Five years ago, historian Christopher Lasch published The Revolt of the Elites. It was a book about how our national elite was literally seeding from America. Pointing out the huge and growing gap in income between the elite and the middle class, Lasch argued that a more ominous gap existed in how each perceived America.

The old elite, Lasch wrote, had a sense of obligation to country and community. But the new ruling class, more merit based, brainy and mobile, congregates on the coasts and puts patriotism far down the list in hierarchy of values. Indeed, said Lasch, "It is a question of whether they think of themselves as American at all."

Lasch did not mention names, but the new elite is not difficult to identify. A few years ago, Ralph Nader wrote to the executives of 100 giant US corporations, suggesting they might show their loyalty to "the country that bred them, built them, subsidised the and defended them." At the annual stockholders' meeting, Ralph said, why not begin with a pledge of allegiance to the flag?

Only one company responded favourably. Half did not respond at all. Many sent back angry letters declaring that they were not American companies at all. Motorola denounced the request as "political and nationalistic." Other companies likened the idea of a pledge of allegiance to loyalty oaths of the McCarthy era. Why were the heads of these corporations so outraged? Because for years they have been trying to sever their bonds to the country of their birth.

In 1997 the head of Boeing told one interviewer he would be delighted if, in twenty years hence no-one thought of Boeing as an American company. "My goal," said Phil Condit, "is to rid [Boeing] of its image as an American group."

'Beholden to no nation'

Back in the 1970's, Carl Gertstacker of Dow envisioned the day when Dow would be free of America. "I have long dreamed," he said, "of buying an island owned by no nation and of establishing the world headquarters of the Dow company on truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society." A spokesman for Union Carbide agreed: "It is not proper for an international corporation to put the welfare of any country in which it does business above that of any other." In any test of loyalties, for such as these, the company comes before the country.

Early in the 1970's, Zbigniew Brezinski, later Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, wrote:-

"A global consciousness is for the first time beginning to manifest itself... we are witnessing the emergence of transnational elites... composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries; their perspectives are not confined by national traditions.. and their interests are more functional than national."

The one big force that can derail the rise of this new elite, warned Zbig, is the politically activated masses, "whose nativism could work against the cosmopolitan elites."

Brzezinski knew that the creation of any New World order would have to proceed by stealth. As Richard Gardner, Carter's ambassador to Italy wrote in 1974:-

"The 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up. An end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than an old fashioned frontal attack."

Advancing on little cat's feet, they have done their work. By 1992 Mr Clinton could appoint as Deputy Secretary of State his room-mate from his Oxford days, who openly welcomed the death of nativism and the coming of world government. Wrote Strobe Talbott:-

"All countries are basically social arrangements. Within the next hundred years, nationhood, as we know it, will be obsolete. All states will recognise a single global authority. A phase briefly fashionable in the mid 20th century, citizen of the world, will have assumed real meaning at the end of the 21st."

Last year in Istambul, Bill Clinton declared himself "a citizen of the world."

This then is the millennial struggle that succeeds the Cold War. It is the struggle of patriots of every single nation against a world government where all nations yield up their sovereignty and fade away . It is the struggle of nationalism against globalism, and it will be fought out, not only among nations, but within nations. And the old question Dean Rusk asked in the Vietnam era is relevant anew: Whose side are you on?

Last fall, accepting the highest award of the World Federalist Association, the 'Most Trusted Man in America' declared his loyalty:-

"...If we are to avoid the eventual catastrophe of world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations, as the first step towards world government... we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order."

Indeed it would Mr Cronkite.

Walter went on to urge US ratification of the UN Law of the Sea treaty rejected by Ronald Reagan, of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty rejected by the Senate, and of the Rome treaty for a permanent international war crimes tribunal. He urged America to surrender its veto power in the Security Council, and called for a UN standing army to enforce the peace of the world. We now no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face, the internationalists' vision of world government.

New World Order the Goal

But the American ship of state has long been shifting course to that destination. In October 1991, President Bush told the UN that a New World order was America's goal. In 1993, the Clinton White House, in a secret national security directive, declared its intent to put US troops under UN command. When young Americans were killed in an accident over Iraq, Al Gore offered his condolences "to the families of those who died in the service of the United Nations."

In a lame-duck session of Congress in 1994, both parties voted to ensnare the United States in a World Trade Organisation where America gets one vote out of 135, and gives up its right to negotiate reciprocal trade treaties that serve America's national interest.

Under the treaty on global warming Al Gore brought home from Kyoto, the United States must radically slash its use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, while no commensurate cut is demanded in the fossil use of 132 'undeveloped countries,' including China.

Two years ago, a Mr Bacre Waly Ndaye of the UN Human Rights Commission came to the US. His mission? Tour US prisons to determine if they are up to UN standards. Mr Ndaye interviewed condemned prisoners to see if their human rights were being violated.

There is, of course, something comical in a UN official from a continent where the criminal justice system is, shall we say, pre-Miranda, ripping the US for its prison system. But the issue behind the Ndaye tour is deadly serious. For he insists that he has the right to investigate our prisons because his UN Commission speaks for 'the world' - an authority higher than the United States, and he claims the 1992 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by President Bush, justifies UN inspections of US prisons.

Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson toured North Mexico. Her concern? By heavily patrolling the accessible crossing points, said Mrs Robinson, our Border Patrol is 'forcing illegal aliens to take more perilous routes into the United States. It is, presumably, a violation of human rights of people breaking into our country to 'force' them to seek out less safe passages across the borders!

It is easy to see where Mary Robinson and her colleagues are heading. They seek a regime where UN bureaucrats from Third World despotisms demand that America open her borders and grant sanctuary to all who wish to settle here. Americans who wish to control their borders will be told that sovereignty is outdated, that our great fertile plains and cities are, compared to Bombay and Lagos, under-populated.

From UN declarations of 'world heritage sites' in the US to putting US troops under UN command, to the creation of a UN war crime tribunal with the power to seize and prosecute US soldiers, we are on the road paved by Bill Clinton when he said that he hopes to leave America tied down in a web of global institutions.

Last month, we learned that the UN tribunal to prosecute war crimes in the Balkans has opened a file on US airforce pilots. The chickens of globalism are coming home to roost.

Pretext of Human Rights

Another milestone was crossed last year when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asserted that only the Security Council can authorise the international use of force; and a nation's sovereignty no longer protects it from intervention, if the UN determines that human rights are being violated. The Brechnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty has been replaced by the Annan Doctrine.

Upon what meat has our Caesar fed? The United Nations was not established as a world government, but as a forum for settling disputes. Kofi Annan is not the conscience of mankind; he is a civil servant, an employee of the UN, and he should behave as such.

But it was not Mr Ndaye, Mrs Robinson or Mr Annan who announced the death of the nation-state. That was Strobe Talbot, Richard Gardner and those Republicans, who have made the global economy a golden calf to fall down and worship. And the political globalists have their own fifth column of fellow travellers inside the conservative elite.

Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley has been quoted as declaring that the "nation-state is finished." He calls for the amendment to the Constitution to throw open American borders to immigration from all over the world. Bartley's vision of America as Global Mall is embraced by the global corporations that advertise in the Journal and seek to access an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour. AS British author John Gray writes, America's neo-conservatives have become little more than "ranting evangelists of global capitalism."

Let it be said: Loyalty to the New World Order is disloyalty to the Republic. In nation after nation, the struggle between patriotism and globalism is under way. In England the Tory Party draws a line in the sand at giving up Britain's Pound. In France farmers riot to preserve a way of life. In Canada, the fight to preserve the national culture is gaining recruits. In Germany, Gerhard Schroder makes a political comeback by embracing economic nationalism.

And Mr Cronke's talk of world government ushering in world peace notwithstanding, the end of sovereignty means endless war. Trampling on the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, President Clinton determined that the Serbs surrender kosovo and cede domination of their country to NATO. When Belgrade rejected his ultimatum, Mr Clinton began 78 days of bombing, using as his casus belli allegations of Serbian genocide against Kosovar Alabanians. We now know there was no genocide. We now know it was Cinton's bombing that spurred the killing. We now know that Clinton's war did not create a 'multi-ethnic democracy,' but a vengeful little statelet where Serbs are burned out of their homes for sport.

If ever sovereignty becomes obsolete, we may expect America's involvement in endless wars, until one day, we pay the horrific price in some act of cataclysmic horror on our own soil. For interventionism is the spawning ground of international terror.

Admonishing Russia for her war on Chechnya, Madeline Albright declared: "Killing the innocent does not defeat terror; it feeds terror." Exactly, Mrs Albright. But that is as true in Serbia as it is in Chechnya.

If we wish to see the future golbalists have in mind, we need only look at the super-state rising in Europe. The nations of the European Union have ceased to be sovereign. They have given up control of their currencies (partially correct, but not yet in the case of Britain. Ed.), their budgets, their borders, and are giving up control of their defence. Britain has been forced to comply with a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights requiring the British Army to accept homosexuals. Earlier, the Court demanded that Britain end corporal punishment in its schools. "What doth it profit a man if he gain control of the whole world and lose control of his country?"

Fight Back

In 1939, in his book The New World Order, H. G. Wells wrote: "Countless people will hate the New World Order... and will die protesting against it... we will have to bear in mind the distress of a generation of malcontents..."

Well, Mr Wells, we are your malcontents. But we're not going to die protesting your New World Order; we're going to live fighting it. And Seattle may just prove to be the Boston Tea Party of that New World Order. "I believe globalism is inevitable," Mr Clinton told Larry King at last year's end. Well I don't!

My vision of America is of a republic that has recovered every trace of her lost sovereignty, independence and liberty, a nation that is once again self-reliant in agriculture, in industry and technology, a country that can, if need be, stand alone in the world.

My vision is of a republic, not an empire, a nation that does not go to war unless it is attacked, or her vital interests are imperilled, or her honour is impugned. And when she does go to war it is only after following a constitutional declaration by the Congress of the United States. We are not imperialists; we are not interventionists; we are not hegemonists; and we are not isolationists. We simply believe in America first, last and always.

And we don't want to be citizens of the world, because we have been granted a higher honour - we are citizens of the United States. Asked on his deathbed to make a toast, John Adams, the great Bostonian, declared: "That is my vision for America; that is our cause; and it shall prevail!