My point wasn't to drive down too far into the meat of Ivo's commentary, but to point out that the Bush administration's disengagement or lack of care for treaties as a whole might be a boon instead of the viewpoint of this a negative -- if we can drive the decisions for treaties directly into the hands of the American people instead of through bureaucracies.  Ultimately, we the people are the ones responsible for whether a treaty should affect us; let heads of state discuss protectionism based on our nuclear arsenal all they want, but leave the decisions as to our participation in nuclear, missile or other treaties in the hands of the voters.

Posted at May 31, 2005 2:24 PM in response to We Don't Do Treaties

I'd recommend Eugene Volokh's post on the applicability of treaties on First Amendment rights and how ultimately the congress and White House can demonstratively impact our rights (or the general reflection of how other's rights should be viewed) based on the treaties we sign or disconnect ourselves from.

Removing the democratic right of the Republic to protect our personal freedoms based on representative decisions is ludicrious.  This applies to any treaty, NPT, Kyoto, or other international policy brought forth by other nations.

To extend this argument into peripheral territory, if the American people were bound to be the final decision makers for international treaties, it would leave open more opportunities to modify our Bill of Rights, moving the country towards a possible greater list of freedoms (as people would be more accustomed to questioning the basis of their own personal freedoms on a semi-regular basis).  Whether that's a safe thing to do or not is a big unanswerable question, given corporate influence over voting, but it's a curious question.

Posted at May 31, 2005 1:04 PM in response to We Don't Do Treaties