even in the first millennium B. C., there were only sovereign city states, each having domain only over the city and surrounding countryside. Greece, until the time of Alexander the Great, was not a single nation with one overall government.

Probably spurring the change from more primitive times had been the development of water travel. In the case of Egypt, it was travel up and down the Nile. The Greeks used vessels propelled by galley slaves and crude sails and by sailing almost always within sight of land to made the Mediterranean a prime means of communication and transportation. Land communication and transportation hadn't changed very much.

The Romans built a great empire based substantially on improved roads. The roads along with somewhat improved water transport kept the empire together. Eventually, the empire proved too far flung, stretched beyond the limits of timely communication, and gradually disintegrated starting at the edges.

When the Roman empire crumbled, most of Europe devolved into small, almost tribal kingdoms. There were few

cities. The few good roads appear to have mostly deteriorated. It took centuries for these small kingdoms to gradually merge into true nation states. While it did not directly affect the speed of communication, Gutenburg's invention of movable type had a tremendous effect in broad dissemination of news and thus likely the consolidation of nations. England, France, Spain and (I think) Russia were essentially true nations by the end of the sixteenth century. But communication and transportation hadn't progressed very much from that of Roman and even Greek times. Lagging far behind in the 1870s, the various principalities in Germany and Italy were united into single nations

The people of the world in the eighteenth century were still widely separated. Timely communication over long distances was not possible. Not too many people traveled more than a few miles from home. Most ordinary people had little idea of what lay over the mountains and certainly not what lay across the sea. Separated as they were, governments controlling fairly small areas were fully adequate to meet the needs of the people for safety, road building and the settlement of disputes. Things like welfare, religion and education were family, tribal or village matters

In the spring of 1776, while debate over American independence was raging throughout the colonies, John Adams made some proposals as to how the various soon to be independent state governments should be organized. As best I remember from McCullough's recent biography of Adams, these proposals were for a bicameral legislature, an independent executive and an independent judiciary. The proposals were circulated in all the states and ultimately largely followed.

But in 1777 the Congress, with Adams now in France, proposed Articles of Confederation for the new United States and these were adopted by the states. They provided for a congress but no real executive. Neither did the congress have tax power and the other powers held by a sovereign state. Rather the states were sovereign. It didn't work well though it was in use for some ten years. Massachusetts didn't call a convention to draft a state constitution until 1780. Three hundred delegates met. The delegates realized that they were far too many to do the actual drafting so they appointed a committee of thirty. The thirty realized they also were too many and appointed a subcommittee of three. Adams was one

of the three and also the foremost lawyer in Massachusetts. He was back in the state between assignments in Europe for the Congress. The other two delegates told Adams to write the constitution and he spent most of the summer on it. He wrote according to the principles he had outlined years earlier. Though Adams' draft was modified by the convention and has been much amended since its adoption, it has become the oldest written constitution still in use in the world.

In the fall of 1786 representatives of states surrounding Delaware Bay met to try to solve boundary, commercial and other disputes that had grown up. This meeting resulted in the calling of a constitutional convention for the United States the following year. As we all know, that convention produced the present constitution of the United States. It provides us with a bicameral legislature, a strong and independent executive and an independent judiciary. Unlike the Massachusetts Constitution where the Declaration of Rights is the first part of the constitution and the frame of government follows (I assume that, to Adams, this was the proper priority), the Bill of Rights was not included in the original but was added almost immediately afterward.

When the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, it took some five days of hard riding to get the news and text to Boston and probably a few more days before the news reached hill towns like Winchendon. (Actually the Winchendon town meeting had voted for independence on July 4th.) It was probably a couple months before King George learned about the Declaration. Such was the state of communication and transportation not only in the United States but throughout the world. It hadn't changed much

In the nineteenth century, the word shrunk. In communication, Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph. As soon as wires were strung, cities and towns at great distances had immediate communication. By shortly after the Civil War undersea cables had connected the continents. What happened in the United States was immediately known throughout Europe and also the other way around. Transportation improved almost as dramatically. With the railroad and the steamship, travel that had taken days or months now took hours or days. Timely communications, which are essential to effective sovereign states, now encompassed the entire world. Matters that had been of little interest to most people, in fact likely unknown, were now known and of interest. Stanley's reports of searching for Livingstone in darkest Africa were gobbled up in London. Ideas that had traveled very slowly up until our era now moved people immediately. People that had formerly lived only in their village became citizens of the world

Two developments at the very beginning the twentieth century shrunk the world even more: the airplane and radio. The first dramatically reduced transportation time. The later, far more than printing, allowed the dissemination of news and ideas to almost everyone in near no time at all. Whether we like or want to admit it, all the people of the world have, because of rapid communication and transportation, become one people.

The American constitution has stood the test of time. Not only has our country endured many wars, including a very uncivil Civil War, it has gone from an inconsequential upstart nation of around a million people to being the largest national economy in the world and the one acknowledged world superpower. Our system of government and our liberties work.

Yet our systems of government haven't kept up with the shrinkage of the world. It took until the end of the first world war for any kind of general international organization to form. True, the World Court was organized a few years earlier. The League of Nations failed largely because the isolationists in the United States didn't understand how much the world had shrunk and refused to participate. Without the United States, the League was doomed to failure. The Americans learned that lesson and not only helped with the formation of the United Nations (as they had with the League) but became, perhaps, the major influence in the United Nations. That organization has had a considerable influence for good over the last 55 years.

But let us compare the world to the United States. The United Nations is very like the United States was under the Articles of Confederation. The sovereign power vests with the member countries, the U N has little more than influence and has no money other that what its members give it. Timely communications, that necessary condition of forming an effective sovereign state has far outstripped our present sovereign nations and now encompasses the world. It is now time for a sovereign unit that reaches to the limit of timely communications

What I am proposing here, is that we desperately need a world government. It should be modeled on the successful example of both Massachusetts and the United States. We are one world, we need one government.

Such a world government must have the necessary powers to maintain itself. The first would be the power of taxation. Governments, as is the case with families, have the necessity of revenue. It must also have the means to carry out police powers. It must also be democratic. Churchill is reported to have said that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all other forms. That has been the verdict of modern world history. Only through democracy can the rights of the whole people be preserved.

We noted that statements of individual rights are essential components of both our state and national constitutions. So must it be with a world constitution. But here, the statement is already in place and has been for near a half century. It is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations. Unfortunately, it has too often been ignored. Individual nations have asserted their sovereign rights to control their internal affairs. While not the worst offender in this regard, the United States has from time to time refused to accord some citizens their full rights.

A world government would have its own judiciary. This is already partly in place: the World Court located at The Hague in the Netherlands. The differences would be first, that the authority of that court could not be limited by claims of national sovereignty: every nation would be required to accept its jurisdiction; second, there would be not just one court but a system of courts spread throughout the world; third each citizen would have direct access to the court in matters of admiralty law and international commerce; and fourth it would have criminal jurisdiction to enforce world laws over all citizens.

The legislative body of the world government would have power to impose such taxes (including taxes on individuals and businesses such as excise, income or value added taxes) as may be necessary to finance its operations. It would make necessary laws to regulate international commerce and relations between nations. A criminal code to detail and enforce the Declaration of Human Rights would be another of its responsibilities. It would establish programs to improve health, education and the economic condition of people throughout the world.

As part of the executive branch of that government there would be an international police force. While I foresee this force being mostly modeled on our civilian police forces, it would likely require a military style component to respond to threats that are beyond control by regular police forces. At the same time, the armed forces of individual nations would become unnecessary and would be immediately reduced and ultimately eliminated. The world forces would take over their duties. The money saving here would be immense.

To further illustrate my ideas of how such a world government would function, let us consider how that government would have reacted to recent problems. First, the one foremost in our minds: the 9-11 attack. This would have immediately been recognized as international terrorism, a criminal offense. The world police, using bases in every country including Afghanistan, would have undertaken to find and arrest those responsible. Innocent Afghanis would not have been disturbed except as they assisted the terrorists. The Taliban would have already been deposed for violations of human rights. There would have been no question of how and where the terrorists would have been tried when apprehended: it would have been in world courts. Whether or not a death penalty could be imposed would be determined by world law. We would not have the present situation of European countries refusing to extradite presumed terrorists to the United States because here they might face the death penalty, though there is none in the country where they were apprehended. Neither would there be the question of military tribunals of the United States that undermine our constitutional rights.

The educational deficiencies of people throughout the world would be urgently addressed since education is the key to every improvement of the human condition. The world government, through its health agency, would be waging an aggressive campaign against Aids in Africa and other parts of the world where it is rampant. Similarly, under the department of economic development, we would have numerous programs to eliminate poverty in the third world and even in the various poverty pockets in highly developed countries such as our own. Since little money is now needed for arms and munitions, there would be enough all these humanitarian activities.

Since the world government would enforce a high standard of human rights, national governments that abuse those rights would be deposed and their leaders prosecuted and imprisoned. I could assemble a substantial list here. Acts of genocide would be immediately suppressed by the world police. While true democratic national governments would be strongly encouraged, benevolent authoritarian regimes might be tolerated, particularly in nations with low literacy rates that could not yet manage freely elected governments.

I could go on but I am more than out of time. My point is that our world is half a century overdue for a single world government. Sure there are all kinds of impediments. The first is fear of change. Yet we have all seen tremendous changes in our lifetimes. Most have worked for the better. So also, will recognition that we are one world of one people and require one world government.