> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >I don't believe in simple "sovereignty" or "self-determination"-- I've
> >repeatedly over the years stated as such. I am an internationalist and
a
> >democrat, small d, and the only role for local sovereignty is as a unit
of
> >democratic decision-making.
>
> I don't get this. If you accept local sovereignty, the South was
> right to resist federal desegregation orders. Then on what basis was
> it ok to send federal troops in - to enforce national law or by
> appeal to some higher moral law?
I didn't say I accept local soveriegnty in total, just that it doesn't even get a role in checks and balances without the democratic component.
And, um, the South was not a democracy-- any system that systemically disenfranchises from 30-50% of its population does not qualify. Voting rights was always the key fight in the South-- the tragedy of this nation was that the Supreme Court in 1875 gutted the national voting rights laws that protected the black vote in the South; once the Supreme Court did that, it made the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow a juggernaut that corrupted this nation for a century.
It is worth noting that the evolution of international interventions in the last decade have overwhelmingly focused on moving as quickly as possible to creating the conditions for a free local vote of the population, from Cambodia to Namibia to East Timor to Bosnia to Kosovo. Notably, the US has largely abdicated this goal in Afghanistan, ceding puppet power to the jury-rigged leadership it managed. This shows one of the reasons why a US-led intervention is far less desireable than a multilateral intervention in any scenario, since the UN has developed a moderately admirable track record in such democracy-building exercises.
-- Nathan Newman