CAFTA Should Be Rejected Just Like the EU Constitution

Since democracy is the worldwide goal of the Bush Administration, we must face the stunning fact that the integration of different nationalities under a common European Union (EU) constitution was rejected by decisive democratic votes. President Bush can thank conservative leaders for saving him from the embarrassment of endorsing the EU constitution shortly before it was so soundly defeated in France and the Netherlands.

The EU constitution was defeated because Western Europeans don’t want to be politically or economically or socially integrated with the culture, economy, lifestyle, or history of Eastern Europe and Muslim countries. Western Europeans recognized in the proposed EU constitution a loss of national identity and freedom to a foreign bureaucracy, plus a redistribution of wealth from richer countries to poorer countries.

Will the political and business elites in America hear this message and stop trying to force CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) on America?

The Senate Republican Policy Committee appears to be tone deaf. Its just-released policy paper argues that CAFTA should be approved because its purpose is “integrating more closely with 34 hemispheric neighbors — thus furthering the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)” which the 2001 Quebec Declaration declared would bring about “hemispheric integration.”

Americans don’t want to be “integrated” with the poverty, corruption, socialism and communism of our hemispheric neighbors any more than the French want to be integrated with the Turks and Bulgarians.

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CAFTA may serve the economic interests of the globalists and the multinational corporations, but it makes no sense historically, constitutionally, or democratically. Americans will never sing God Bless the Western Hemisphere instead of God Bless America.