I'm not necessarily a supporter of world government at this time, and there are certainly many forms such a government might take I might be opposed to, but this does not necessarily rule out that I will always be opposed to it under all circumstances, forever and ever. Forever and ever is a long time, and the US government, for all its virtues, is not likely to survive intact for that long. Nor should it.

All of these dire predictions of the evils of world government arise from regional minorities afraid they will be abused by larger collective entities; not an unreasonable fear by any means! To use my analogy, that was the fundamental cause of our own civil war, but the Confederate paradigm was defeated in 1865. We've settled that in this country, we have a Union now, and it is not inconceivable that a century or two from now that argument will reassert itself on a continental or global basis.

Besides, world governments can take many forms, from very loose compacts which deal with trade treaties, commerce regulations, extradition treaties, and industrial standards (more or less what we have already) to a monolithic million-year Reich run by the Grand Kleagle of Eurasia. No one is going to agree to any system that tramples on their rights unless they are coerced.

If you are really that concerned about our sovereignty being absorbed by a political octopus determined to exploit us, I would suggest that the most likely villain is the corporate world itself. The nation-state is slowly dying, and it is the international corporation that is most likely to replace it. There is a lot of incentive for large companies to operate without the inconvenience of borders and boundaries (that is already a rapidly growing trend). I'm a lot more afraid of a "Rollerball" world than I am of an Oceania a la Orwell, because I can see it taking right shape now. At least, in Rollerball, the rival companies were headquartered in major cities. What we are seeing now is the rise of the dispersed multinational corporation that will see the nation state (and its democratic institutions) as an annoying inconvenience and a charming but unprofitable anachronism. The world government may not have a capital in this age of instant communications. It will be a distributed capitalist enterprise.

This is what the New World Order is all about, look at the names in Mr Jacob's post. Do they all sound like Bolsheviks to you? To me, it is the logical, final, even inevitable stage of capitalism.