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World government

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World government is the notion of a common political authority for all of humanity, yielding a global government and a single state. Such a government could come into existence either through violent and compulsory world domination or through peaceful and voluntary supranational union.

Quotes

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  • People of the world, it is time for you to awake, to see the goal you want to reach and to go straight to it. You are harried, decimated, impoverished by the absence of world government. Each nation is a law unto itself, which means lawlessness. Wars are caused by this state of things. Kings and certain other privileged classes may reap distinction, reward in money and the gratification of vengeance; YOUR portion will be slain husbands, heartbroken widows, orphaned children, burden of taxes, harder conditions of labor, and the destruction of your business. Do not wait, therefore, for your politicians to move. Act yourselves! Do it now!
  • There is no salvation for civilization, or even the human race, other than the creation of a world government.
  • There is an increasing awareness of the need for some form of global government.
  • I am conscientiously, and have been from the beginning, an advocate of what the society represented by you is trying to carry out, and nothing would afford me greater happiness than to know that, as I believe will be the case, at some future day, the nations of the earth will agree upon some sort of congress, which will take cognizance of international questions of difficulty, and whose decisions will be as binding as the decisions of our supreme court are upon us. It is a dream of mine that some such solution may be.
  • Finally, may I ask, is it possible to stay halfway on the road that leads to total disarmament and the setting up of a League police force? If we contemplate as our ultimate end a League which controls the world’s economic life and the world’s armed forces, then we must say frankly that our ultimate ideal is the creation of nothing less than a World Commonwealth. I think we must make this admission. The establishment of a World Commonwealth is, in the long run, the only alternative to a relapse into a world war. The psychological obstacles are formidable but not insurmountable. There is already a group of nations in the world between whom war may be considered as ruled out forever. Those nations are the British Commonwealth, the United States, and the surviving European democracies. I would add to that group the Soviet Union which, in its international policy, has shown that it is devoted to peace, abhors war, and sincerely believes in the ideal of world union and world cooperation, although it is of the opinion that in the long run such a consummation is impossible without a far-reaching change in the present social order. The democracies stand for a certain view of what constitutes the good life. That view is incompatible with war or with the “totalitarian state”. I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise. I think we must get the better of both those forces and subordinate them to the common good through world union on the basis of social justice. I believe that the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization are the instruments to our hand for conceiving and executing such a policy. Today the world is in transition. The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity. The policy I have endeavoured to sketch is big, bold, and far-reaching. It will be no light and simple task to lay the foundations of a World Commonwealth. It is, on the contrary, perhaps, the greatest and most difficult enterprise ever imagined by the audacious mind of man. But it is a task which has become a necessity. It is an enterprise that is solidly grounded in realities and in the facts of the modern world. If there is still virtue in our common Western civilization and our faith in democracy – and I believe there is – then we must dare to announce that policy as a challenge to the world and as the summons to a great crusade for peace. What greater cause and what more splendid adventure can be set before the youth of the world than the endeavour to bring into being that age – old dream of saints and sages – the great Commonwealth of the World as the visible embodiment of the brotherhood of man?
  • Finally, the present Powers of the world were formed. This process [of coalescing and forming fewer, larger units] has all taken place among the 10,000 countries over several thousand years. The progression from dispersion to union among men, and the principle [whereby] the world is [gradually] proceeding from being partitioned off to being opened up, is a spontaneous [working] of the Way of Heaven (or Nature) and human affairs.
    • Kang Youwei, (1885): The One World Philosophy, (tr. Thompson, Lawrence G., London, 1958, p. 79).
  • [T]he drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
    • Larry McDonald, Introduction. The Rockefeller File. By Gary Allen. Seal Beach, CA: '76 Press, 1976. ISBN 0-89245-001-0. Quotes by Pat Buchanan and Others on the New World Order. Archived from the original on 2007-10-10. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.. The Internet Brigade; retrieved August 24, 2009
  • Influential individuals and groups are pressing for global economic co-operation, global taxes to support the backward territories, a global army and a world government, even for a world-wide moral consciousness. Whatever the future prospects of these recommendations, there is no doubt that the tactics, the methods, the announced aims, fall under the category of social engineering...
    • Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 7 "Planetary Coexistence".
  • Renunciation of freedom implies that the collectivity will be endowed with all that the individual gives up as too burdensome, risky, incalculable. The bargain is an alluring one, since man is always strongly tempted to discard freedom in favor of security and material benefits. The "elites" too would find their advantage since, whether on the Left or on the Right, they no longer believe in democracy but only in a paternalistic directorate, be it called managers, experts, planners, world government, ubiquitous agencies, or any other network. Their condition would be just as permanent as the order of world society itself.
    • Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 11 "Intellectual and Philosopher".
  • Future peace, security and ordered progress of the world demand a world federation of free nations, and on no other basis can the problems of the world be solved. Such a world federation would ensure the freedom of its constituent nations, the prevention of aggression and exploitation of one nation over another, the protection of national minorities, the advancement of all backward areas and peoples, and the pooling of the world's resources for the common good of all. On the establishment of such a world federation, disarmament would be practicable in all countries, national armies, navies and air forces would no longer be necessary, and a world federal defense force would keep the peace and prevent aggression. ...The Committee regretfully realizes, however, despite the tragic and overwhelming lessons of the war and the perils that overhang the world, the Governments of few countries are yet prepared to take this inevitable step towards world federation.
    • Jawaharlal Nehru & the All-India Congress Committee, (Aug. 8, 1942) as quoted by Bhagwan Manu, The Peacemakers: India's Quest For One World (2012) p. 1894.
  • Secondly, there is the further development of the Hague Tribunal, of the work of the conferences and courts at The Hague. It has been well said that the first Hague Conference framed a Magna Charta for the nations; it set before us an ideal which has already to some extent been realized, and towards the full realization of which we can all steadily strive. The second Conference made further progress; the third should do yet more. Meanwhile the American government has more than once tentatively suggested methods for completing the Court of Arbitral Justice constituted at the second Hague Conference and for rendering it effective. It is earnestly to be hoped that the various governments of Europe, working with those of America and of Asia, shall set themselves seriously to the task of devising some method which shall accomplish this result. If I may venture the suggestion, it would be well for the statesmen of the world, in planning for the erection of this world court, to study what has been done in the United States by the Supreme Court. I cannot help thinking that the Constitution of the United States, notably in the establishment of the Supreme Court and in the methods adopted for securing peace and good relations among and between the different states, offers certain valuable analogies to what should be striven for in order to secure, through the Hague courts and conferences, a species of world federation for international peace and justice. There are, of course, fundamental differences between what the United States Constitution does and what we should even attempt at this time to secure at The Hague; but the methods adopted in the American Constitution to prevent hostilities between the states, and to secure the supremacy of the Federal Court in certain classes of cases4, are well worth the study of those who seek at The Hague to obtain the same results on a world scale.
  • For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
    Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
    ...
    Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and
    the battle-flags were furled
    In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
    There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
    And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
  • There are some things which a world government could do better than national or state governments. A world government could compel peace among the nations; but it could not efficiently prescribe the character of sewers to be installed by the city of Pittsburgh, Pa., or Des Moines, la. There are some things a national government can do better than a state or city government. But we do not want to leave it to the national government to prescribe the character of telephone service our city shall have. I do not want to leave it to Congress to determine the time I shall retire at night. There are some things which might well be left to a world government, there are others which can be cared for better by our national government, and others by the state government, and still others by the county, and city, and family. And there are a few matters that even the individual himself can best perform, strange as it may seem to some. The real problem is how to secure wise regulation. Will a strong centralized government bring the best results, or is the federal plan—joining national and state control—preferable? The issue concerns the method of government, one of the profound problems at the basis of all organized human life.
    • Clifford Thorne, Address before the National Association of Railway Commissioners (Oct. 23, 1915) Traffic World, Vol. 16 Traffic Service Corporation (1915) p. 867.
  • We live... in an age of law and an age of reason, and age in which we can get along with our neighbors. ...It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for you to get along in the republic of the United States. Now, if Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over a watershed they don't call out the national guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring suit in the Supreme Court and abide by its decision. There isn't a reason in the world why we can't do that internationally. There were two documents signed at San Francisco. One of them was the charter of the United Nations. The other was the World Court. It will require the ratification of both of those Charters, and the putting of them into effect, if we expect to have world peace for future generations. This is one of the tasks which have been assigned to me. I am accepting the responsibility. I am going to try to carry it out.
    • Harry S. Truman Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman (June 28, 1945), Vol. 1.
  • I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares and the Arthur Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash. ...It took several thousand years to convince our fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to convince that same fine race—including every splendid intellect in it—that there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch. We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and we can't prove it by the miraculous "histories"... I feel that our fetish is safe for three centuries yet.
  • It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it.
  • History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime.
    • Carl Van Doren as quoted by Nicholas Hagger, The World Government (2010).
  • We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest.
  • There can be little question that the attainment of a federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity to most of the children born into the world, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history. The enormous waste caused by military preparation and the mutual annoyance of competing great powers, and the still more enormous waste due to the under-productiveness of great masses of people, either because they are too wealthy for stimulus or too poor for efficiency, would cease. There would be a vast increase in the supply of human necessities, a rise in the standard of life and in what is considered a necessity, a development of transport and every kind of convenience; and a multitude of people would be transferred from low-grade production to such higher work as art of all kinds, teaching, scientific research, and the like. All over the world there would be a setting free of human capacity, such as has occurred hitherto only in small places and through precious limited phases of prosperity and security. Unless we are to suppose that spontaneous outbreaks of supermen have occurred in the past, it is reasonable to conclude that the Athens of Pericles, the Florence of the Medici, Elizabethan England, the great deeds of Asoka, the Tang and Ming periods in art, are but samples of what a whole world of sustained security would yield continuously and cumulatively. Without supposing any change in human quality, but merely its release from the present system of inordinate waste, history justifies this expectation.

See also

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