The UN, the EU, and America
by John F. McManus
President, The John Birch Society

I don't believe a full appreciation of the danger inherent in the United Nations can be had without some history of the determination of a powerful group to establish their rule over mankind. I say this because the United Nations is the culmination of more than a century of intrigue that involves the willingness of conspirators to work for the destruction of their own nations. No one would do such a thing without a sinister goal in mind. And that goal, as history has shown is unimpeded and tyrannical world rule.

While I could reach back further into history, let me begin in the 1870s with Oxford University Professor John Ruskin and his star pupil, Cecil Rhodes. Ruskin taught his elite students that they should be the ultimate leaders of mankind, and that the entire world would benefit if they could be its rulers. No one absorbed and acted on Ruskin's message more than Rhodes. After he graduated from Oxford, and with considerable help from the Rothschild banking empire in Germany, he became one of the world's wealthiest men. He used his ruthlessly acquired wealth to gain control of several governments and to establish secret organizations whose goal was world rule. As noted in Professor Carroll Quigley's ponderous and complimentary report of Rhodes and his confreres, their goal was simply "to bring all the habitable portions of the world under their control." (Tragedy and Hope, Quigley, page 131)

By 1891 in England, Rhodes formed the highly secretive inner circle of his conspiracy with Alfred (Lord) Milner and others. Although he died in 1902, his great wealth was used by those he had organized to continue his grandiose plan and, by 1913, an outer circle of the still secret cabal was formed. It was called the Round Table organization.

The overall goal of the Round Table groups was, according to Carroll Quigley, "nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole." Secrecy was essential. And the use of war was looked to as a way to hasten the realization of their plans.

In America, a parallel Round Table group with the identical goal was established. Its members included leaders of the Carnegie Endowment and several other wealthy U.S.-based foundations. In the early 1950s, a U.S. Congress investigating committee (led by Representative Carroll Reece of Tennessee) discovered details of what the Carnegie Endowment had been planning as far back as 40 years earlier. For instance, the Carnegie Endowment's own documents showed that its leaders, in 1911, concluded that there was no better way known to man to alter the life of an entire people than to get them into war. And once they arrived at that conclusion, these conspirators sought ways to involve America in a war. As we know, they succeeded when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917. After the U.S. entered that conflict, the officials at the Carnegie Endowment congratulated each other and even sent a telegram to President Wilson urging him not to end it too speedily.

One of the key incidents that led to U.S. entry into World War I was the sinking of the British passenger liner Lusitania in 1915. There were 785 causalities, including 127 Americans. Fifty years after the Lusitania went to the bottom, British authorities opened their files about the tragedy and British journalist Colin Simpson produced his remarkable 1972 book, The Lusitania. It showed that the ship was actually an armed cruiser of the British Navy carrying a huge store of military weaponry, something the British authorities denied at the time. The vessel, they insisted, was merely a passenger ship.

Also, Simpson showed that the German government had warned Britain and America that the ship was fair game during war because they knew it carried munitions. The ship was then deliberately sent into an area where German submarines were known to be patrolling. And the escort vessel supposed to guide the Lusitania to safety was suddenly and without explanation recalled. Lord Mersey, the head of the British inquiry group formed soon after the ship went to the bottom, stated privately, "It was a damned dirty business."

Outrage over "the Lusitania incident" led the American people to accept getting into World War I. And before the war had ended, President Wilson and his mysterious but extremely powerful advisor, Edward Mandell House, were calling for a League of Nations, the first try at world government. House had authored a book in 1912 entitled Philip Dru: Administrator in which he called for world government, an income tax, and a central bank. He persuaded President Wilson to advocate everything he wanted.

In his book, House even blatantly advocated abolishing the U.S. Constitution. His book contained his desire to see in the United States "Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx." Actually the most powerful man in our nation as a result of his strange but dominant influence over President Wilson, House has been labeled by some of my colleagues, and quite accurately I believe, as the arch-conspirator of the 20th Century.

The drive for world government had begun. Let me provide a small indication of the continuity of this conspiratorial drive against my nation. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt sought and won the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. He had spent many months and much energy offering a very conservative agenda that attracted a huge following. But when the Chicago convention at which he was nominated ended, he traveled immediately to Massachusetts to visit an old man in semi-retirement. That man was Edward Mandell House. Roosevelt was obviously a willing participant in the conspiracy even before he took office. Once in office, he completely reversed his campaign oratory and began a socialist revolution and a drive for world government.

But I should return to the World War I period. Soon after the war ended in 1918, the United States Senate considered but rejected America's entry into the League of Nations. Word of this setback reached Edward Mandell House and his team of likeminded advocates of world government in Paris where they were constructing the Versailles Treaty. Disappointed but not defeated by the Senate's action, the globalist-promoting Americans promptly sat down with British counterparts and committed to formally establishing organizations to fulfill the Rhodes-Milner designs.

The British formed the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the Americans formed the Council on Foreign Relations. The purpose of these organizations, and the many similar Institutes formed in British Commonwealth nations and elsewhere, has always been to have a world government created and controlled by the men who created them. The descendants of these conspirators within the RIIA and CFR would carry on the "great Work."

In my country, the Council on Foreign Relations attracted men of power and influence. Its influential journal, Foreign Affairs, wasted no time in stating that the organization's goal was "world government." In 1923, House himself called for "an association of nations" in an article he wrote for the CFR journal. Funding for the CFR began to arrive from Rockefeller-controlled foundations, the Carnegie institutions, and other internationalist groups and individuals. By 1939, a group from the CFR volunteered to aid the U.S. State Department. Its offer was accepted and the CFR gained control and has kept control of America's foreign policy for the past 60 years. The agenda produced as a result of this takeover has been characterized quite accurately as "America Last" and "World Government First."

One of the goals of these world planners was to have the United States enter another war. Much has been discovered about the behind-the-scenes plotting amongst America's leaders that led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Time doesn't permit more than a mention of this incredible betrayal of American lives and naval vessels. But the incident did lead the U.S. Congress to declare war against Japan. And three days later, Germany (an ally of Japan by treaty) declared war on the United States. Those who wanted war because it always leads to more government (and moral decline) would use this war to establish not more government but world government.

Several months prior to Pearl Harbor, the CFR's Foreign Affairs had already urged the creation of a "Commonwealth of Free Nations." Soon after the Japanese attack, delegates from many countries gathered in 1942 to issue a Declaration of the United Nations, the first time the term "United Nations" appeared. By 1944, U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss and the Soviet Union's Vyacheslav Molotov were hard at work constructing the UN Charter. Alger Hiss was later shown conclusively to have been a secret communist loyal to the Kremlin. It is without doubt that American leaders then extended the war both in Europe and in the Pacific, even using the atomic bomb on civilian targets, to make war so horrible that world government could be presented to mankind as the only alternative.

I can recall as a boy hearing General Dwight Eisenhower's voice telling the American people that the war in Europe had ended. It was in May 1945 when he stated that "the forces of the United Nations are victorious" at a time when the United Nations organization hadn't even been founded. Within weeks, however, the United Nations did come to life at a meeting in San Francisco. The founding conference's Secretary General was the same Alger Hiss, a traitor to America and to the world. The long-awaited organization designed to rule mankind had been created and the United States Senate approved it overwhelmingly in a matter of days. A conspiracy to control the world had passed a most significant hurdle; the United States was now within its grasp. Other nations joined eagerly.

America's Experience

U.S. experience as a member of the UN had begun. Only five years after the UN had been launched, American forces became involved in military action in Korea. This was a war our own President Truman refused to call a war. It was a United Nations operation from its outset, with UN flags flying over the American forces and our own President eventually firing General Douglas MacArthur from his command because he insisted on winning. As you may know, the war in Korea has never ended and tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel are still on station in that nation.

The reason Mr. Truman never referred to the Korean conflict as "war" stems from the very explicit provision in the U.S. Constitution granting power to Congress, and to Congress alone, to get our nation into war. According to this Supreme Law of our nation, the U.S. was never to go to war as a result of some presidential decree. Any national leader that can send his nation into war at his pleasure is effectively a king. And the United States was never to be led by anyone with kingly power. Yet, this is precisely what happened in 1950, and it has occurred repeatedly in the decades that followed.

More than 50,000 Americans died in Korea. The only real winners of that war were the United Nations, those who want world government, and the communist leaders in North Korea who maintained their grip on their land. To give you a small indication of the treachery involved, let me refer to the U.S. Secretary of State during that period, a man named Dean Acheson. A veteran member of the Council on Foreign Relations as has been virtually every Secretary of State (foreign affairs leader) in our nation for the past 60 years, he should be known as a traitor. During the period immediately following World War II, a desire to return to normalcy swept across our nation. The American people and a sizable number of members of the U.S. Congress favored an end to U.S. intervention in the world's affairs. Many expressed opposition to government-led internationalism, preferring instead to promote people-to-people commercial relations which are almost always beneficial.

Always the promoter of the United Nations, Acheson would later state that at this critical moment in the late 1940s when enthusiasm for internationalism had declined sharply, the Korean War "came along and saved us." It saved those who wanted world government brought on by U.S. interventionism and the sacrifice of national sovereignty. It surely didn't save any of the 50,000 American dead or the many Koreans who died. Acheson had learned well that war always brings on more government and, according to the plan he shared with other globalists, it would speed the way toward world government.

The harmful effect of UN membership on our nation's military is a topic for a completely separate discussion - one that I expect we shall have time for later. But there have been plenty of other effects on our nation because of the United Nations.

In 1990, the United Nations sponsored the World Conference on Education For All in Jomtien, Thailand. The programs approved at this gathering dealt with education for the young. Two of them were immediately launched in the United States under the names Goals 2000 and School-To-Work. Five years after these programs had already caused great harm, a prominent American educator stated that the real goal of that UN conference in Thailand was being implemented, and that young students in America were being given an education "that de-emphasizes facts and knowledge and emphasizes politically correct social, psychological and global thinking." As you may know, America's educational system is a disgrace. But it was planned to be a disgrace and this UN presence stemming from Jomtien is only a continuation of the UN's entry into American education.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of the Interior requested a United Nations commission to examine a privately owned company's plan to construct a gold mine in the state of Montana. The firm had already complied with all state and federal ecology guidelines. Yellowstone National Park happens to be five miles away from the planned mine location and is separated from the site by mountainous ridges. Unfortunately, Yellowstone National Park had already been designated a World Heritage Site by the UN's World Heritage Site Commission, a division of UNESCO. When UN officials expressed their fear that the mine "might impact" its World Heritage Site, mine officials abandoned the project. The UN is being allowed to take over America.

In 1998, an official of the UN's Commission on Human Rights received the U.S. government's permission to conduct a nationwide inspection of American prisons. The resulting report condemned our nation's prison system because capital punishment is permitted. Then the UN World Court sought to halt the execution of a man from Paraguay who had raped and murdered a victim. The governor of the state of Virginia ignored the World Court and the man was executed. But the clear intent of the UN to secure jurisdiction over America's system of justice is obvious.

In 2000, UN Human Rights Commission Chairman Mary Robinson condemned the U.S. for seeking to seal our porous border with Mexico.

In 2001, the UN's 54-member Economic and Social Council removed the United States from membership on the UN's Human Rights Commission while retaining the Peoples Republic of China, the world's greatest abuser of human rights. Within its Human Rights Commission, the UN prefers China to the United States. America's leaders who should have been delighted to be excluded from the fraud known as the UN Human Rights Commission expressed sadness. They should have used the opportunity presented to quit the UN entirely.

The European Union

One of the most significant steps toward the world government being planned for all of mankind is the European Union. The John Birch Society is a strong believer in national sovereignty and an equally strong opponent of placing vast authority in any single place or with any group of individuals.

We have long maintained that economic union is always followed by political union which is intended to be followed by world government. And the world is very close to having this three-step plan completed. It must be stopped.

As far back as 1912, world government advocate Joseph Stalin wrote an essay entitled "Marxism and the National Question." In it, he called for the creation of "regional autonomy" as the solution to the "national problem." He wanted regional authority to bring about the "eradication" of nationalism. And this is what has been happening all over the globe. It should come as no surprise to any thinking person to know that the Soviet Union expressed great enthusiasm and worked very hard to see the United Nations created.

The European Union, of course, grew out of the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community called the "Shuman Plan" though it was mainly the work of France's Socialist millionaire, Jean Monnet. Possessing sovereign powers, it was the first step toward the abolition of national independence in those European nations that participated. It was followed in 1957 by the creation of the six-member European Economic Community, a product of the Treaties of Rome. This was known as the "Common Market." Other nations soon joined and in 1986, Europe approved the Single European Act that actually called for the elimination a national boundaries. Henceforth, the European Economic Community (more commonly known then as the Common Market) began now to be referred to as the European Union. The change from just economic ties to political ties was being accomplished.

In 1991, the Treaty of Maastrict committed the European Union to a single currency and a central bank. And the EU's court in Strasbourg began to order member nations to rewrite or cancel some of their laws - which nations are dutifully accomplishing.

What isn't generally known about this dangerous progression toward world government in Europe is that every bit of it was promoted and given funding from America by world government advocates in my country. Some of the early and important American contributors to Europe's present predicament were William Donovan, Walter Bedell Smith, and John Foster Dulles.

(Donovan was the head of the World War II group known as the Office of Strategic Services that became, in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency. John Foster Dulles was a disciple of Edward Mandell House and a collaborator in the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations.)

In 1969, Merry and Serge Bromberger wrote a book praising Jean Monnet. In it, they stated: "A day would come when governments would be forced admit that an integrated Europe was an accomplished fact, without their having had a say in the establishment of its underlying principles." That is a perfectly accurate assessment of what happened, and it was written in 1969.

Just last year, England's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard would write in the London Telegraph of his discovery that Americans had funded and organized much of what has happened to Europe via the European Union. As far back as 1959, Britain's Reginald Maulding warned about the loss of his nation's sovereignty because of these ties. In 1991, Britain's Peregrine Worsthorne said it was "a lie" to say that the European movement would not cost nations their sovereignty.

The plan to establish economic union, followed by political union, and then world government, continues.

In America, Trilateral Commission co-founder (along with David Rockefeller), Zbigniew Brzezinski called for "piecemeal" transition to world government in his 1973 book Between Two Ages. He actually stated a desire for "limitations on national sovereignty." He repeated this goal more explicitly at the Gorbachev State of the World Forum held in San Francisco in 1995 as follows: "We cannot leap into world government in one quick step.... The precondition for eventual globalization is progressive regionalization...."

In 1974, State Department veteran Richard N. Gardner stated in the CFR magazine Foreign Affairs that "...an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault." Many other globalists have summarized the overall goal in less-explicit terms.

Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated in 1992, "The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty, however, has passed; its theory was never matched by reality."

More recently in January 2000, current UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said: "... state sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation."

The European Union is a major step toward what these people advocate.

In America, we are immersed in the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). It is an economic union involving Canada, Mexico and the United States. During my lifetime, our nation's greatest trading partner has always been Canada. Now we have more than a dozen different NAFTA agencies and commissions to help with Canadian trade. This all seems stupid but it is not. It's a brilliant way to destroy U.S. sovereignty and lead us into world government.

These globalists want to expand NAFTA into the newly promoted Free Trade Area of the Americas. They have begun the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC), another economic union. All of these groupings fit the pattern of economic union first, then political union, then world government. Anyone who believes that sovereignty of individual nations is important should realize that it is under severe attack and is in grave danger.

There is so much more that can be said but time allows only a brief glimpse at the plans of this centrally coordinated conspiratorial drive to rule the world. The United Nations is to be the seat of power for these globalists. But it would be a huge mistake to believe that the UN itself is the engine for all of what is happening. The UN is the tool of the conspirators, not the generator of all of these attacks on freedom.

National sovereignty is essential - for my nation and for others. As history has shown, it is true that some nations fall into the hands of bad men who use their acquired power and authority to create war, attack neighbors, and provoke widespread misery. But bad men in a single nation can be defeated and removed, as has happened frequently. If bad men seize power over the entire world, removing such power from them would be extremely difficult.

The worst mistake one could make would be to fall for the propaganda proclaiming that world government will put an end to any possibility that bad men would seize power. It would be a mistake because those who have created the United Nations and who intend to lead it are bad men. Placing authority over the entire world in any repository, and especially in the hands of any person or groups of persons, is absolute folly.

It was encouraging to learn recently that Ireland had rejected the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights approved in Nice a year ago. It is also encouraging to know that resistance to portions of the EU has surfaced here in Switzerland, and in Austria, Denmark and Germany. I know Karl Albert Schachtschneider's book The Euro Illusion: Is it Too Late to Save Europe has awakened many to the globalist threat.

All of you should be encouraged to know that members of our John Birch Society are busily working at the campaign to withdraw our nation from the United Nations. If we are successful, I believe the plans of the globalists worldwide will suffer a tremendous defeat. I expect that all of you in this audience wish us speedy success. And for that I thank you very much.