Corsi: Hegemony, Nativism and paranoia....

This reference by Atrios to a an article by Corsi and its previous mention by a wingnut friend in (polite) conversation actually encouraged me to click through the article.

It's kind of an oddball article these days- it's your typical extremist wingnut "they're selling out our sovereingty through the Council on Foreign Relations" appeal to paranoia.

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy.

Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA to include Canada, setting the stage for North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

The blueprint President Bush is following was laid out in a 2005 report entitled "Building a North American Community" published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Well, let's see just what the wingnut was talking about in that report by the nefarious CFR...

WHAT WE SHOULD DO NOW

• Establish a common security perimeter by 2010. The governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States should articulate as their long-term goal a common security perimeter for North America. In particular, the three governments should strive toward a situation in which a terrorist trying to penetrate our borders will have an equally hard time doing so, no matter which country he elects toenter first.
  
  
• Develop a North American Border Pass. The three countries should develop a secure North American Border Passwith biometric identifiers. This document would allow its bearers expedited passage through customs, immigration, and airport security throughout the region. The program would be modeled on the U.S.-Canadian ‘‘NEXUS’’ and the U.S.-Mexican ‘‘SENTRI’’ programs,provide ‘‘smart cards’’ to allow swifter passage to those who pose no risk.
  
  

Outside of "help Mexico develop" (NAFTA was born the same way- wait for it, wait for it) the entire report dryly reads not so much like, "Holy shit, they're compromising our soverignty!" to more like "Holy shit, the US wants to make further demands on its vassal states!"

Dudes and dudettes reading this: the CFR makes recommendations like this to enhance the power of the United States in the world, not to attenuate it. The "move defenses to the outer perimeter" verbiage is to expand US border force beyond its current perimters, not to surrender it.

It's amazing how this game is played - policies of hegemony are decried as weakening the United States and so when their derivatives are implemented as law or treaty a move of aggression is seen as a retreat.

Moreover, Corsi and other wingnuts like this count on their audience never to consider that the US might be acting in a way to dominate other nations, and expect the United States - by far the world's largest military power - to roll over and play dead with respect to nations like Mexico that aren't exactly world powers. In fact, Corsi probably doesn't even have enough consideration for the intellection of his audience to even get that Canada's joined NAFTA, as Atrios points out.