What’s the Value of National Sovereignty?

I ran across this comment in Spiegel Online International:

…when the EU ambassadors agreed to a common statement at the World Health Organization in Geneva, the British representative vetoed the move, saying the issue wasn’t a matter of foreign policy but of health policy — and therefore fell under national sovereignty.

The British have been using similar nit-picking arguments in other UN organizations….

This is the model followed by our home-grown Progressives, who also think national sovereignty is a nit-pick.

It’s part and parcel with the meddling of our government in other nations’ internal affairs: sovereignty be d***ed; they should listen to their betters.  Our State Department, for instance, presumes to instruct Israel on its internal legislative workings, decrying the alleged endangerment of democratic principles that must result from proposed legislation that would limit foreign funding of their domestic NGOs.

It’s also of a kind with the Progressives’ respect for the sovereignty of American citizens in our own country.  While there is legitimate argument over the efficacy and the legality of State-passed illegal immigration laws, for instance, these arguments are domestic matters.  Their progress through the American Federal Court system is a purely internal discussion that can be resolved only by American citizens among themselves and through their government representatives.  Yet the Obama administration has turned these domestic concerns over to foreign nations for resolution: Obama actively encourages Mexican, Argentinian, Brazilian, et al., intervention into the court cases currently in progress concerning Arizona’s and Georgia’s illegal immigration laws.

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