Transnationalism Getting Worse Thanks to Twitter
Some 243 years ago, America’s forefathers gathered in Philadelphia to debate and write a unique document. That single-page document announced the formation of a new country—one that would no longer find itself in the clutches of a foreign power. That document was the Declaration of Independence. Eleven years later, many of those same men gathered again to lay the foundation for how the United States of America was to be governed: The US Constitution, a form of government like no other, by the people, of the people and for the people.
For more than two centuries, hundreds of thousands of courageous men and women have given their lives to protect America’s sovereignty and liberties.
American constitutional rights must be preserved in order to preserve unique American values of liberty and freedom.
America has unique values of liberty which do not exist in foreign legal systems. Included among, but not limited to, those values and rights are:
• Freedom of Religion
• Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of the Press
• Due Process
• Right to Privacy
• Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Unfortunately, increasingly, foreign laws and legal doctrines, are finding their way into the US.
These foreign laws are frequently at odds with U.S. constitutional principles of equal protection and due process.
It is imperative that we safeguard our constitutions’ fundamentals, particularly the individual guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the sovereignty of our Nation and its people, and the principles of the rule of law—American laws, not foreign laws.
Prominent Left-leaning politicians and organizations have become increasingly frustrated over the years with their inability to advance radical agendas under U.S. constitutional law. As a result, they have created a parallel channel through which they promote the concept of the American judicial community looking to international and foreign law in making legal decisions and establishing legal precedents.
This dangerous phenomenon is known as “transnational jurisprudence,” or more succinctly, “transnationalism.”
Transnationalism is a dangerous threat because it advances the idea that Americans should look to laws that have not undergone the political process in the United States to become law. In the USA, laws are introduced in legislative branches by elected representatives of the people (Congress and state legislatures) and, having passed, are signed into law by the elected executives (the President or governors). When courts look to international or foreign law in making legal decisions, this entire fundamental process is bypassed, indeed totally ignored.
Despite the fact that this seems completely Unamerican, it is happening more and more and there are those in the USA who are promoting transnationalism. In fact, two US Supreme Court Justices have commented that America must increasingly look to international law:
“Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change. Justices are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspective.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“I suspect that with time, we will rely increasingly on international and foreign law in resolving what now appear to be domestic issues.”
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
Perhaps not surprisingly, the most recent threat from transnationalism comes in social media. It appears that Twitter has been using the laws of foreign countries as an excuse to stifle and suppress free speech and freedom of expression on its platform.
With the overwhelming prominence of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, using foreign laws to suppress the 1st amendment freedom of expression rights of Americans is a cynical method by which the Left continues to try to shape thought and dialogue in America. It must not be allowed to continue.
Social media platforms should be allowed to make their own rules–if those rules are applied and enforced equally, something that is currently highly questionable to say the least.
But once those social media platforms start invoking laws to apply rules arbitrarily, they should open themselves to scrutiny and possible regulatory action.
It’s high time that the folks at Twitter, Facebook and YouTube remember that it was under the liberties of America’s free enterprise system that they built their empires of vast wealth, not the frankly inferior legal and economic systems of foreign countries.
