When I think of the purpose of Memorial Day, my thoughts tend to wander back beyond Vietnam, Korea, and the struggle against Hitler to the days of the First World War when the full horror of modern conflict first impressed itself on the consciousness of the West. Millions of ordinary English boys were sent off to die in the trenches for a cause that they only dimly understood then and that is still nebulous today.

It was in response to the horror of that tragedy that one of the United States? most underrated presidents, Woodrow Wilson, pushed for the creation of an international League of Nations that would serve as a forum for the airing and peaceful resolution of international disputes. I begin by stating the obvious, because the obvious does frequently need to be stated, and is often not stated forcefully enough by those who want to ensure that the United Nations is not allowed to become an obstacle to the accomplishment of its own founding ideals: the promotion of global peace, international justice, and mutual respect among all the peoples of the world is a noble and glorious goal. The devil of course is not in the ends but in the means.

Like the UN, the European Union is a multinational body with admirable goals, at least in theory. But both of these organizations also possess the grave potential that they might become more successful in accumulating power than they are in accomplishing their original objectives. Both could become harmful institutions, and for similar reasons. Thus, I treat them together here.

The UN and the EU are both democratic institutions set up to promote prosperity and justice. But democracy does not by itself lead automatically to either prosperity or justice. We should not allow our positive emotions about the word democracy to blind us to the fact that successful democracies are impure democracies; democracies that include checks and balances to prevent their degeneration into mob rule. What are the potential pitfalls of democracy? Here are three of them:

1) Fanaticism. The tendency for people to act based upon the restrictive beliefs of ideologies or superstitions (condemning homosexuals on scriptural grounds, redistributing wealth based upon unproven economic assumptions, voting with one's own group regardless of the justice of the specific cause).
3) Greed. Ignoring the needs and desires of others when they conflict with one's own; forming coalitions that benefit members at the expense of nonmembers.
3) Bitterness. Harboring jealousy against those presumed to be more privileged, seeking to punish descendants for perceived crimes of their forebears.

The principle danger of any pure democracy is that the fair-minded will be outvoted by the biased. That is: ideology can trump evidence, selfishness can trump cooperation, and hatred can trump justice. We only need look at the constitution of the UN Human Rights Commission, or reflect upon the idiotic possibility that those who brought down the tyrant Saddam could be charged with war crimes down the road, to see that this is the central moral problem with organizations like the UN and the EU as they currently stand. Democracy, like sunlight and running water, can be a source of tragedy.

But this leaves Great Britain and the United States in the embarrassing situation of having to assert that their own vantage point is somehow morally superior to that of the constituent members of these organizations. How can we be so arrogant? Dare we accuse the UN or the EU of acting out of fanaticism, greed, or bitterness?

The answer is simple: we have to focus on the facts. A juvenile delinquent might ask a judge what right she has to condemn him. What makes her superior? She need not in fact claim any intrinsic superiority, nor need she resort to an appeal to the authority vested in her by society, she need only point to the actions of the individual under scrutiny and the consequences to others thereof.

Similarly, Great Britain and the United States need claim no ultimate moral superiority to other states, nor should they. But they should point to actions. How has the UN been acting? How has the EU been acting? Actions are the essence of the issue as far as international peace is concerned, and their counterpart, facts (data, evidence), are the crux of the problem in any debate about economics. What does evidence suggest? When an international body wants a nation like the Great Britain to exchange its own currency for one whose value is principally tied to the behavior of citizens of other countries and not to the behavior of Britain's own citizens, it ought to present extraordinary evidence that such a change would be beneficial, not just a hunch that it might be. Remember how Jack squandered his inheritance for a dream and a handful of beans.

It troubles me that Britain might be seduced into accepting a written European constitution. Most British citizens have no firsthand experience of the way a written constitution can pervade every aspect of social life. They think perhaps that such a document will just be another artifact to place in a museum somewhere for schoolchildren to be filed past. The United States Constitution is interpreted through the Supreme Court, chosen by American presidents who were elected by American citizens. That is why it had the moral authority to decide the 2000 election. The prospect of a close general election in Britain some day being decided by a foreign court that answers chiefly to foreign interests is thoroughly abhorrent. And those who think that Britain will be able to opt out down the road if things don't go according to plan ought to check out a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

It's an age-old tragedy that a dream is sexier than a fact: "Come along and be a dreamer too, and together we'll make it come true;" "You don't want to participate? You don't share our dream? You don't want to be part of the solution?" The descent into Hell so often begins with somebody claiming that an alluring ideal is its own justification. History shows that it never can be. Those dreams that do come true -- the miracle of flight, motion pictures, the internet -- only do so because of facts and because of individuals who insist on honoring facts. A just legal system is one that puts facts first.

The EU and the UN are like multinational cults, presenting a vision of the Kingdom but demonstrating no evidence whatsoever of an ability to actually build it. They are coalitions of the billing that get to invoice governments for moneys that they themselves spend, sometimes in ludicrous ways. Those who do not cooperate with dubious international projects that are based on unjust assumptions and poorly grounded suppositions, or those who take independent action for the common good, are accused of being bad international citizens.

There is a place for the United Nations, but it cannot be allowed to become what many would like it to be, and what a growing number of Europeans seems to assume that it already is: a de facto world government. We have to take a pragmatic approach to foreign policy that recognizes both the potential of the UN as a suitable forum for resolving some disputes and also its limitations as a moral force in the world under present circumstances. The UN may be able some day to assume a greater role, but, in the interests of justice, it needs to be kept at arm's length for the time being. Indeed, we need to positively counter false assumptions about the scope of its legitimate powers.

From both an emotional and a scientific standpoint, I consider all humankind to be one family: there is no superiority of one people over another. The British are not better than the French. The Americans are not better than the Chinese. But this is not true of ideas. Some ideas are better than others. Some systems of justice are better than others. Some types of medicine are more successful than others. Some economic systems produce more prosperity than others. Some political systems are more conducive to general human satisfaction and well being than others.

We cannot ride every train that has "Justice" or "Democracy" or "World Peace" painted on the boxcars. Not because we don't believe in these ideals, but because we do.

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