More SPP Deception

In my last post I introduced a new addition to the SPP.gov website: a "Myths and Facts" page that seeks to debunk all the "conspiracy theories" circulating on the internet.

In this post we'll consider another "myth" debunked by the SPP Ministry of Truth.

Myth: The SPP is a movement to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union and establish a common currency.
Fact: The cooperative efforts under the SPP, which can be found in detail at http://www.spp.gov/, seek to make the United States, Canada and Mexico open to legitimate trade and closed to terrorism and crime. It does not change our courts or legislative processes and respects the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The SPP in no way, shape or form considers the creation of a European Union-like structure or a common currency. The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers.

Let's look at the claim that the SPP "does not change our courts." This is deception. What the SPP does is set up "tribunals" that have the power to overrule U.S. Courts. This power already exists under NAFTA, and the power is strengthened under the SPP.

In April 2004, a NAFTA tribunal overruled U.S. courts in a dispute between a Canadian and an American firm. Chapter 11 of the agreement gives NAFTA courts power over U.S. Courts. Abner Mikva was a U.S. Congessman and also a federal appeals court judge, and is now a judge in a NAFTA court. Mikva commented on this provision, "If Congress had known that there was anything like this in NAFTA, they would never have voted for it." The attitude expressed by Mikva should awaken all of America's leaders to the sovereignty issue.

But it won't. Many "leaders" will simply go along with NAFTA courts. When the California Legislature passed a bill last year to help the state dispose of millions of scrap tires by recycling them into asphalt for road construction, Mexican rubber producers claimed this was a violation of NAFTA. Gov. Schwarzenegger, citing the supposed supremacy of NAFTA, vetoed the bill.

The government seeks to deceive us. It cannot be trusted.

Some people will criticize me for saying this. But John Adams wrote in 1772:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government
ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the
public liberty."

Should libertarians have more confidence in their government? Thomas Jefferson, 1799:

Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.… In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

James Madison warned the people of Virginia (1799):

the nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will
sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.

Madison added in Federalist No. 55,

[T]here is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of
circumspection and distrust. . . .

Trusting government, having "confidence in government," is un-American. Having trust in the SPP-created North American Union and its organs of disinformation is suicidal.